ScottishPower to get share of £1bn carbon research fund

Published on Thursday 4 March 2010 21:39

A SCOTTISH power station is expected to be given a share of tens of millions of pounds of government funding next week to develop technology for catching and storing carbon dioxide emissions.

ScottishPower is one of two companies left in a competition for a government prize, expected to be worth about 1 billion, to be spent building one of the world's first carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities.

The energy giant hopes to develop CCS technology to capture the greenhouse gas emissions from Longannet power station, a coal-fired plant in Fife.

Next week, the government is expected to give ScottishPower a share of tens of millions of pounds to develop its competition bid.

The other company still in the contest, Eon, is expected to share in the tens of millions of pounds to develop its own competition entry, planned for a new power station at Kingsnorth in Kent.

An energy company insider told The Scotsman it was good news that it looked likely the money would be made available.

He said: "It shows commitment from the government to quite an ambitious competition. There is nothing else like this competition in the world.

"It's also good that the government is sticking to the time-scale for the competition."

The money will be spent drawing up detailed plans to show how the companies would develop CCS technology at each power station.

If ScottishPower, which is owned by the Spanish firm Iberdrola, impresses the judges enough to win the competition, it would put Scotland at the forefront of development of the innovative technology across the world.

The use of CCS technology, which catches the emissions from the power plant for storage underground – such as under the North Sea – is also considered essential if the UK is to meet its ambitious climate change targets.

The winning power station is expected to be revealed in about a year.

Dr Richard Dixon, the director of environmental campaigners WWF Scotland, threw his support behind ScottishPower winning the overall prize for Longannet, saying that it was the "obvious choice".

Whereas Eon is planning to build a new power station at Kingsnorth – an idea that has attracted considerable protest – Longannet is an existing plant that would be "retrofitted" with the technology.

It is also located near to the North Sea, which is believed to have much of the storage capability for carbon dioxide.

Dr Dixon said that it would be a boost to Scotland if Longannet won.

"It's a big old power station, and there are lots of those around the world that would benefit from the same sort of retrofitting," he said.

"If we can make it work here, it would be an expertise that could be sold all around the world."

First Minister Alex Salmond has claimed that Scotland could lead the world in carbon capture technology.