By Paul Homewood
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The East Coast Cluster in Teesside – a project that will capture and store carbon emissions from industries in the region – is now set to start construction in mid-2025, marking the latest milestone in the government’s mission to reignite its industrial heartlands, tackle the climate crisis and turbocharge growth for decades to come.
This investment decision comes less than a week after the launch of the government’s landmark Plan for Change, which aims to drive economic growth and rebuild Britain, and marks a significant step forward in delivering a Mission-led government. Backing the Carbon Capture industry will help reignite industrial heartlands and drive investment in industrial communities such as Teesside.
It follows the government’s £21.7 billion funding commitment to ensure the UK’s vision for CCUS becomes a reality in the UK. Work is set to begin in 2025, with one of the first projects, Net Zero Teesside Power, estimating to deliver secure low-carbon energy capable of powering up to one million homes from 2028.
The deals will unlock £4 billion worth of contracts that will be awarded by projects in the East Coast Cluster to supply chains, supporting UK businesses, driving investment in innovative technology and industries and creating opportunities for local people.
It also brings a major boost for the UK economy, with 2,000 jobs set to be supported in the North East initially and tens of thousands more to be supported across the UK in the coming years as the CCUS industry grows.
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There is limited information in this briefing and the media don’t appear to have bothered digging any further, merely just repeating Miliband’s propaganda.
But we can glean more from the East Coast Cluster website:
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https://eastcoastcluster.co.uk/press-release/greenlight-for-net-zero-teesside-power/
The particular project which has been signed up appears to be just a gas-fired power station, which we also learn has capacity of 742 MW. They also claim they will capture 2Mt of CO2 a year.
I can find no mention of the subsidies agreed, but if we guess at a value of £100/tonne CO2, the annual subsidy would be £200 million.
The project is also said to be costing in the region of £4 billion to build, though DESNZ stress that this is not the amount of subsidy involved. I will FOI them to get the details. But from previous discussions, it appears likely that part of that £4 billion will be paid for out of Miliband’s £21.7 billion pot, on top of CfD subsidies for running costs.
A BEIS study in 2018 reckoned that CCS would reduce fuel efficiency from 59.8% to 52.6%, as some of the energy produced in a CCGT would be needed for the carbon removal.
CAPEX would also be triple that of a stand alone CCGT, and annual running costs could be about £35 million higher for a typical CCGT with CCS.
Extra fuel costs due to inefficiency would also raise costs, maybe by around £50 million a year at current prices. That adds up to about £85 million a year, on top of higher financing costs.
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We’ll have to wait and see the actual numbers, but we are bound to be paying through the nose for an expensive and inefficient way of producing electricity from gas, which may not even end up saving much CO2!
After all, BP and Equinor are not forking out four billion for the fun of it!