Only one submission for CCS funding
Only one submission for CCS funding
A consultation with stakeholders will determine what should be done about the CCS funding failure.
Proponents of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, which traps carbon emissions and stores them underground, are expressing alarm after only one demonstration project applied for EU funding by a 3 July deadline.
CCS ‘demonstration projects’, which trial the yet-unproven technology, were meant to be funded by the NER300 programme, which uses proceeds from the EU’s Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) to fund low-carbon technologies. In a first round of funding last year no CCS project could be given funds because of insufficient financial commitments from member state governments. The entirety of that round’s funding was given to renewable projects.
At the time, Connie Hedegaard, European Commissioner for climate action, expressed confidence that the projects would get their act together in time for the second round of funding at the end of this year. But only one CCS project applied for the funding by the 3 July deadline – the White Rose project by British power company Drax. In the first round, 10 projects were put forward.
Graeme Sweeney of the pro-CCS group Zero Emissions Platform says the focus will now be on getting this one project through, for fear of the signal it would send to again have no funding for CCS in the second round. “We want to get more than one, but we need to be pragmatic that it’s not going to be very many,” he said.
“The big lesson we’ve learned is that the recession has changed everybody’s appetite for risk, so we need to plan differently from what we had in the past,” he added. “The prospect of a capital grant from NER300 is not enough in itself to guarantee profitability.”
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If the current carbon price remains stable, about €430 million should be available for the second round of funding, plus an additional €288 million carried over from the first round.
A final decision on which projects will get funding is expected in 2014. The Commission is running a consultation with stakeholders to determine what should be done about the CCS funding failure.