The UK Department of Energy and Climate Change last week announced the award of a front-end engineering design to the White Rose CCS Project, at Drax power station in North Yorkshire.

The FEED study will span two years, include a planned development of a CO2 transportation and storage solution (the Yorkshire-Humber CCS Trunkline) and aim to solve issues needed before making a final investment decision on the construction of the £2 billion clean coal power plant with full CCS.

Last week the UK government also announced plans to complete feasibility works and identify options to take forward an industrial CCS network through the over £10 million Tees Valley City Deal.

“The UK CCS Research Centre (UKCCSRC) welcomes news that the FEED study is progressing for the White Rose Project and the additional resources to investigate industry CCS for the Tees Valley,” Gibbins said.

“CCS is imperative for the UK to reach our emission targets and these projects will capitalise on the growing research knowledge-base in the UK. The UK has one of the strongest CCS research communities, and the UKCCSRC looks forward to working with these projects both on technical issues and in supplying the highly-skilled scientists and engineers needed to take forward CCS commercialisation.”

The UKCCSRC coordinates a programme of underpinning research on all aspects of CCS in support of basic science and UK government efforts on energy and climate change.

The Centre members will be supporting the delivery of many R&D aspects of the FEED studies, and the Centre will look to fund additional research on areas of import to CCS in 2014.