Chamber welcomes funding for Yorkshire carbon storage project

9th July 2014

News of £240m European Commission funding for a Yorkshire carbon storage project that would support up to 2,000 jobs and provide clean electricity to more than 630,000 homes has been welcomed by the Sheffield Chamber of Commerce.

The White Rose project, based at Britain's largest coal-fired power station, the Drax plant in Yorkshire, is one of Europe's first carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects. When built, the plant would capture around 90 per cent of its carbon dioxide emissions and would store two million tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum under the North Sea seabed. Whilst acknowledging that the project is happening instead of a new power station proposed for Hatfield, Doncaster, the Chamber's Executive Director Richard Wright said: -This is good news with respect to energy supply security in the future. -Although the Hatfield project researched different ways of capturing carbon, which probably would have delivered more benefits to the Sheffield City Region, we recognise that there will be a need for energy from fossil fuels to complement nuclear and renewables and that requires carbon capture to protect the environment. This project achieves that and will be of great benefit to us. -The investment should also offer some opportunities to local businesses to supply components and that is to be welcomed, added Mr Wright. Carbon capture and storage is a process of capturing millions of tonnes of CO2 from power stations and industrial facilities, and storing the CO2 offshore, deep under the sea bed. It's estimated that clean power plants with CCS could provide more than 20 per cent of the UK's electricity by 2050. The White Rose project includes the construction of a new clean coal power plant with a large CO2 transport and storage network.