By Alex Morales and Paul Dobson
April 16 (Bloomberg) -- National Grid Plc is investigating piping carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants and refineries near London and in northern England to undersea storage sites so the gas won’t add to global warming.
The manager of Britain’s natural gas-delivery network found the Thames Estuary near London and the northern Teesside industrial hub may be suitable to lay new pipelines to move the greenhouse gas toward depleted offshore wells, Director of Network Operations Chris Train said in an interview.
The U.S. and Europe together have earmarked as much as $14 billion in aid to develop technology to trap and bury the waste gas for eons, which in the London area may benefit utilities E.ON AG and RWE AG and refinery operator Petroplus Holding AG.
“What we’ll probably see is something arranged around clusters” of industrial polluters to remove their CO2, Train said by telephone. That’s more feasible than building a national infrastructure, he said.
Pilot projects have developed slowly because of potential gas-transport costs. London-based National Grid is expanding its range of possible routes beyond Scotland and Humberside, banking on government support and its own unique position of already operating 4,600 miles of gas pipelines in Britain.
Saving Polluters Money
A carbon-capture system might help the government as well as industrial polluters to meet international greenhouse-gas agreements without having to buy emissions permits from traders.
The Thames river area near the country’s financial capital is home to large producers of greenhouse gases.
Duesseldorf-based E.ON, Germany’s largest utility, has drawn up plans for carbon capture at a new coal-burning power plant at Kingsnorth, just south of the Thames river. RWE AG’s Npower unit runs a coal-fired power station on the banks of the Thames. Petroplus has refineries by the Thames and on Teesside.
Train declined to name companies National Grid has spoken with about the plans, beyond saying “we are talking with parties in both those areas” of England. “It’s pretty embryonic at this stage.”
Carbon capture and storage, commonly called CCS, will contribute a maximum of 10 percent of emission reductions needed globally in 2020 under expected greenhouse-gas trading programs, or 240 million metric tons of gas, New Carbon Finance, a London- based research company, estimated last month.
‘High Cost’
“The role of CCS will only be minor given the relative high cost of doing CCS projects prior to 2020,” said Milo Sjardin, an analyst in New York for the firm. The rest of the reductions would come from increased fuel efficiency at factories, fuel switching and other abatement efforts, he said.
National Grid, which earns a regulated rate of return on its energy networks, is an “ideal” candidate to move the gas around Britain, provided the government set rules that enable companies to make money by helping bury CO2, Train said.
“One of the barriers for the development of carbon capture to date is having the right incentive framework in place,” he said. While National Grid’s focus is land-based pipes, “if it meant developing a project, we wouldn’t shy away from doing the offshore” leg of the transportation too, Train said.
The company is vying to control the transportation side of the unproven technology, which the International Energy Agency has said will be vital to meet the United Nations’ goal of cutting greenhouse-gas output 50 percent by mid-century.
“It’s still a technology that’s at the beginning of its development,” Mark Freshney, a London-based analyst at Credit Suisse Group, said today in a telephone interview. “It’s 10 years away. It’s not a big value-driver today.”
$3 Billion Plan
National Grid said in February it was drawing up plans for a 2-billion pound ($3 billion) network of carbon-dioxide pipes in the Humber area of northeast England. Last week, the energy regulator, Ofgem, began a public consultation to investigate the viability of National Grid plans to turn over 300 kilometers (186 miles) of natural gas pipes in Scotland to transport CO2.
“There’s a number of areas that also have similar opportunities,” including the Thames Gateway, and Teesside, “which is more refinery-based,” Train said. “There are the economies of scale and opportunity that are afforded by the clustering of coal-fired plants.”
The company is studying converting existing natural gas pipes for CO2 transportation, as in Scotland, and to build new networks, such as in the Humber area. So long as the government introduces clear rules, construction of pipes can start “quite quickly,” Train said.
To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net. Paul Dobson in London at pdobson2@bloomberg.net
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