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CCS - Carbon Capture and Storage at Vattenfall

Climate change is one of the largest environmental challenges of our time. As part of ongoing research and development efforts, Vattenfall initiated a project on carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) in 2001. The goal of the project is to develop commercial concepts for CCS at power plants between 2015 and 2020.

Climate change is a threat that seriously needs to be tackled; hence we need to significantly reduce the amount of emitted carbon dioxide (CO₂). Alternative and sustainable sources of energy are being developed but need more time before they can be commercialised and fully deployed on the market. Fossil fuels will be needed during the transition period. CO₂ capture and storage (CCS) can support the transition to a low CO₂ energy system in the near future.
Read about the CCS technology

At Vattenfall, a number of test rigs, EU projects and joint efforts at different pilots and research stations around the world have given us great knowledge and experience. It has also secured the company’s belief that CCS is a viable concept and that CCS is absolutely necessary to quickly start reducing global CO₂ levels.

The different methods available for capturing CO₂ aim at producing a concentrated stream of CO₂ that can be readily transported to a suitable storage site for injection underground.  There are three principal ways to capture CO₂ produced in power plants: Oxyfuel combustion, Postcombustion and Precombustion.

Vattenfall has built a 30 MW pilot plant for carbon dioxide capture at the lignite-fired power plant at Schwarze Pumpe, Germany. The plant was inaugurated in 2008, and since then tests are performed to evaluate the technology of Oxyfuel combustion before building a larger scale demonstration plant.  

Next step will be a full-scale demonstration plant at Jänschwalde in Germany. The Jänschwalde demo will feature both the technologies of Oxyfuel and Postcombustion. With this double-demo-project, it is planned that CO₂ lean electricity can be delivered to the grid in 2015.

Through Nuon, Vattenfall is building a pilot plant at the Willem Alexander power plant in Buggenum, Netherlands. This pilot, that use the Precombustion technology of CCS, is planned to be in operation during 2010.

Read more about our:
CCS - Pilot plants
CCS - Demonstration plants