Project objective and targets

The overall objective of Vattenfall's project on CCS is to develop commercial concepts for carbon capture and storage at coal-fired power plants by 2015-2020.

To reach the overall project objective, we have defined two technical targets:

• To reduce the total cost of carbon dioxide capture and storage to less than EUR 20 per tonne avoided carbon dioxide.
• To realise a carbon dioxide capture efficiency close to 100 per cent.

Carbon dioxide is emitted, as fossil fuels are combusted in power plants. Emissions of carbon dioxide are costly under the EU emissions trading scheme. Technologies for capture and storage at power plants could be applied when the costs for capture and storage meet the price for emitting carbon dioxide imposed by the trading scheme. By 2015-2020 we believe that capture and storage of carbon dioxide will meet the price of emitting carbon dioxide.

R&D phases

The CCS project is carried out stepwise, where the results of each phase is evaluated before next phase begins:

Phase 1: Feasibility studies
Phase 2: GAP analysis
Phase 3: Laboratory test
Phase 4: Pilot plant
Phase 5: Demonstration plant

Since September 9th, phase 4 is being performed in the pilot plant in Schwarze Pumpe, Germany