The commercial concepts

The goal of the project is to develop commercial concepts for carbon capture and storage at coal fired power plants
by 2015-2020.

The commercial framework for power plants with carbon capture and storage will be set by the emission trading scheme that was introduced in Europe in 2005. The technical concepts will be developed if the economy can meet the costs imposed by the trading scheme.

CO₂ would be captured at power plants using technologies that have been developed and proven in other applications. However, optimisation of the integration of these technologies into power plants and a significant equipment scale-up is required.

One of the main commercial challenges is to decrease the energy demand from the capture process, which will reduce power plant efficiency. Another challenge is to decrease the additional equipment cost for applying the capture technology.

Carbon capture and storage technologies are most effective if applied on large facilities for coal or heavy oil combustion. Here the CO₂ concentration is high and the potential quantity of captured CO₂ large enough to make a difference. The plant needs to be large and intended for base load generation since the investment cost is high.