A d v ic e Pa p er (09 -11b)

S E P T E M BE R 2 0 0 9

THE DEVELOPMENT AND DEPLOYMENT OF CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE IN SCOTLAND

Summary

Although energy policy is largely reserved toWestminster, the Scottish Government does have substantial
powers to influence the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS) and other generation technologies through its responsibility for planning consents and environmental regulation in Scotland. It is paramount therefore that open lines of communication and connectivity exist at the UK and Scottish levels.

If nuclear energy is to be phased out in Scotland, and if Scotland is to meet its highly challenging emissions
reduction targets, the provision of secure baseload and variable response to demand in Scotland will depend upon the hypothesis that CCS technology can be developed successfully and implemented in Scotland.

For CCS to form a critical part of Scottish electricity supply strategy, significant additional effort will be
needed to promote commercial scale demonstration, and especially deployment, in Scotland at an early date, and to encourage the required major investment so that Scotland can deploy CCS and reduce its own emissions from carbon-based energy sources whilst benefiting from its contribution to global roll-out of the technology.

It is also important that planning for fossil fuel stations that will require CCS takes into account the energy
needs of the capture process.This will require stations able to generate significantly more energy than will be delivered to the grid, with potential implications for the price of electricity.

Ultimately, the deployment of CCS and any other generation is in the hands of private shareholder
companies and there is a limit to the extent to which governments in the UK can directly determine the sites to be developed or the pace of development. Scotland will need to develop policies that give developers confidence that it is a suitable location for investment. The Scottish Government should therefore work with its counterparts at the UK level in developing a sufficiently large, stable and long-lived financial support mechanism to provide investors with a clear signal about potential returns.

A key world-class resource offered by Scotland is the proximity of well-known, high quality, and large,
geological storage sites for CO2 beneath the North Sea. In order to validate the potential for very large scale storage, it is important to investigate the functional availability of these diverse geological settings.

Scotland is already endowed with major research and development capacity that spans the energy spectrum.
Scottish Ministers should collaborate with Scotlands research and industrial base in maximising the opportunities that Scotland could exploit in accelerating the development and demonstration of CCS technologies.

We have concerns about whether the reformed planning system will be capable of dealing efficiently and
authoritatively with planning applications for CCS plant and its infrastructure, given the enormous scale and the new issues of technology, health and safety and public acceptability which CCS will raise.

It is imperative that public engagement and dialogue is started now, without any further delay, with the intention
of creating a degree of public consensus on the need for development of CCS prior to the planning application stage. Purposeful leadership to abate emissions from coal and gas plant will also be advantageous.
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A d v ic e Pa p er (09-11b)
Background
1 The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), Scotlands National Academy, has recently responded 1 to the UK Department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) proposals set out in its consultation, A Framework for the Development of Clean Coal 2, for the development and demonstration of commercial scale carbon capture and storage (CCS).As the RSE has been particularly active in informing energy policy in Scotland, not least through its wide-ranging Inquiry into Energy Issues for Scotland (2006)3 and its ongoing interest in the development of Scotlands climate change agenda, we have taken this opportunity to comment on the development of CCS from a Scottish perspective.This Advice Paper complements the RSEs response to the DECC.Although energy policy is a reserved matter, the Scottish Government does have substantial powers to influence the development of CCS and other generation technologies through its responsibility for the consenting of power stations over 50 MW and for environmental regulation. It is therefore paramount that there are open lines of communication and wider connectivity at the UK and Scottish levels. 3 If nuclear energy is to be phased out in Scotland, and if Scotland is to meet its highly challenging emissions reduction targets, the provision of secure baseload generation in Scotland will depend upon the hypothesis that CCS technology can be developed successfully and implemented. For CCS to form a critical part of Scottish electricity supply strategy, significant additional effort will be needed to promote commercial scale demonstration, and especially deployment, in Scotland at an early date, and to encourage the required major investment so that Scotland is both able to deploy CCS to enable it to reduce its own emissions from carbon-based energy sources whilst benefiting from its contribution to global roll-out of the technology. If CCS is to be commercially available from the 2020s, it will be necessary to ensure that multiple demonstration plants are built, to test the capture processes and to test the CCS chain through to storage. However, other strategies need to be maintained as CCS could prove unexpectedly expensive, slow to develop, fail to attract sufficient investment, publicly unacceptable or (in the worst case) fail to work at sufficient scale. It is also important that planning for fossil fuel stations that will require CCS takes into account the energy needs of the capture process.This will require stations able to generate significantly more energy than will be delivered to the grid. It is important that the efficiency of this process is maximised to ensure that the choice of CCS as the tool that permits coal generation to be used as a key source of Scottish base load does not result in an uncompetitive electricity price in Scotland. CCS has the potential to make a huge contribution to reducing carbon emissions and placing Scotland and the UK on the ambitious emissions reduction trajectories set out in their respective Climate Change Acts. In order to ensure that there is a coherent and integrated framework for moving to a low carbon economy, the development of CCS should be part of the wider programme of decarbonisation with appropriate links to the framework for emissions reduction, and to strategies for renewable energy and demand reduction and energy efficiency.

The role of CCS in secure and reliable energy supply

2 There is a need for large-scale replacement of electricity generating plant in Scotland and the UK within the next ten years. It is also likely that electricity will play a greater role (whether for heating or transport) such that the supply of CO2-free electricity will have to significantly increase. In terms of security and reliability of energy supply, while the long term goal may be to have a largely renewable source of energy, it will be necessary to utilise non-renewable sources in the short and medium term, particularly those forms of generation that will provide stable base load.A diversity of energy sources is therefore absolutely essential and all currently available sources and technologies will need to be considered as part of the energy mix, including renewables, clean technologies for fossil fuels and nuclear powered generation.There is no requirement that all three sources are part of a Scottish mix, but choices to ignore, or de-emphasise, nuclear power means that fossil fuels must be more rapidly decarbonised in Scotland if emission targets are to be met, and that a large capacity of renewable generation has to be researched, developed, demonstrated, encouraged, consented and connected at an electricity price competitive with the rest of the UK and EU.

Integrated programme of decarbonisation

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1 Advice Paper (09-11a), September 2009 http://www.royalsoced.org.uk/govt_responses/2009/clean_coal.pdf 2 http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/consultations/clean_coal/clean_coal.aspx 3 http://www.rse.org.uk/enquiries/energy/index.htm

A d v ic e Pa p er (09-11b)
Financial support
6 We applaud the Scottish Government and industry support for the Scottish Centre for Carbon Storage (SCCS) report4 on the potential for, and challenges associated with, CCS in Scotland. In line with its conclusions, we would expect the initial financial incentives required for CCS to be comparable with those already provided today to a number of other low carbon technologies, including offshore wind and solar technologies. Ultimately, the deployment of CCS and any other generation technology is in the hands of private shareholder companies and there is a limit to the extent to which governments in the UK can directly determine the sites to be developed or the pace of development. Scotland will need to develop policies that give developers confidence that it is a suitable location for investment. The Scottish Government should therefore work with its counterparts at the UK level in developing a sufficiently large, stable and long-lived financial support mechanism to provide investors with a clear signal about potential returns. A key world-class resource offered by Scotland is the proximity of well-known, high quality, and large, geological storage sites for CO2 beneath the North Sea. This can offer economic diversification potential to offshore industries and enable the additional exploitation of currently unrecoverable offshore hydrocarbon resources. In order to validate the potential for very large scale storage, it is important to investigate the functional availability of these diverse geological settings. One test will not achieve this, and testing the geological diversity of large scale storage should be an explicit and important facet of demonstrator projects. However this is a reason to accelerate, not delay, demonstration.We therefore welcome the recent announcement that the SCCS, with Scottish Government and industrial backing, will be making detailed assessments of the potential of specific sites. To enable commercial deployment of CCS, thorough consideration must be given to invigorating the skills base.The lack of technically-skilled people is a major threat to the demonstration, commercialisation and export of know-how in relation to CCS. In this respect Scotland is currently well positioned to exploit opportunities as they arise. Considerable expertise in offshore engineering already exists in Scotland and we note Scottish Government and industry support for the recently established Scottish European Green Energy Centre (SEGEC) which aims to place Scotland at the forefront of sustainable energy development and demonstration through partnership working and maximising engagement with European actors. 10 Scotland is already endowed with major research and development capacity that spans the energy spectrum, particularly within its institutions. The Energy Technology Partnership (ETP)5 is a pooling collaboration between all of Scotlands universities engaged in energy research. It represents the largest and most broadly-based power and energy research partnership in Europe.The members of the ETP are active across the range of energy sectors, including CCS, and across the research, development and demonstration spheres. It therefore represents a very significant body of expertise working in Scotland.We have already referred to SCCS6, an innovative collaboration between the University of Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt University and the British Geological Survey, as a centre of excellence for research and development in CCS. 11 There is also a need for Scotlands research and development community to be located close to leading development and demonstration facilities as well as energy sources. In this regard, Doosan Babcock at Renfrew is unique in the UK as an international research and test facility for cleaner coal combustion and CO2 capture. Furthermore, Scottish Powers prototype carbon capture unit extracting CO2 emissions from Longannet is a UK first. 12 In order for Scotland to increase the momentum to and through CCS deployment it is crucially important that strategic research and development capacity continues to grow and that there is good connectivity between university and industry activities.We therefore urge the Scottish Ministers to collaborate with Scotlands significant research and industrial base in maximising the opportunities that Scotland could exploit in accelerating the development and demonstration of CCS technologies. This should also include consideration of the opportunities to be gained from developing strategic CCS clusters in Scotland. By analogy with renewables R, D & D, it is also important to consider large scale test facilities in Scotland.There may be potential not just for engineering tests, but also for submarine laboratories to develop injection and monitoring instrumentation. These will need explicit encouragement and support commensurate with the size of the economic opportunity and the over-riding need for security of electricity supply.

Sub-surface storage
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Skills base
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4 Opportunities for CO2 Storage around Scotland an integrated strategic research study; Scottish Centre for Carbon Storage (April 2009) http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/sccs/regional-study/CO2-JointStudy-Full.pdf 5 http://www.etp-scotland.ac.uk 6 http://www.geos.ed.ac.uk/sccs

A d v ic e Pa p er (09-11b)
Planning and public acceptability
13 Whilst we recognise the importance of upholding the democratic process and enabling public engagement on issues of national importance we also realise that it is crucial that timely decisions can be taken.We agree with the premise that once a development has been mapped out as a national need in Scotlands National Planning Framework, its need should not be a subject for debate in local public enquiries, which would concentrate on local impacts. 14 To date many applications for onshore wind turbines have been evaluated through a planning system which was not designed to cope with a large volume of applications and has not been updated to allow effective representation by objectors or speedier decision making, both of which are in the interests of all parties.We are concerned that there is much glib discussion of CCS that does not recognise the very large area that will be required by a CCS plant and its infrastructure, and the visual intrusion that they will represent.As this becomes apparent, and if there is not a strong public consensus about the vital need for these developments, we have grave concerns whether even the reformed planning system will be capable of dealing with applications in a timely and efficient manner.This is particularly pertinent as CCS will raise new issues which planners have not previously experienced, such as the perceived hazard posed by onshore CO2 pipelines. 15 Along with the planning system, public acceptance has been one of the greatest barriers to the deployment of energy generation technologies in Scotland and the UK, whether they are nuclear, fossil-fuel baseload or a range of renewables. Governments find it increasingly difficult to implement policies that involve complex issues of science and technology, primarily because of their failure to identify and engage effectively with public concerns. CCS raises issues of environmental and climatic impacts, cost and technological uncertainty. It raises issues of hazard from leakage and of the potentially disruptive scale of CCS plants, something that even many proponents of CCS have not realised, and which could elicit profound local objections on grounds of environmental damage and impacts on local amenity and property. In view of the likelihood of a complex array of public responses, it is imperative that public engagement and dialogue starts very soon, with the intention of creating a degree of public consensus prior to the planning application stage. These processes must be deeper than the conventional consultation exercises routinely carried out by government.

Attracting investment
16 Scotlands aspirations to implement CCS as a central part of its energy and decarbonisation policies will depend crucially upon its capacity to attract private investment by persuading companies that their investment will yield a long term financial return. This in turn will depend upon a long term Scottish commitment to relevant research, to the exploitation both of the existing skills base and the additional skills that will be required, of providing feasible financial and regulatory support, and a national planning framework that persuades companies that that there will be no excessive planning delays.This is a crucial issue for Scottish Government and will require both ingenuity and commitment.

Additional Information and References

In responding to this consultation the Society would like to draw attention to the following Royal Society of Edinburgh response which is relevant to this subject:

The Royal Society of Edinburghs submission to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change, A Framework for the Development of Clean Coal (September 2009)

Any enquiries about this submission and others should be addressed to the RSEs Consultations Officer, Mr William Hardie (evidenceadvice@royalsoced.org.uk). Responses are published on the RSE website (www.royalsoced.org.uk).
Advice paper (Royal Society of Edinburgh) ISSN 2040-2694

The Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) is Scotlands National Academy. It is an independent body with a multidisciplinary fellowship of men and women of international standing which makes it uniquely placed to offer informed, independent comment on matters of national interest. The Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's National Academy, is Scottish Charity No. SC000470
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