Tuesday 15 October 2013

World’s largest CCS test centre keeps working with Alstom

The world’s largest carbon capture test facility – the CO2 Technology Centre Mongstad (TCM) in Norway – has agreed to continue working with power generation and transmission company Alstom.

They will carry on testing Alstom's Chilled Ammonia carbon capture process until Autumn 2014 - an extra year.

Despite recently scrapping the adjoining full-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant, the Norwegian government has reaffirmed its commitment to CCS research by pledging 450 million krone (£47m) of additional funding for the TCM (pictured) over four years, with 150 million krone (£15.7m) set to be spent in 2014.

Minister of Petroleum and Energy Ola Borten Moe said: “TCM is the world’s largest centre of its kind and has the capacity to test several different types of technology for this purpose. The work being done at TCM is important for achieving the objective of developing cost-effective CO2 capture technologies.”

A report from the Global CCS Institute released on Monday found CCS is being held up by "insufficient policy support".