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Plans for a £3bn “clean” coal project at the heart of Yorkshire’s renewable power ambitions have been revived after 2Co Energy revealed proposals to create more than 1,000 jobs by building a power plant fitted with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology at Hatfield, near Doncaster.

New owners describe the plan, renamed the Don Valley Power Project, which would involve pumping huge quantities of harmful carbon dioxide beneath the North Sea, as the most advanced scheme of its type in Europe.

2Co said it would continue plans to build a 900 mega watt (MW) power station next to Hatfield Colliery after buying Powerfuel Power. It also intends to build a 400km (249 miles) pipeline to pump the plant’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions deep beneath the North Sea. The company said it wants to work with other big CO2 emitters in Yorkshire to create a CCS network, also transporting their emissions.

2Co chief executive Lewis Gillies said; “This is without a doubt the best and most advanced CCS project in the whole of Europe. It’s a credible project with a credible sponsor.”

2Co aims to use CO2 to recover millions of tonnes of inaccessible oil from depleted wells off the east coast of Scotland with a technique called enhanced oil recovery. With its abundance of power plants, oil refineries and steelworks which belch out about 60 million tonnes of CO2 per year, the Humber region is seen as a prime spot to test CCS.

Not-for-profit environmental consultancy CO2Sense estimates creating a CCS network could benefit the region by £31bn over 25 years, creating 55,000 jobs. CO2Sense chief executive Joanne Pollard said: “This project will become a vital part of a network of CCS projects in Yorkshire and the Humber that can eventually be linked up in a single pipeline – making CCS more cost-effective, and delivering jobs and investment into the region.”

The Don Valley project will capture about 90 per cent of its emissions, pumping five million tonnes of CO2 underground annually. Mr Gillies said the project could recover three barrels of oil for every tonne of CO2 it buried.
 

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