RWE-Essent

RWE-Essent is one of Europe's leading top five electricity and gas suppliers, with core markets in Germany, the UK, Benelux and Eastern Europe. With 66.000 employees and an annual turnover of nearly €50 billion, RWE-Essent produces three billion cubic metres of gas and more than 220 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity. But above all RWE-Essent stands for responsible and safe energy - combining climate protection with security of supply. In the future, high demands will be placed on utilities. That's why RWE-Essent launched the largest investment and innovation programme in the company's history. The power supply across the entire production will be optimised, while RWE-Essent will search for further innovations. This will allow the company to lay the groundwork for the low-carbon electricity supply of the future. The tools RWE -Essent uses are greater energy efficiency, expansion of its renewable energy portfolio, innovative energy storage concepts, efficient power plants and e-mobility.

To reduce CO2 on fossil-fired plants RWE-Essent is developing several clean coal technologies by:

• Building new modern power plants that will reduce CO2 emissions by 25-30% compared to older plants. The Eemshaven power plant is one of these to-be-build power plants.
• Developing new technologies with a focus on increasing the net efficiency of fossil-fired power stations to above 50% efficiency by roughly 2015.
• Developing and demonstrating various CCS technologies. For this RWE-Essent is investing in several projects like:
• the pilot project at RWE's Niederaussem power plant, where the post-combustion capture (PCC) technology is being tested.
• the to-be-build Eemshaven power plant, where a PCC demonstration project is planned
• the to-be-build IGCC station in Hürth, near Cologne. Here, the gasification of coal will be combined with the capture of CO2, and electricity will be produced in downstream gas and steam turbines.
• the development of amine-based CO2 scrubbing technology. A process that enables a sustainable lowering of emissions from existing power plants in the course of retrofit measures.
• several CO2 sequestration projects that aim to safely store CO2 in deep rock layers.