|
News overview
Changes in CATO R&D programme18 July 2011The CATO R&D programme is executed in a CCS landscape that appears to be under constant construction. Some of these constructional changes affect the programme only to a limited extent, other changes have a more severe impact.
A word from the CATO programme director, Jan Brouwer: "Obviously the decisions to discontinue the Barendrecht and Chemelot pilots had some effect on some of the work packages in the programme. Also, the decision to ‘temporarily' postpone on-shore storage is of some significance to programme execution. Some of the planned on-shore activities could be either "moved off-shore" or are now executed abroad in cooperation with international partners. Other activities - in particular those directly related to on-shore storage in the northern Netherlands - needed to be abandoned."
Disappointment and opportunities"Needless to mention that not all changes are necessarily harmful to the programme. Obviously the decision of Vattenvall (NUON) to postpone development of their phase II Magnum gasifier was felt as a disappointment for those of us actively involved in pre-combustion capture, however, the interest expressed by RWE (Essent) to further investigate options for off-shore storage (possibly in close cooperation with the Rotterdam area) is seen as an opportunity."Investigate shared interest"The Dutch government will forward one of five initially submitted proposals for the first round of the European subsidy programme NER300. The selected proposal concerns the Air-Liquide tender that involves the capture and storage of CO2 that is released in the production of hydrogen. Air Liquide plans, together with Maersk Oil and CINTRA, to permanently store the captured CO2 in mature Danish oil fields, in combination with Enhanced Oil Recovery. At first sight the decision of our government to submit the proposal of Air Liquide may not offer too many options for involvement from the CATO side. However, a shared interest between ROAD, the Rotterdam storage and capture demonstration project, and the Air-Liquide consortium regarding transportation and storage of CO2 may exist and would be worthwhile to pursue. ROAD intends to store CO2 in depleted offshore gas fields of TAQA Energy."
International recognition"Despite the changes in the CCS landscape, resulting in a more or less constant requirement to make adjustments to the CATO programme, most of the work performed in the work packages is executed according to plan without too many adaptations. We have seen good progress in all of the CATO Sub- Programmes and are content with the work performed. It is impossible to be complete in this regard, but e.g. the work on nitrosamines and the regional storage assessment performed for the Rotterdam Climate Initiative have met international recognition."
This message is part of the CATO-2 Newsletter June 2011. The complete newsletter can be found here. |