The U.K.’s North Sea gas reserves are running out. But rather than let gas pipes go to waste, the national transmission network owner plans to use some of them to send carbon dioxide captured from a Scottish coal-fired powerplant for disposal in depleted offshore wells.
The project is part of a growing European effort to commercialize technologies that could allow the greening of coal burning. By mid-decade, the U.K. plans to have a commercial-scale carbon-capture and storage plant in operation. But by then, Norway is scheduled to have one of the world’s largest CCS test facilities online at a site north of Bergen.