Mott MacDonald advises on CCS pilot project

Mott MacDonald is helping ScottishPower to develop a project demostrating the technical and commercial viability of capturing carbon dioxide from coal-fire power stations and locking it away underground. SP's CCS proposal is being developed as part of a competition held by the Department of Energy &  Climate Change, and involves fitting post-combustion carbon capture technology to Longannet power station in Fife, Scotland, and transporting the CO2 to depleted oil and gas fields in the North Sea.

Acting as owner's engineer for ScottishPower, the consultancy is responsible for designing the integration of the carbon capture plant with the power plant. It also holds the role of overall project manager for the project consortium which includes Marathon Oil, Aker Clean Carbon and Aker Solutions.

“Carbon capture and storage involves input from the power, oil and gas, maritime and chemical industries,” said the firm's CCS sector leader Guillaume Wolf. “Mott MacDonald brings significant experience and capability across those disciplines. Through this project all of the consortium members are building valuable experience of applying their skills to an important new challenge, which we’ll be able to apply to other carbon capture and storage projects around the world.”

CCS technology has huge potential for limiting carbon emissions in fast-growing industrial countries such as India and China, which have constructed major coal-fired generating capacity in recent years.

If the ScottishPower consortium bid is selected for construction, Longannet CCS will be operational by 2014 and will be the biggest carbon capture plant in the world, according to the energy firm.

In other contract news, Mott MacDonald has been appointed by the Environment Agency in Devon to provide flood risk modelling and mapping under the EA's stratgeic flood risk management framework. It has also recently helped bring a major hybrid renewables project on the Caribbean island of Bonaire to a financial close. Mott MacDonald is acting as lender's technical advisor to Rabobank for the 24MW wind-diesel system, which has been deisgned to switch to biofuel in future.

• Mott MacDonald news release, EA contract
• Caribbean renewables project
• CCS project