CCS and Marine Boost for Scotland

Germany's recent decision not to give immediate approval to legislation governing the onshore storage of CO2 has given Scotland's role in the development of carbon capture and storage an added boost says Chris Bronsdon, CEO of SEGEC.

"Scotland's competitive advantage as the prime provider of offshore CCS in Europe is now even more pronounced," he commented, following a CCS seminar at the Scottish Low Carbon Investment Conference in Edinburgh today, in which he was a panel member.

"If you're a CCS developer you'll want to know that, in addition to technology and funding, you're also going to be able to secure the necessary consent to progress to the actual delivery of the desired solution. Scotland is already in that position. We have the full chain in place to go with our huge natural resources and that has to be a major attraction for investments in this sector."

Marine
Also at the conference today, SEGEC's Marine energy manager, Tim Hurst, picked up the positive note struck by the announcement of Aquamarine Power having secured £7m of new funding, comprising £3m each from existing major shareholders SSE Venture Capital and ABB and £1m from Scottish Enterprise. It was also revealed that the three shareholders are working together to develop a further funding package of £18m to take the company to commercialisation in 2014.

"Coming on top of last week's news of a £3.4m loan from Barclays to Aquamarine Power, today's announcement demonstrates a significant shift in attitude towards the marine industry since last year's conference," said Tim. "This highlights the increased optimism being shown in marine potential by industry, the public sector and government. It also shows a renewed enthusiasm by all concerned to work together as Scotland plc in the development of our marine industry."

Scotland
Finally an upbeat first day summary from Michael Liebreich, head of Bloomberg New Energy Finance who told delegates that Scotland 'really had something special going on'. 

"What is clear to me as that you've got a head start in Scotland, particularly in the offshore piece of the puzzle," he said. "There's also a tremendous scale of ambition here.  You're not just trying to build an offshore energy industry in Scotland but talking about building world scale energy capability. You're got the resources, skills, engineering heritage and the finances.  Go for it."

 

by Colin Ley, The Renewables Guardian