As the old saying goes “You wait ages for bus and then two come along at once”. Well that’s what happened with good news on CCS this week.

First we got the new that the UK’s White Rose project has gained financial support under the EC NER300 round 2. After the disappointment from round 1 when no projects gained support I was not sure if this meant that we would never get a CCS project funded through this mechanism or the pressure was on the EIB to select one and as White Rose was the only project proposal submitted it stood a better than average chance of being approved.

In reality it does not matter, the project is the first CCS project to be funded under the NER300 which is a major step forward for CCS deployment in Europe.

The second piece of good news is one that I had got wind of whilst I was in China but I am pleased to see it has now been announced. I am talking about the US-China ejosirt partnership agreements to cut greenhouse gases signed yesterday in Beijing. An example of one of the (MOUs) is that between China's Huaneng Clean Energy Research Institute and Summit Power of the USA. Huaneng is part of a Chinese consortium operating a 400 megawatt Green Genproject, Whilst Summit Energy is building the Texas Clean Energy Project in the USA. Under the MOU, both sides will, share and exchange information on the construction and operation of related plant and experience of CO2-EOR operations.

To my mind this is a quantum leap forward in knowledge transfer and we musty applaud the DOE for its vision. This is a real physical experience based exchange between groups working on similar demonstration projects which can only work to assist broader implementation of CCS in the long term