Power firm Drax and engineers at Alstom and BOC have bagged a multi-million pound contract from the Government for their carbon capture and storage project.

The undisclosed amount of cash will go to a study into the costs and possible hurdles for CCS at their £2 billion White Rose project.

The White Rose plans are for a 426MW clean coal plant with full CCS (model illustration, pictured) next to the Drax plant in Selby, Yorkshire, powering more than 630,000 homes. It could capture 90% of all the CO2 produced by the plant, roughly 2 million tonnes of carbon a year, to be transported by pipeline and stored deep beneath the North Sea seabed.

Leigh Hackett, General Manager at Capture Power – a company which the three partners have formed – said: “The White Rose CCS Project has great potential to demonstrate oxyfuel combustion CCS technology which will benefit other projects in the UK and overseas. It also highlights the strategic strength of the Yorkshire and Humber region as a hub for CCS.”

Energy Minister Michael Fallon said in a statement to parliament: “These studies will provide valuable new practical research into this area.”