Grangemouth will need the Acorn Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) development to go ahead to take full advantage of the upcoming £13 billion Project Willow plan.
Colin Pritchard, sustainability and external relations director at Ineos, which runs the Grangemouth refinery Petroineos in a joint venture with PetroChina, said: “If you want to really go for all of the things that are within Willow and take them to the full extent, you will need a CO2 transportation and storage system.
“In that case, the full extent of Willow needs Acorn.”
Project Willow is the plan currently being developed by the UK and Scottish Governments to ameliorate the closure of the Scotland’s only oil refinery with the expected loss of 400 jobs.
Due for release soon, Project Willow will lay out nine potential projects to overhaul the Grangemouth refinery in Scotland and create a long-term sustainable future for the site.
A feasibility study exploring options for overhauling the Grangemouth refinery in Scotland is reportedly set to propose £3.8bn of investments in low-carbon alternatives for the site over ten years, with a best-case scenario could see the amount rise to almost £13bn.
These options include recycling plastics, the production of biomethane, sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and renewable diesel.
In turn, these are hoped to avert the shutdown of Grangemouth, scheduled for the second quarter of this year, and preserve jobs at the facility.
Speaking to Energy Voice on the side-lines of the DeCarbScotland event, Pritchard added: “There are some projects there are not dependent on Acorn, but there are some projects within Willow, like e-methanol, which are.”
He added that the nine projects envisioned in Project Willow are an initial project set and could evolve, making CCS essential “if you want to get the full benefit of what we put in Willow”.
Based in Aberdeenshire and centred on the St Fergus gas terminal and part of the broader Scottish Cluster of projects, Acorn is a joint venture between Storegga, Shell, Harbour Energy and North Sea Midstream Partners (NSMP).
It envisions capturing and transporting up to 20m tonnes per year of carbon dioxide from industrial sites and storing it under the North Sea.
“There is a unique opportunity that exists in Scotland with Acorn and the SCO2T Connect pipeline to be an aggregator of CO2 being pulled in with green hydrogen courtesy of the infrastructure that’s being rolled out that comes to Grangemouth,” Pritchard noted.
© Supplied by StoreggaHowever, as one of the so-called “track-2 process,” Acorn has yet to receive the kind of UK government support that the track-1 projects received – namely £22bn in funding.
Speaking at DeCarbScotland, Scottish minister for climate action Alasdair Allan said: “As much as I welcome the UK government’s funding for two carbon capture and storage projects in England we simply can’t wait any longer for a decision on the Acorn project.
“There is no route to decarbonising Scotland’s industry without Acorn and further delays are risking Scotland’s industrial future.”
Scotland’s business community has also urged the UK government to back the Acorn CCS project or risk serious economic consequences for Scotland.
Pritchard added: “If you get Acorn running, it has the unique value proposition of a waste disposal system that could actually create value by being an aggregator of CO2, which can go into the synthetic molecules. There’s then the potential to pull demand in for green hydrogen.
“You max out on the opportunity of Project Willow with Acorn, and without Acorn, it’s not going to have the same extent of what we’ve currently got in the initial set of projects.”
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