UK energy-from-waste operator Enfinium has announced the next phase of its carbon capture and storage (CCS) pilot programme.
As part of the new phase, the company will relocate the CCS pilot plant currently in place at its Ferrybridge 1 facility in West Yorkshire to Parc Adfer, North Wales, in April.
The pilot plant will be installed and operated by clean technology company Kanadevia Inova.
A new pilot plant will then be installed at Ferrybridge by UK technology company Nuada. The company is in the process of scaling an innovative metal-organic framework (MOF) technology that captures carbon dioxide (CO2) from point sources through a vacuum swing process.
Both pilot projects will run for at least six months as part of Enfinium’s plan to deploy CCS across all six of its UK facilities at a total cost of around £1.7 billion.
Enfinium noted that the plant at Parc Adfer would be the only active carbon capture pilot in Wales and the first pilot to be deployed within the wider HyNet industrial cluster.
The Parc Adfer facility is also a candidate for grant support through the UK government’s Track-1 HyNet Expansion programme. Enfinium’s announcement indicated that the company was hoping for a positive decision on this from the government in the coming months.
The CCS pilot currently operating at Ferrybridge was launched in September 2024, becoming the first pilot project of its kind.
The pilot entailed use of a containerised technology that Enfinium said at the time was a scaled-down version of CCS technology that could subsequently be deployed across all of its sites.
The technology was supplied by green technology player Hitachi Zosen Inova (HZI) and was being used to capture 1 tonne per day of CO2 emissions at the site.
At the time, Enfinium said that trial would run for at least 12 months, but the latest announcement indicates a change in plans.
The new phase of Enfinium’s CCS roll-out comes after the UK’s Climate Change Committee published its Seventh Carbon Budget in February. The document called for carbon removals to help the UK reach its net-zero emissions goal in the long term – something Enfinium noted in its announcement.
“To achieve net zero, the UK needs to produce carbon removals at scale,” stated Enfinium’s CEO, Mike Maudsley. “Energy from waste will play a critical role in delivering the millions of tonnes of durable carbon removals that are necessary for the UK to achieve net zero,” he continued.
Indeed, analysis by the Climate Change Committee and the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (OIES) has found that the energy-from-waste industry could contribute 5-8m tonnes per year (tpy) of carbon removals by 2050.
Both Kanadevia Inova and Nuada also pointed to the role of energy-from-waste and waste management in decarbonisation.
“As we advance carbon capture successfully in the UK, we also advance public awareness of waste management infrastructure as a key driver of decarbonisation,” said Kanadevia Innova’s CEO, Bruno-Frédéric Baudouin. “This is what turns pilot projects into long-term net zero strategies at the national level.”
Meanwhile, Nuada’s co-CEO, Conor Hamill, said his company’s partnership with Enfinium could showcase the potential of its technology for full-scale implementation across energy-from-waste operations.
“Nuada is scaling up a capture technology that tackles the cost, energy, and integration challenges of incumbent solutions to enable the decarbonisation of waste management and the delivery of effective carbon removals,” Hamill stated.
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