Don Valley Power Project

The Don Valley Power Project began as the Hatfield Power Station, a 900 megawatt proposed coal gasification project proposed by Powerfuel with a notional commissioning date of 2013.

In May 2011, 2Co Energy acquired Powerfuel Power Ltd and the Hatfield Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project at Stainforth in South Yorkshire and renamed the project the Don Valley Power Project (DVPP). The project is a 900MW Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plant which proposes to capture and store up to 5 million tonnes per year, or 90%, of its CO2 emissions. 2Co Energy plans to store the CO2 in North Sea oil fields.

2Co said that although the plant has been granted its Section 36 planning application, a final investment decision would only be taken when the project had won financial support from the EU and UK government, anticipated to be taken by mid-2013. 2co stated that, after a construction period of a little over 3 years, the plant should be commissioned in 2016.

Proposed pipeline route
In November 2011, National Grid announced the proposed route of the pipe to pump greenhouse gases into the North Sea from Hatfield. The 40-mile (64km) long underground pipeline would stretch from a power station near Doncaster and pass under Market Weighton before crossing the coastline at Barmston. The CO2 would be pumped into porous rocks off the Holderness coast. If approved, construction work would start in 2014. Initially, the the pipeline would carry the carbon dioxide emissions from the planned Don Valley Power Project, but the developers hope that other local facilities producing carbon dioxide emissions, such as the Scunthorpe steel works, could also be connected in the future.

Financing
The Don Valley Project, the company states on its website, has been "awarded €180 million of EU funding in 2010 and planning permission was awarded in 2009. National Grid is currently permitting a pipeline to take the CO2 offshore to North Sea storage sites.  The project currently expects to be operational by the end of 2016" with an estimated total cost of "up to £5 billion".

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