Plans submitted for £200m carbon capture facility

Alec Doyle, Local Democracy Reporter

A £200 million carbon capture facility which will collect almost a quarter of a million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year is seeking approval from a local council.

The proposal is an extension to Enfinium’s Parc Adfer waste processing site in Connah’s Quay which turns residual waste – the non-recyclable black bin waste collected from Flintshire, Denbighshire, Conwy, Gwynedd and the Isle of Anglesey – into energy to power 45,000 homes.

The extension, which features a chimney stack 10 metres higher than the existing stack at the plant, will process 232,000 tonnes of residual waste per year but capture 241,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

The statistical anomaly is due to the fact the processing of the waste involved the addition of oxygen. The chemical reaction does generate additional carbon, but the facility will capture 95% of all carbon within it.

That is expected to result in a significant reduction in the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere.

Captured carbon will feed into the Hynet carbon capture pipeline where it will be carried underground across the county to Point of Ayr and out into the Irish Sea where it will be stored in spent gas wells.

The application – which will also create eight new jobs – will go before Flintshire County Council’s planning committee with a recommendation from officers to approve the plans. There have been no statutory objections to the plans.

“The proposal involves the retrofitting of post-combustion carbon capture infrastructure to an existing, consented and operational Energy Recovery Facility at Deeside Industrial Park,” said Chief Officer for Place and Growth Dave Fitzsimon in his report.

“The proposed development would deliver a substantial reduction in the facility’s net carbon dioxide emissions, contributing materially to Wales’s statutory decarbonisation targets under the Environment (Wales) Act 2016 (as amended) and Net Zero Wales objectives.”

Officers have recommended a condition that the plant only be allowed to operate until December 31, 2050 – when it will need to shut down and the land be returned to its former state.

According to the planning documents, ‘the development would have a substantial and significant benefit on climate change, which is a key goal of local and national policy and supports the achievement of Wales’s legislated net zero carbon target’.

Flintshire’s planning committee will make its decision on the application on Wednesday, October 7.

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