Enfinium has today announced the UK’s first EfW Carbon Capture pilot at its Ferrybridge-1 facility in West Yorkshire. The technology is set to capture one tonne of CO2 every day. Enfinium’s CEO, Mike Maudsley, believes that carbon capture “is the only way the UK can decarbonise its unrecyclable waste.”  

The company has partnered with Hitachi Zosen Inova, who will provide the Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology for the 12-month pilot. Mr Maudsley said noted the importance of how the partnership could help us better understand the most efficient way of capturing, storing and utilising carbon. He said:

This ground-breaking partnership with HZI will allow us to test multiple capture techniques that could in the future be deployed across our facilities at scale."

The pilot is part of enfinium’s ambitions to invest £800 million in Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) at its Ferrybridge 1 & 2 facilities, announced last December, to capture and store 1.2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. Once the CCS technology is installed, the project will become one of the largest carbon removal projects in Europe.

HZI’s CEO, Bruno-Frédéric Baudouin said the pilot will also contribute significantly to advancement in CCUS technology.

[The pilot] represents an important step not only towards to reducing CO2 emissions in our industry,” he said. “But also towards making CO2 circular and driving down demand for fossil resources globally."

The Climate Change Committee estimates that by 2050, 60 million tonnes carbon dioxide will need to be removed per year for the UK to reach its Net Zero goals. When EfW Net spoke to Mr Maudsley ahead of this year’s Energy from Waste conference in London, he noted how the EfW sector could play a crucial role in achieving this. "Research from the Energy Systems Catapult suggests that the EfW sector could create 10 million tonnes of annual removals – a sixth of the Climate Change Committee target.” The pilot is set to be in operation by July 2024 and last at least 12 months.

Mike Maudsley, CEO of enfinium, Wayne Robertson, General Counsel of enfinium and Dr Kai Lieball, Director Decarbonisation of HZI, all spoke at this year’s Energy from Waste Conference in London. If you attended the 2024 conference, you can find the slides of this year’s presentations here.