Enfinium is proposing to invest around £200m in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology at its Parc Adfer energy from waste facility in Deeside.
It says that the project could be capable of capturing up to 235,000 tonnes-a-year of CO2.
Since more than half of the waste processed at the facility is organic, installing CCS would enable the plant to take more CO2 out of the atmosphere than it produces, it is claimed.
Enfinium was created in 2021 from the merger of Wheelabrator UK and Multifuel Energy, both owned by Australia’s First Sentier Investors.
Wheelabrator opened Parc Adfer in 2019 in partnership with the five local authorities that make up the North Wales Residual Waste Treatment Partnership (NWRWTP). Parc Adfer currently incinerates up to 232,000 tonnes of unrecyclable waste.
With CCS installed, Parc Adfer will support the Welsh government’s ambition to have 100% zero carbon power by 2035, Enfinium said, and support more than 1,000 jobs during the construction phase.
The proposal has been put forward for UK government grant support as part of the expansion of the ‘Track-1’ carbon capture programme. The captured carbon would be transported using the pipeline network currently being developed in the region for the HyNet carbon capture cluster, one of the first two priority carbon capture clusters selected for development in the UK.
Enfinium chief executive Mike Maudsley said: “To deliver a net zero carbon economy, Wales needs to find a way to produce carbon removals, or negative emissions, at scale. Installing carbon capture at the Parc Adfer facility would transform it into the largest generator of carbon negative power in Wales, decarbonise unrecyclable waste and support the green economy in Deeside and wider North Wales region.”
Ben Burggraaf, chief executive of Net Zero Industry Wales, supports the plan, saying: “Northeast Wales has an exciting opportunity to leverage technologies like carbon capture and hydrogen to produce the sustainable goods and services of the future. It is critical that projects like those at Parc Adfer move forward as quickly as possible to maintain our competitive advantage over other countries.”
Planning and consenting for the Parc Adfer CCS project will start later this year. The UK government is expected to provide an update on which projects are progressing through the Track-1 HyNet Expansion programme by the summer.
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