White Rose CCS – Public Consultation for the FEED Studies
The White Rose Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Project was a proposal to build a new, state-of-the-art 448 MW (gross) ultra-supercritical oxy-fuel coal-fired power plant. Capture Power Limited, a consortium of Alstom, Drax and BOC in partnership with National Grid, was to deliver the project.
The proposed power plant was located at the existing Drax Power Station site in North Yorkshire, generating electricity for export to the Electricity Transmission Network as well as capturing approximately 2 million tonnes of CO2 per year, some 90% of all CO2 emissions produced by the plant.
An illustration of the White Rose CCS Plant. Photo credit: The Engineer
There are over 1,000 new construction jobs expected during construction and up to 60 full-time operational jobs at the new plant.
Public Consultation for the FEED Studies
Capture Power started the front-end engineering and design (FEED) studies in 2013. Three rounds of public consultation over a two-year period were undertaken to gather public comments and feedback and incorporate them into the FEED final designs. The first round of public exhibitions was held between 15-17 July 2013. 112 people signed into the exhibitions and 81 visitors returned feedback questionnaires.
Public consultation on the White Rose project. Photo credit: Carbon Capture
In late 2015, Drax announced that after the project FEED study it no longer intends to invest in the project, but will retain a more limited role as the provider of the land, site services and shared infrastructure. Soon after, the UK Government announced the GB₤1 billion capital budget for the CCS Commercialisation Programme would no longer be available. The White Rose CCS Project has been put on hold since.
Accurate, Reliable and Auditable Stakeholder Engagement Software
A key element of the project has been the use of Darzin to manage all stakeholder interactions. Increasing legislative requirements and community expectations had elevated the importance of public consultation. Consultation failures could lead to successful legal challenges that could permanently derail projects. Against this background, all engagement activities for the White Rose project needed to be recorded in an accurate, reliable and auditable way.
Darzin was chosen by Capture Power’s public consultation consultants Pendragon as a central system for all project team members to access and record their engagement process including:
- Maintain comprehensive & up-to-date contact details of over a thousand stakeholders and their groupings
- Provide online feedback questionnaires at all consultation stages
- Record all interactions with the public including community and more complex qualitative interactions with technical consultees such as the Environment Agency and English Nature
- Track and analyse community issues, concerns, suggestions using qualitative, quantitative and spatial analysis
- 50+ reports help ease the task of preparing consultation reports for the FEED
The package was used by different members of the professional team including environmental, planning and legal advisors. Darzin was recognised as saving a great deal of costly professional time.
The public questionnaire was created in Darzin and embedded onto the project’s website. All responses went directly into Darzin with no manual data entry. Statistical reports were automatically generated.