Brussels bureaucrats at the European Commission (EC) are preparing to establish what could be a massively important network of projects to demonstrate the use of the controversial carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects in power plants.

As part of this the EC has this week put out a call inviting tenders for companies to bid to help in establishing the network. Deadline for tenders is 6 October 2008 and the EC aims to complete the selection process by the beginning of next year.

The EC says the successful operation of demonstration projects is crucial for the wide-scale commercial application of CCS and aims to build the demo projects by 2015.

In support of CCS, the EC points to International Energy Agency estimates that the use of CCS could account for 20 per cent of achievable global greenhouse gas emission reductions by 2050. Critics, of course, claim CCS could do more harm than good.

More info on the tender here.

The EC’s tender comes in the same week that the world’s first demo of CCS tech began at Vattenfall’s coal-fired Schwarze Pumpe power station in Germany, using Alstom’s oxy-combustion technology.

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