E.ON UK is fully committed to being a good neighbour in all communities where we operate and we are keen to establish a good relationship with the local community around our proposed development.

We will seek to minimise disruption to the community and to bring local benefits where possible through:

• Consultation with residents on our proposals;
• Careful design to minimise impacts from construction and operation;
• Provision of landscaping and additional biodiversity to improve the local environment;
• Creation of local jobs and the use of local labour during construction where feasible;
• Expenditure within the local community;
• Encouraging feedback from residents during construction and acting on this promptly.

News

March 2010

Transporting CO2 – Our Plans for a Pipeline

As part of our plan for cleaner coal at Kingsnorth we have published environmental scoping reports outlining our plans for a pipeline that would transport captured carbon dioxide (CO2) from the power station. The scoping documents have been issued to a number of statutory consultees so that a wide range of opinions can be canvassed on our plans for the pipeline which would allow CO2 from the new plant to be transported to a gas reservoir under the North Sea.

The onshore section of the pipeline would be buried underground and cross the Hoo Peninsula northwards from the existing Kingsnorth power station to the coastline. It would then be buried in the seabed along the Thames Estuary, before heading out to sea to reach the depleted gas fields in the North Sea which will be used as the permanent storage site.

The pipeline would have sufficient capacity in the long term to allow a ‘Thames Cluster’ of carbon capture projects to be developed, transporting 24 million tonnes of CO2 each year to storage.

“Far from being just about one project,” says Ed Walker, E.ON’s Project Development Manager, “we believe that Kingsnorth has an exciting role to play as a gateway to unlocking the South East energy industry’s potential to decarbonise, something that will become increasingly important as we make the move to a low carbon future.”

The scoping reports are just the start of our consultation process and we’re also holding a series of meetings in communities across the Hoo Peninsula to give local residents the chance to have their say on our initial plans. Once all the studies are completed, it’s likely we’ll submit a full planning application for the onshore and offshore sections of the pipeline in late 2010.

October 2010

E.ON has announced that it will not proceed to the next stage of the Government's carbon capture and storage (CCS) competition.

The company's Kingsnorth project was one of two schemes shortlisted as part of the Government's competition, with the aim being to build the UK's first commercial CCS scheme. But, with the market still not conducive to building the 1,600MW supercritical power station, it had become clear that Kingsnorth could not meet the project timetable.

Dr Paul Golby, Chief Executive of E.ON UK, said: "Having postponed Kingsnorth last year, it has become clear that the economic conditions are still not right for us to progress the project and so, simply put, we have no power station on which to build a CCS demonstration.

"We therefore took the decision to withdraw from the Government's competition because we cannot proceed within the competition timescales.

"As a Group we still believe that carbon capture and storage is a vital technology in the fight against climate change and will now be concentrating our efforts on our Maasvlakte project in the Netherlands as we believe the lessons from that project can be brought back to the UK for future generation CCS projects.