Capture the solution: Abu Dhabi has taken the bold decision to build the world's first industrial scale hydrogen-powered generating plant using carbon capture processes.

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LOCKING GREENHOUSE GASES safely away from the atmosphere in deep underground geological formations, known as carbon capture, is increasingly viewed as one of the few viable solutions to cutting man-made CO2 emissions.

The first steps towards developing a multi-billion dollar power plant, the first of its kind in the world, to capture most of the resulting CO2 and store it deep underground, has been taken by Masdar, the government of Abu Dhabi's renewable and alternative energy division. Masdar is building this hugely significant project in a joint venture with BP and Rio Tinto, working together as Hydrogen Energy International.

Abu Dhabi was one of the first major hydrocarbon-producing nations to use its oil wealth to actively seek solutions to some of mankind's most pressing issues: energy security, climate change and truly sustainable human development. Masdar (meaning 'the source' in Arabic) was inaugurated in April 2006 when Abu Dhabi took the decision to embrace renewable and sustainable energy technologies.

Managed by the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, wholly owned by the government of Abu Dhabi through the Mubadala Development Company and mandated with four primary objectives to help drive the economic diversification of Abu Dhabi; to foster Abu Dhabi's position in evolving global energy markets; to help Abu Dhabi develop world-class technologies; the project aims to make a meaningful contribution to sustainable human development.

The Masdar and Hydrogen Energy International power plant project is currently in its preliminary design and engineering stage, but once completed later this year the construction phase of the $2bn generating plant is expected to get underway. Completion of the scheme is put at 2012.

Man-made greenhouse gas emissions are widely cited as being responsible for the global warming phenomena. Practically all scientists agree that left unchecked global warming will have profound implications for mankind's future, indeed its very existence. The burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil, gas and biomass has been the principal source of greenhouse emissions since the industrial revolution, and there is a clear correlation between the use of fossil fuels, CO2 emissions and the planet's rising temperature.

The problem is compounded as the world's population grows, industrialisation gains pace and global power requirements increase. According to the Stern Review of the Economies of Climate Change, published by the UK government in 2006, global power generation accounts for 24% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, almost as much as transport and industry (each at 14%) combined. Consequently, finding the means of meeting the world's power demands in a clean (or 'green') manner is currently exercising the minds of many within the scientific community, and carbon capture technologies, sometimes referred to as carbon sequestration, have been identified as one of the primary means of cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

Indeed, although building power plants with carbon capture technologies (using any feedstock not just gas but coal, oil or biomass) doubles the start-up costs of new projects, the EU has stated that a delay of seven years in introducing carbon capture could mean 90gigatons of avoidable CO2 being released worldwide by 2050, equivalent to 20 years of current EU CO2 emissions.

Lewis Gillies, Hydrogen Energy International's CEO is clear about the merits of Abu Dhabi's progressive energy policies. "Through Masdar," he says, "Abu Dhabi has shown strong leadership in creating the right environment in which hydrogen power with carbon capture and storage, and other alternative energies, can be deployed successfully. The complementary skills of Masdar and Hydrogen Energy International will be a formidable combination. We look forward to making this project a reality."

"This joint project will bring together in a single integrated scheme a number of technologies already operating at scale successfully around the world," says Dr Al Jaber, Masdar's CEO. "Part of our mission at Masdar is to combine our expertise with that of others--and so we are pleased to be able to work with Hydrogen Energy to explore this new and important technology."

Rio Tinto's CEO, Tom Albanese, is similarly upbeat. He says: "The investment we are making in Hydrogen Energy International will allow us to deliver de-carbonised energy and carbon capture and storage. Investing now means we will be well-placed to create value for shareholders from opportunities in the emerging clean power market." Speaking from the viewpoint of an oil company, and as Rio Tinto's partner, Gardiner Hill, BP's director of the company's carbon capture and storage technology division, points out: "We have spent a century or more taking hydrocarbons from the ground, now the focus could shift to putting carbon back in ... through carbon capture, the oil and gas industry is as involved with carbon management and tackling climate change as we already are in delivering energy to the world."

The business model for Abu Dhabi's new power generating plant is relatively simple even if the technologies that underpin it are not. Around 3m cubic metres of Abu Dhabi's natural gas will be the feedstock processed to create hydrogen and CO2. The hydrogen fuel will then be used to generate around 420MW of low-carbon electricity, or five per cent of Abu Dhabi's current power generation capacity. That is the equivalent of 'de-carbonising' Abu Dhabi's entire domestic transport sector

Rather than being vented into the atmosphere, the CO2 will be captured and piped to the country's oilfields where it will be injected to improve oil production in a process known as 'enhanced oil recovery'. The CO2 will replace the natural gas that is currently being used to maintain the oil field's pressure, not only significantly increasing the amount of Abu Dhabi's oil that can be recovered but allowing the natural gas previously used for this purpose to fuel Abu Dhabi's economic development.

The generating plant itself will transform the natural gas, capturing some 90% of the CO2 generated and safely and permanently storing up to 1.7m tonnes of this greenhouse gas each year. Interestingly, the deeper the CO2 is pumped underground, the less volume it occupies; 100 cubic metres at ground level is only 2.7cubic metres when buried at a 2km depth. Pumping CO2 into existing oil and gas fields also holds a distinct advantage as the operators of these fields have conducted extensive seismic research to find the hydrocarbon resources, and that research can also ascertain suitable geological traps for the CO2 gas.

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One of BP's pioneering carbon capture projects is at In Salah in Algeria. However, the Abu Dhabi project differs fundamentally as it is directly linked to power generation while the In Salah installation only strips CO2 from gas feedstock before it is piped across the Mediterranean to Europe. There is no associated power production in Algeria, but the CO2 that would normally be vented into the atmosphere is instead buried in geological formations deep underground.

The Masdar and Hydrogen Energy International power plant will position Abu Dhabi as a world leader in clean power generation, carbon capture and the new hydrogen economy. By utilising advanced technologies that make hydrogen production commercially viable, due in part to its tie-in to the region's oil and gas industries, this project will also stimulate other hydrogen-related fields such as clean transport, fuel cells and industrial applications. Hydrogen, with the highest energy content of any fuel by mass, can be used to power internal combustion engines and fuel cells.