CMS CMcK to advise National Grid

Date: 05/11/2009

Munir Hassan

CMS Cameron McKenna has won a competitive bid to advise National Grid on their Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) projects. This includes advising on their participation with Scottish Power in the Government's competition to fund a commercial scale CCS demonstration project, and their exploration of CCS opportunities in the Humber region in Northern England and the Thames region.

CCS is an integral part of the UK's plan to decarbonise the power sector, transition to a low carbon economy and meet the emissions reduction commitments made at national, EU and international level. It involves capturing emissions from industry, principally coal fired power stations, transporting these and then injecting the captured emissions into geological storage facilities – primarily under the North Sea.

National Grid has identified a potential reduction of up to 78 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (60 for the Humber region and 18 for Scotland) going into the atmosphere every year if CCS networks in Scotland and the Humber region can be delivered, equivalent in environmental benefit to taking nearly all of Britain’s cars off the road. CCS would also contribute to security of electricity supply by allowing coal to remain part of a future diverse energy supply mix.

National Grid is therefore exploring opportunities to apply its expertise and key competencies to CCS. It is looking at developing networks where clusters of power stations or other heavy industry adopting CCS could use the same pipeline infrastructure. This would be much more practical, economic and environmentally sensible than the wasteful duplication of each emission source building its own separate pipeline.

The CMS Cameron McKenna team comprised Munir Hassan (Energy), who secured the opportunity with National Grid and led the pitch team, together with partners Charles Currier (Corporate), Trevor Butcher (Projects) and Judith Aldersey-Williams (Oil & Gas).

Munir Hassan said; “These are high profile and ground breaking projects that put our Clean Energy practice at the forefront of this exciting and rapidly expanding area of work. It also positions the firm to advise on the numerous further CCS opportunities that are opening up internationally.”

For your online legal updates

Eve MacKinnon
+44 (0)207 367 3621
eve.mackinnon@cms-cmck.com

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