AFTER years of wrangling over carbon capture and storage (CCS), governments have started to back the technology with policy and money, prompting a potential gold rush of contracts for well-placed suppliers.

The global market for CCS in 2007-08 was worth £13.28bn but there is huge potential for expansion, particularly as governments announce funding mechanisms for the first generation of demonstration plants. The sector is predicted to grow by about four per cent a year between now and 2015.

The International Energy Agency says the world's use of power will increase by 50 per cent by 2030, with 77 per cent of that coming from fossil fuels. At its best, CCS could trap up to 90 per cent of a power plant's carbon emissions, but only two small-scale demonstration projects are anywhere near operation — one at Schwarze Pumpe in east Germany and the other at Lacq in the French Pyrenees.

Building bigger CCS plants is crucial if the technology is to become commercial — but it is expensive and risky, owing particularly to a lack of clear direction from governments.

But Jeff Chapman, chief executive of the UK's CCS Association, which lobbies on behalf of companies in the field, says his association was beginning to see “at long last” the beginnings of ongoing government policy. “There's a sense among all the companies that CCS is inevitable. It's not a question of 'will it happen?', it's 'when does it happen?'”

Established engineering companies were the first to enter the CCS field. Those that already build complex power plants for electricity utility companies spotted the potential early, and virtually all are working on one or more of the three basic approaches to the technology.

The companies have designs for post-combustion technology, where the CO2 is extracted from the exhaust gas of a standard coal station and piped away to be buried. Alstom, in particular, leads the field with Schwarze Pumpe and Lacq based on its technology.

—The Guardian, London