Carbon dioxide specialist Carbon Capture Scotland (CCS), based in Dumfries and Galloway, plans to remove up to 1 million tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere per year by 2030. Working with Energy From Waste (EFW), distillers, firms and biomethane plants, they could generate as many as 500 jobs across rural Scotland by deploying technology to capture biogenic CO2 emissions from processes such as whisky fermentation, anaerobic digestion and biomass incineration and transporting it to sequestration sites.
CCS has three main activities
- Capture – use proprietary technology to capture biogenic CO2 from fermentation processes and biogas plants
- Use – CCS owns and operates the world’s largest dry ice manufacturing plant from biogenic CO2
- Remove – permanently removes biogenic CO2, creating high-quality carbon removal credits to help mitigate climate change
Founded by brothers Richard and Ed Nimmons, CCS has piloted a variety of CO2 capture and processing technologies at its current headquarters at Crofthead Biogas Anaerobic Digester Plant in Dumfries and Galloway. The site uses over 10,000 tonnes of CO2 per year to produce dry ice – a critical component in many industries from pharmaceutical to food. Constructed in 2021, the £4 million project was a world first and had been a key component in maintaining dry ice supplies during the Covid vaccination rollout and CO2 shortages. Another carbon capture site is North British Distillery in Edinburgh, where 88 tonnes of CO2 will be utilised for dry ice every day.
Securing adequate geological and mineralisation storage facilities is a significant challenge. To address this, CCS strategically locates their carbon storage systems near storage sites where possible to minimise transportation challenges. Their systems are highly mobile and versatile, allowing quick adaptation to new storage opportunities. Geological storage remains the industry’s biggest bottleneck and requires significant expansion. CCS’s geographically flexible approach enables them to go wherever the best storage facilities exist, ensuring a smooth transition to permanent carbon removal.
A second stumbling block is that the industry is not well-developed in the UK, and although CCS has the technology in place to deliver dry ice to the hospitality industry, the Government has not issued the appropriate licences, culminating in the UK falling behind its European competitors.
CCS’s Project Nexus, which could help remove 1 million tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere per year by 2030, addresses a major issue in the global net zero journey – how to secure large volumes of biogenic CO2, whether for utilisation or removal, from a large number of dispersed sites? To achieve this, they have developed the Nimmons900, a compact, efficient and mobile carbon module specifically designed for fermentation sources. Removing 1 million tonnes of CO2 is the equivalent of de-carbonising the gas and electricity of over 175,000 average UK homes.
Prior to 2030, the focus will be on capturing biogenic emissions produced during fermentation in the whisky industry. These emissions will be captured, processed and transported to domestic and/or international sequestration sites. After 2030, focus will be opened to other large-scale sources of biogenic emissions such as anaerobic digestion and biomass incineration, both of which will be mature enough to exist at scale by that time.