Thursday 29 November 2018

The UK’s first carbon capture usage and storage (CCUS) project could be up and running from the mid-2020s under government plans were unveiled on 28 November at a world-first summit in Edinburgh.

More than 50 international leaders, CEOs of major energy companies, manufacturing businesses and finance firms gathered to discuss the next crucial steps for making cutting-edge carbon capture technology a reality. Energy-intensive industries currently produce approximately 24% of global emissions. This potentially vital technology captures carbon from power stations and carbon heavy industries such as cement, chemicals, steel, and oil refining. Then before it even enters the air, it either uses it for industrial purposes like manufacturing concrete or stores it safely underground, reducing pollution and helping to tackle climate change.

Ahead of COP24 next week and almost a year on from the launch of our modern Industrial Strategy, the government will show the UK’s continued leadership on tackling climate change by setting out an action plan to enable the development of the UK’s first CCUS project, commissioning from the mid 2020s. The overarching ambition is to roll out the technology at scale in the 2030s, subject to costs coming down sufficiently.

The plan commits the UK to:

- next year set out how to enable the UK’s first CCUS facility

- invest £20 million in supporting construction of CCUS technologies at industrial sites across the UK, as part of £45 million commitment to innovation

- invest up to £315 million in decarbonising industry, including the potential to use CCUS

- begin work with the Oil and Gas Authority, industry and the Crown Estate and Crown Estate Scotland to identify existing oil and gas infrastructure which could be transformed for CCUS projects

The UK government also announced investment of £175,000 in Project Acorn in St Fergus, Scotland, to develop ways of transporting carbon emissions from where they are captured to storage. This will be matched by the Scottish government, and the European Union Commission will also provide funding. This comes as other CCUS projects are also being developed with OGCI Climate Investments announcing its intention to open the first commercial end to end CCUS project in Teesside. The project will use natural gas to generate power, with CO2 then captured and transported by pipeline for storage under the seabed.

Earlier in the week, Drax Power Station, in North Yorkshire, announced work would start on the commissioning of a Bioenergy Carbon Capture and Storage pilot plant using technology developed by Leeds University spin-out company C-Capture, which was supported by £2 million of government funding. If the pilot project is successful, Drax could become the world’s first negative emissions power station - meaning the electricity it produces would help reduce the amount of carbon accumulating in the atmosphere.

This pivotal summit follows last month’s publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) stark report which called for urgent global action to tackle climate change and highlighted that past carbon emissions have already caused 1°C of warming. The IPCC made it clear that globally we are currently not on track to meet the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal and we must increase our ambition to drastically reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to reach a net level of zero around the middle of the century.

The UK is already a world-leader in carbon capture, and to date has invested £1.3 million to progress industrial carbon capture in Teesside. As well as boosting local supply chains and creating good jobs, carbon capture will also explore what can be done with existing oil and gas infrastructure. The UK is also the largest donor of Official Development Assistance to carbon capture globally, providing £70 million since 2012 to support carbon capture activities in emerging and developing countries including Indonesia, Mexico and South Africa, supporting a truly global move towards this new technology.