The Government of the UK has pledged nearly £22 billion (~ $28.5B) of funding for carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects on the island.
The funding will be rolled out in subsidies for the development of new CCS clusters in the industry-heavy areas of Teeside and Merseyside.
Located in the North East of the UK, Teesside is also part of the East Coast Cluster by the Northern Endurance Partnership, selected by the UK Government as a priority cluster in phase 1 of the Carbon Capture, Usage, and Storage (CCUS) cluster sequencing process.
Last year, some of the projects located in Teesside advanced to Track-1 negotiations as part of Phase 2 of the cluster sequencing process for CCUS.
The newly greenlighted CCS governmental funding, totaling up to £21.7 billion, will cover a period of 25 years, beginning in 2028.
Divided into three projects, the funding will support the capture of up to 8.5 million tonnes of CO2 emissions released either during hydrogen production, gas power generation, or waste-to-energy burning processes, locking away the captured exhausts into empty gas fields in the North Sea and Liverpool Bay.
According to a report published this week by Offshore Energies UK (OEUK), the UK has the potential to become the largest market for carbon storage in Europe.
Looking into figures ahead of final investment decisions on the Track-1 CCUS clusters, OEUK concluded that depleted oil and gas reserves around the UK, a legacy from the country’s bustling industry, offer some 78 billion tonnes worth of storage potential.
This capacity can lock away an amount of captured CO2 equal to 200 years worth of emissions from the UK, OEUK stated.
OEUK also shared that the carbon capture sector has the potential to create 50,000 new jobs and guarantee a further 100,000 across different industries in the UK, building a supply chain worth £100 billion by 2050.
Courtesy of Carbon Herald.