The government has pledged nearly £22 billion funding to develop projects to capture and store carbon emissions in northern England, and has already approved a £4 billion project in Teesside.
It is hoped the funding for two ‘carbon capture clusters’ in Merseyside and Teesside, promised over the next 25 years, will create and support thousands of jobs, draw in private investment and help the UK meet climate goals.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer claimed the move was ‘reigniting our industrial heartlands by investing in the industry of the future’, as he made the announcement with Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband.
Funding of up to £21.7 billion over 25 years focuses on subsidies to three projects in Teesside and Merseyside, once they start capturing carbon from hydrogen, gas power, and energy from waste, to support the development of the clusters, including the infrastructure to transport and store carbon.
The funding will also support the two transport and storage networks which will carry the carbon captured to deep geological storage in Liverpool Bay and the North Sea.
The Government said the move would give industry confidence to invest in the UK, attracting £8 billion of private investment, directly creating 4,000 jobs and supporting 50,000 in the long term.
It aims to pave the way for the first large scale hydrogen production plant in the UK and helping the oil and gas industry transition to clean energy with a workforce that has transferable skills.
The move has been welcomed by businesses involved in developing the two carbon capture clusters, which are focused on capture and storage of emissions from industrial, hydrogen and energy production.
Emma Pinchbeck, chief executive of Energy UK, described CCUS as a ‘tool in our armoury of technologies which we need to decarbonise parts of energy that we currently can’t do with clean electricity, such as major industrial processes’.
She said development of CCUS for industrial processes would unlock investment and help areas with a ‘proud history of engineering and industry pioneer the technologies of the future in the UK’.
Also on Friday, the government approved a £4 billion project to build an industrial-scale carbon capture, utilisation and storage facility in North East England.
Work on the Net Zero Teesside project, led by BP and Equinor, is set to start by the end of this year with operations expected to begin in 2027.
The proposed power station will generate up to 860 megawatts of low-carbon electricity – enough to power up to 1.3 million UK homes, according to South Tees Development Corp.
The aim is for projects at Teesworks over the next decade to help boost local revenues, with income from business rates expected to increase by £79 million annually once large-scale projects become fully operational, according to the corporation.
Dynamic battery storage, sustainable aviation fuels and hydrogen fuel production could be among the clean energy projects.
source: PA
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