UK gov pledges £22bn for carbon capture

Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero Ed Miliband made the announcement today, at the same time calling time on the UK’s last coal power station.

Without going into many details, the Labour government’s announcement of the project, which was kick-started by the previous Conservative government, says carbon dioxide will be captured and stored under the seabed.

The commitment comes after a number of Final Investment Decisions were moved four or five times, says Gari Harris, director at the Net Zero Industry Innovation Centre in the northeast of England, where a lot of research is going into CCUS, green hydrogen and other projects.

“In the North Sea there are the Northern Endurance Partnership Fields. Back in 1972, when BP and everyone were drilling for oil, they went there but didn’t get oil – it’s a saline aquifer. It’s perfectly suited to store CO₂ – there is about a billion tons worth of storage there.”

The commitment is in line with the government’s target to reach ‘net zero’ by 2050.

As part of the announcement, the government’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero says its mission to tackle climate change comes ‘at a time when the UK has seen a year of record-breaking temperatures’.

The claim might come as a surprise to many UK residents, given the lower than average temperatures throughout the summer of 2024, according to the Met Office.