.png)
🏆 Keir Starmer’s government recently announced it will invest £22 billion in CCS projects over the next 25 years. This is not just smart climate policy, it's a critical enabler for the entire carbon management industry and positions the hashtag#UK as a global leader rivaling the U.S.
🚛 While this funding is intended to accelerate CCS infrastructure development, it can simultaneously benefit the scale-up of carbon dioxide removal (hashtag#CDR) technologies such as Direct Air Capture (hashtag#DAC) or Bioenergy with CCS (hashtag#BECCS), which share much of the same transport and storage infrastructure with CCS.
📉 As a reminder: transport and storage costs account for up to 10-30% of DAC costs at scale, so this investment can also play a pivotal role in bringing down the cost of DAC.
🎯 The UK is naturally poised to be a global leader in CCS, with many countries looking to it and its ample storage potential in the North Sea. To give you an idea of scale: the UK’s National Infrastructure Commission foresees a carbon transmission network capable of handling 50MtCO₂e per year by 2035. The EU’s overall 2040 durable CDR target will likely be around 75Mt of CO2.
💷 In addition to the £22 billion funding, the initiative is expected to attract an additional £8 billion in private investment, ensuring that the CCS clusters in the north of England - some of the areas hardest hit by the fossil phase-out - become hubs of future innovation and economic growth.
🤑 As is typical for the UK, the funding will primarily support a ‘contract for difference’ (hashtag#CfD) scheme, covering additional costs borne by CCS facilities (and benefitting from a potential upside).
😑 I know CCS is not popular with everyone. It has a history tainted with project failures and overpromises. However, decarbonisation will require CCS, there is no way around it. And CCS 2.0 is different to what we saw 10-15 years ago. Also, CDR will require CCS infrastructure. Big bets like this one are absolutely essential in helping us move the needle on this journey.
🤔 What do you think?
Comentarios