Industry demand for facilities to sequester and stockpile carbon emissions has been higher than predictions, positioning Britain as a potential world leader.
Speaking at the Offshore Europe conference in Aberdeen earlier this month, Dr Nick Richardson, head of the North Sea Transition Authority, revealed the regulator had received huge levels of in response to a call for nominations in the second carbon capture and storage [CCS] licensing round of 2025.
The Authority has been issuing licenses since 2023, with Spirit Energy, EnQuest, Harbour Energy and Perenco amongst the first recipients. Since then, a BP-Equinor joint venture and another from Eni have been approved as so-called ‘track 1’ projects in North West England and Teesside.
According to Richardson, there needs to be substantially more licenses green-lit to ensure capacity meets demand by 2050, when 100million tonnes of carbon will need to be stored annually. This would be enough to cover domestic emissions, but due to the high concentration of greenhouse gas output, there is an opportunity for the sector to continue expanding in order to process carbon from elsewhere.
If done properly, this could be delivered at a highly competitive price point compared with Britain’s North Sea neighbours. The UK Government has already delivered £22billion to CCS ‘clusters’ over the next 25 years, while the nation’s energy-from-waste sector recently called for a rollout of the technology to realise its potential to become carbon negative by 2035.
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