UK government backs CCS with £9.4bn of new funding

The UK government has reaffirmed its support for carbon capture and storage (CCS), allocating £9.4bn to two major low-carbon industrial projects: the Acorn project in Aberdeenshire and the Viking project in the Humber.  

The funding was announced as part of the government’s five-year Spending Review, unveiled last week by the UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves (click here for related news). The government expects the financial support to help attract further private investment and support thousands of jobs across the supply chain.

The Acorn and Viking projects will be the third and fourth carbon capture clusters to be developed in the UK. The first two are the HyNet cluster in north-west England and north Wales, and the East Coast Cluster in the Teesside and Humber region. The ambition is for the four clusters to capture up to 30mn t/y of CO₂ by 2030.

Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) said the funding was ‘an important move towards final investment decisions in this Parliament’ for the Acorn and Viking projects alongside the expansion of the existing carbon capture projects in Merseyside and Teesside. However, it warned that ‘further details of long-term support for these projects will be required from government for industry to take advantage of the economic opportunities carbon storage presents to the UK’.  

OEUK believes that the projects have a ‘critical’ role to play in decarbonising the UK’s energy intensive industries from power generation to chemicals, refining, glass and cement production. It also notes that ‘independent research has demonstrated that the existing domestic oil and gas supply chain already has at least 80% of the resources required to deliver the projects’.  

Simon Virley, Vice Chair and Head of Energy and Natural Resources at KPMG UK, also welcomed the funding announcement, noting: ‘The UK has unique geology and geography to enable it to be a world leader in CCS.’ However, he added: ‘If we are going to build a successful CCS industry in the UK over the longer term, we need to repeat what we have achieved with solar and wind over the past decade and scale up this industry over the next decade to get costs down and avoid the “stop-start” approach to policy that has plagued the CCS sector in the past.’

Turning point for CCS is now, says DNV report  

Meanwhile, global investment in CCS is expected to reach $80bn (£60bn) over the next five years, according to DNV’s Energy Transition Outlook: CCS to 2050 report.

It forecasts that worldwide CCS capacity is expected to quadruple by 2030. Up to now, growth has been limited and largely associated with pilot projects, but a sharp increase in capacity in the project pipeline indicates that CCS is at a ‘turning point’, suggests the report. The immediate rise in capacity is being driven by short-term scale-up in North America and Europe, with natural gas processing still the main application for the technology, it says.  

In the longer term, CCS is ‘crucial for addressing sectors that are challenging to decarbonise’, such as steel and cement production. These hard-to-decarbonise industries are forecast to be the main driver of growth from 2030 onwards, accounting for 41% of annual CO₂ captured by mid-century. Maritime onboard capture is expected to scale from the 2040s in parts of the global shipping fleet.

As the technologies mature and scale, the average costs will drop by an average of 40% by 2050, predicts DNV.

The report forecasts that CCS will grow from 41mn tCO₂/y captured and stored today to 1,300mn tCO₂/y in 2050, which will be 6% of global emissions. However, CCS will need to scale to six times this level to reach the amount outlined in DNV’s Pathway to Net Zero Emissions report.

DNV warns that the ‘roll-out of CCS is reliant on policy support, and recent political turmoil and shifting budgetary priorities pose a significant risk to future deployment’. It believes Europe’s strong price incentives could lead it to overtake North America in CCS deployment.

DNV forecasts that carbon dioxide removal (CDR) will capture 330mn tonnes of CO₂ in 2050 – one-quarter of total captured emissions. Bioenergy with CCS (BECCS) is generally the cheaper CDR option and will be used primarily in renewable biomass for power and manufacturing, it adds.

Meanwhile, direct air capture (DAC) costs are expected to remain high at around $350/tCO₂ through to 2050. However, DNV believes ‘voluntary and compliance carbon markets still ensure the capture of 32mn tCO₂ in 2040 and 84mn tCO₂ in 2050’.

Jamie Burrows, Global Segment Lead CCUS, Energy Systems at DNV, comments: ‘CCS is entering a pivotal decade and the scale of ambition and investment must increase dramatically. It remains essential for hard-to-decarbonise sectors like cement, steel, chemicals, and maritime transport. But as DNV’s report shows, delays in reducing CO₂ emissions will place an even greater burden on CDR technologies. To stay within climate targets, we must accelerate the deployment of all carbon management solutions – from industrial capture to nature-based removal – starting today.’

Carbon Clean and MODEC collaborate to scale up offshore carbon capture tech

In related news, carbon capture solution company Carbon Clean and MODEC, a provider of offshore floating platforms, have signed an agreement to jointly develop and scale Carbon Clean’s CycloneCC carbon capture technology for offshore applications.

According to Carbon Clean, its CycloneCC technology is particularly suited to the offshore maritime environment, with a compact footprint up to 50% smaller than traditional solutions and key equipment sizes reduced by a factor of 10. It also reports that the C1 series, the newest in the CycloneCC lineup, delivers a 70% height reduction compared to column-based technologies. It features a rotating packed bed (RPB) design.

A pilot Cyclone CC plant is to be installed on a MODEC FPSO in 2026. This will be followed by the first commercial-scale deployment, targeting capture of up to 100,000 t/y of CO₂, enabling partial decarbonisation. A further scale-up will integrate CycloneCC into the FPSO design to achieve full decarbonisation, with the capacity to capture approximately 300,000 t/y of CO₂.

‘Together, [we] aim to fast-track the delivery of carbon capture technology capable of capturing up to 1,000 t/d of CO₂ onboard FPSOs, providing the maritime industry with a clear, scalable, and competitive pathway to full decarbonisation,’ says the collaboration.