Britain has pledged up to 21,7 billion pounds for cleaner energy
The government announced on Friday that it will invest up to 28.46 billion pounds (21.7 billion pounds) in the development of carbon capture and storage and hydrogen technology for northern England.
Britain has set a target of achieving net zero emissions in 2050. CCS is needed to reduce emissions from industries that are energy-intensive and to create jobs.
The Chancellor of Exchequer Rachel Reeves stated that "this game-changing technology" will create 4,000 jobs in communities in Merseyside, and Teesside. This will ignite growth in these industrial corelands and power up the rest the country.
CCS is the process of capturing emissions from industrial plants and power plants to store them underground. However, the cost of the projects has prevented CCS from taking off.
The previous Conservative government in Britain, which was ousted in July, promised in 2023 20 billion pounds in CCS funding, but never delivered on it.
The government announced that the two sites in Northern England would have a combined carbon capture capability of 8.5 millions metric tons per year. This is equivalent to taking 4 million cars off the roads.
HyNet NorthWest cluster in Merseyside aims to capture emissions of industrial plants, and store them on depleted gasfields in the Irish Sea. The consortium is led by Italian energy giant Eni.
Claudio Descalzi, Eni's CEO, said that "HyNet...will decarbonise a key industrial district in the UK as well as unlocking significant economic growth" in the region.
Equinor, BP and other oil and gas companies are developing a project on Teesside to store captured emissions in the North Sea.
(source: Reuters)
