Across the UK’s industrial heartlands, a transformation is taking shape. For decades, chemical plants, refineries and manufacturing facilities, alongside electricity generators, have powered the nation’s economy and provided essential societal services. While these sectors are closely regulated, they remain major sources of carbon pollution.
With the UK legally bound to reach net zero by 2050, the challenge is clear: power and industry must decarbonise. Renewable energy is revolutionising our power system, but we need low-carbon power to complement wind and solar and to ensure UK industry can grow in a net zero world.
In order to comply, we need carbon capture fitted to energy-from-waste, biomass and gas-fired power stations. Equally, the UK’s vital heavy industries can’t be decarbonised by switching to renewable power alone. They emit carbon dioxide (CO2) not only from burning fuel but also from the chemical processes at the core of their products. Cement production, vital for building 1.5 million homes by the end of this parliament, releases CO2 directly from limestone. Fuel refining, fertilisers, glass manufacturing and chemicals face similar constraints. Similarly, energy-from-waste facilities that process residual waste also emit carbon, but the alternative – landfill – produces even higher emissions. Unlike landfill, these facilities recover resources by generating electricity and district heat, displacing fossil fuels.
This is where Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) comes in. The technology traps CO2 before it reaches the atmosphere, compresses it, and pipes or ships it offshore for safe, permanent storage deep under the seabed, where the geology is already proven, porous rock which acts like a sponge. These layers are sealed by a layer of hard, impermeable rock – locking the carbon away.
But CCUS is more than a climate solution: it’s an economic lifeline. Industry in the UK faces an uncertain future.
Rising costs combined with the need to decarbonise could push production overseas, taking skilled jobs with them. This will increase the UK’s dependency on critical product imports. By investing in a future with CCUS, we can decarbonise without deindustrialising – keeping cement and chemicals production in our industrial heartlands, while building new supply chains in CO2 transport, storage and low-carbon manufacturing. This is why CCUS has been identified by the government as one of six frontier Clean Energy Industries in its Clean Energy Industries Sector Plan.
CCUS strengthens our biomass and energy-from-waste plants, capturing carbon from the waste we throw away and other plant-based materials, accelerating the transition to a decarbonised economy. CCUS also unlocks new low-carbon value chains in fuels and products. Captured CO2 can be utilised to produce Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) – essential to meeting the UK’s SAF Mandate – and specifically e-fuels, where demand is accelerating.
The potential is enormous. The Carbon Capture and Storage Association (CCSA), the lead trade association advocating for the commercial deployment of CCUS, estimates that CCUS could create more than 50,000 UK jobs by 2050 – ranging from pipeline welders in the north-west of England and offshore technicians in Aberdeen, to control room engineers in the Humber and scientists developing utilisation products. CCSA analysis shows that deploying all potential projects will attract £26bn in private investment and boost the economy by £94bn.
CCUS enables greenhouse gas removal techniques such as Waste-to-Energy and Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). These technologies can deliver the net-negative emissions needed to offset hard-to-abate sectors such as aviation and agriculture, while delivering net-renewable power to the UK energy system. They achieve this by capturing and storing biogenic carbon – the carbon originally absorbed by plants and organic material during growth – preventing it from re-entering the atmosphere. These “carbon dioxide removals” can be traded on carbon markets, reducing development costs and channelling government funds invested in early deployment back to the public purse.
In the UK, two CCUS clusters have already reached financial close, with others set to follow before the end of this parliament. The East Coast Cluster, covering Teesside and the Humber, will store CO2 in the southern North Sea, while HyNet in north-west England and North Wales will capture industrial CO2 for storage under Liverpool Bay. Scotland’s Acorn Project will reuse oil and gas infrastructure to provide storage capacity and hydrogen production, and Viking CCS in the Humber is targeting the UK’s highest-emitting industrial region. Meanwhile, the Morecambe Net Zero-Peak Cluster in Derbyshire and Staffordshire is leading the world’s largest cement decarbonisation project. Further initiatives in Bacton, North Norfolk, are also gathering momentum. These projects are more than dots on a map: they are the foundations of a new low-carbon economy in regions that have powered Britain for over a century.
The Labour government has made vital progress in the CCUS sector. The next step involves government and industry forging a pathway for the next wave of CCUS projects – with clear dates, funding windows and an allocation framework that supports both pipeline transport and alternatives such as shipping, road and rail. Alongside this, market development for carbon removals and low-carbon products will be key to creating new revenue streams for industry. The UK must also show leadership in building a Europe-wide CO2 market, helping projects attract global investment. Together, these measures would boost investor confidence, reduce project costs and accelerate the transition to a self-sustaining market.
The UK’s vast storage potential, combined with our engineering expertise, means the UK can not only hit its own climate goals but export CCUS know-how worldwide. We have the workforce, the technology, the storage and the track record. What we – and the rest of the world – no longer have, is time to waste.
CCUS infrastructure must be operational by the late 2020s for us to stay on track for net zero by 2050. These early projects will pave the way, offering a comprehensive prize: achieving net zero without deindustrialisation, ensuring energy security in a decarbonised grid and establishing the UK as a global leader in a defining technology of the century – all while creating jobs, skills, and growth for a future-ready economy.
Related
