Invest £800 million to build a carbon capture storage cluster

Our verdict

• This is a promise to invest £800 million to build and deploy a carbon capture and storage (CCS) cluster by the mid-2020s, capable of permanently and safely storing carbon dioxide.
• The March 2020 Budget announced the creation of “a new CCS Infrastructure Fund of at least £800 million” and promised that CCS would be established “in at least two UK sites, one by the mid-2020s, a second by 2030”.  The November 2020 Spending Review set out a funding schedule, detailing planned investment of £1 billion in CCS across the period 2021-2025. From February to March 2021, a consultation was held seeking views on the process of choosing sites and scheduling the allocation of funds for CCS projects. Then, in May 2021, an update on the CCS Infrastructure Fund was published and the first phase of the process (known as ‘sequencing’) to identify two clusters suitable for deployment was launched. (It’s worth noting that early in 2021 debates about the wisdom of relying heavily on CCS were reignited following a review by the Tyndall Centre Manchester)
• The creation of the fund for CCS and the launch of Phase 1 of the sequencing process are significant steps towards fulfilment of this pledge, but the investment target of £800 million is unlikely to be met until 2024-2025, at which point the promised cluster should be nearing deployment. Until then, this policy remains ‘in progress’.