Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure that industry in the North West has access to carbon capture and storage infrastructure needed to meet regional and national decarbonisation targets by 2026.

As my Rt. Hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution made clear, we are committed to two carbon capture clusters by the mid-2020s and for a further two clusters by 2030. These are expected to be in areas of heavy industry such as the North East, the Humber, North West, Scotland, and Wales. In February we published a consultation on a potential approach to sequencing the deployment of clusters; we have gathered and considered stakeholder feedback and intend to launch Phase-1 of that process shortly. In order to support this deployment, the Government has announced a £1 billion CCS Infrastructure Fund, alongside £240 million to fund low-carbon hydrogen, and is developing business models across power, industry and hydrogen to encourage private investment.