Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, how much funding his Department has allocated to carbon capture utilisation and storage projects through the Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage Infrastructure Fund in Scotland since that fund was launched in March 2020.

The £1bn CCS Infrastructure Fund (CIF) forms part of a package of Government support to provide industry with the certainty required to deploy CCUS at pace and at scale. On 15 March 2023 my Rt hon Friend Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer announced an unprecedented up to £20 billion investment in the early development of CCUS. The Government has committed to setting out a vision for the CCUS sector that will support net zero ambitions and raise investor confidence.

Since its launch the Government has committed up to £40m of the CIF to support early-stage design work in industrial clusters via the Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge (IDC) Fund. UKRI announced the outcome of the challenge in March 2021 allocating a total of £171m, including £31m in funding for Scotland’s net zero infrastructure (offshore and onshore). The majority of CIF will be allocated through the ongoing Cluster Sequencing process.