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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent steps the Government has taken to promote carbon capture, utilisation and storage technologies.

The Government believes that carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) has the potential to play an important role in meeting the UK’s climate targets. CCUS can add value to the economy and help tackle hard to decarbonise sectors.

The Government published its CCUS Action Plan in November 2018, designed to progress CCUS in the UK, including enabling the UK’s first CCUS facility to be operational from the mid-2020s. The Government is investing over £50 million in CCUS innovation support between 2017 and March 2021.

CCUS is also likely to play an important role in achieving our Industrial Clusters Mission, creating the world’s first net-zero industrial cluster by 2040. This is supported by up to £170 million from the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund to support the deployment of low carbon technologies and enabling infrastructure in one or more clusters. In addition, through our Industrial Energy Transformation Fund we are investing £315 million to support businesses with high energy use to cut their bills and emissions through increased energy efficiency and transition to a low carbon future through the use of lower carbon energy and processes. This may support CCUS projects.

In March this year, the Government launched the CCUS Advisory Group. Backed by government and industry support, the Group will provide advice on the potential incentives and regulations needed for the development of a new UK market in CCUS.

The Government is also working with other governments to promote the development of CCUS internationally. We hosted, with the International Energy Agency, the Global CCUS Summit in Edinburgh last November which brought together world energy leaders from governments and industry to accelerate the global progress of CCUS and co-lead the CCUS initiatives under both Mission Innovation and the Clean Energy Ministerial.