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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment his Department has made of the potential use of deep offshore saline aquifers in developing a viable business model for carbon capture and storage technology.

The Department funded a twelve month £2.5 million project, led by the Energy Technologies Institute, to progress the appraisal of five selected carbon dioxide storage sites in the North and Irish Seas; three of these sites were offshore saline formations. The report, “Progressing Development of the UK’s Strategic Carbon Dioxide Storage Resource”, was published by the Energy Technologies Institute in May 2016 and is available at: http://www.eti.co.uk/project/strategic-uk-ccs-storage-appraisal/.