Corporate Capture and Storage: Earlier this month, the government unveiled a sizable commitment to Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS), announcing it would spend £22bn over 25 years on two carbon storage clusters, which it said would entice a further £8bn of private investment.
That investment was confirmed two weeks later at the UK’s flagship investment summit, when the government revealed it had reached a commercial agreement with investors including Eni, BP and Equinor to “unlock £8bn of private investment to launch carbon capture clusters”.
CCUS is controversial because it is largely untested at scale and critics say it is essentially a sop to the fossil fuel industry – kicking the can down the road on the seismic shift in energy policy needed to genuinely meet net-zero targets. This announcement will do little to quell those concerns given the three main investors are among the largest oil and gas companies in the world.
