Response to UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy consultation: Building our Industrial Strategy

Abstract

CCS decarbonises fossil fuel power generation, is the only available method to address industrial emissions, and can enable the production of hydrogen as a low carbon vector for heating, energy storage and transport. Further, CCS in combination with biomass may potentially provide net-negative emissions to offset emissions which are too complex or expensive to directly mitigate. In the absence of CCS, full decarbonisation of power generation, heating and transport consistent with the UK's Climate Change Act 2008, and the recently agreed ambition for net-zero emissions in the UNFCCC Paris Agreement which UK ministers have endorsed, will likely be both extremely difficult and costly to achieve. The UK has unique and substantial strategic advantages in CCS. These include: - Excellent geological resources for CO2 storage in the North Sea basin. - Large and mature offshore hydrocarbon industry with skills and experience directly applicable to CCS delivery. - Existing onshore and offshore hydrocarbon pipeline infrastructure appropriate and available for conversion to use for CO2 collection and transport to offshore storage. - Successful industrial clusters located accessibly to pipeline and/or port connections to North Sea CO2 storage opportunities. - Potential for CO2-enhanced hydrocarbon recovery in North Sea oil fields to achieve both CO2 removal, and additional hydrocarbon production extending recovery and income from the North Sea. - World-leading academic and industrial research into CCS technologies - CO2 capture, CO2 transport and CO2 storage. These strategic advantages have been developed through sustained UK investment in CCS research and development, totalling in excess of £200 million investment over a period of more than a decade. The premature cancellation of the BEIS predecessor Department for Energy and Climate Change CCS Commercialisation programme was a substantial set-back to UK CCS development. However, the need and strategic advantages for CCS in the UK remain, and present a near-term opportunity for successful and profitable UK industrial development fulfilling the objectives of the 'ten pillars' of the proposed Industrial Strategy. As such, it is extraordinary that CCS appears absent from the Industrial Strategy Green paper, and BEIS is strongly urged to assess its omission. CCS is much more than just lower carbon electricity, and UK all-energy and industry decarbonisation require solutions beyond renewables.