UK CCS strategy moves forward

But concerns over storage and the government’s long-term plans still need to be ad-dressed, say industry bodies

The first four CCS projects approved by the UK government will enable the country to reach its 2030 CO₂ storage target, if they all reach their nameplate capacity. The East Coast Cluster aims to capture and store up to 27m t/yr of CO₂ by 2030, the Hynet cluster 3–4m t/yr, Scotland’s Acorn project 5m t/yr and the Viking CCS project 10m t/yr. The last two of these were given the go-ahead by the government in early August. If successful, these four projects would together store 45–46m t/yr of CO₂ by 2030, well in excess of the government’s 20–30m t/yr by 2030 target. However, it is far from certain that all the projects will achieve their stated capacity. A study in 2022 by Imperial College fou