UK to invest 200 million pounds in Acorn carbon capture project in Scotland
LONDON, June 12 (Reuters) - Britain will invest 200 million pounds ($272 million) in the Acorn carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in Scotland, the government said on Thursday, fleshing out details of funding for the technology announced in a spending review on Wednesday.
Britain has a climate target to reach net zero emissions by 2050 and has said CCS will be needed to curb emissions from energy-intensive industrial sectors.
Acorn, being developed by Storegga, Shell UK (SHEL.L), opens new tab, Harbour Energy (HBR.L), opens new tab and North Sea Midstream Partners, in St Fergus, Scotland, will capture carbon dioxide emissions from industry and store them under the North Sea.
"This vital support will enable the critical work needed to reach Final Investment Decision (FID) and marks a major step forward — not only for Acorn, but for the development of Scotland's CCS infrastructure and the growth of a UK-wide carbon capture and storage industry," Tim Stedman, CEO of Storegga, said in an emailed statement.
The government said it would also back the Viking CCS project in the Humber region, in the north of England, without specifying how much it would receive.
"This (funding) will support industrial renewal in Scotland and the Humber with thousands of highly-skilled jobs at good wages to build Britain's clean energy future," Britain's energy minister, Ed Miliband, said in a release from Britain's Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.
Once operational, the two projects could capture up to 18 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, the government said.
The funding is part of 9.4 billion pounds the government pledged to carbon capture technology over the spending review period and the 21.7 billion pounds it last year said would be spent on CCS over 25 years.
($1 = 0.7352 pounds)
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Times
31 minutes ago
- Times
How the UK is testing a radical plan to refreeze the Arctic
F or much of his career, Dr Shaun Fitzgerald of the University of Cambridge worked on trying to cut the amount of carbon we pump into the atmosphere. Five years ago, he shifted his focus. 'We've been talking about reducing emissions for decades,' he said. 'The truth is, they're still rising.' He turned his attention to something more radical. Could we, he wondered, refreeze the Arctic? The idea has serious backing. In June the UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency (Aria) — a government body created to back 'ideas on the edge of what's possible' — awarded a team led by Fitzgerald £10 million in funding. The money will be spent on exploring whether it might be possible to use hundreds of thousands of robots to thicken and prolong the life of a portion of the sea ice that forms each winter across the High Arctic.
Times
31 minutes ago
- Times
Businesses call for action on abuse of public-facing staff
Business leaders are urging the government to broaden legislative action to protect all public-facing workers amid soaring levels of violence and abuse. Some 42 per cent of workers in pubs, restaurants, hotels and transport said they experienced some form of abuse between October and March, a year-on-year increase of 19 per cent, according to the new figures from the Institute of Customer Service. An all-party parliamentary group, which works alongside the industry group UK Hospitality, whose members include retailers, hospitality groups, call centres and transport companies, has been tracking customer service across all sectors over the past five years. • Extra costs holding back hospitality sector, says Whitbread boss Over a third, or 37 per cent, of the 1,050 respondents to the organisation's latest survey said they had considered leaving their role because of incidents which include racial abuse and sexual harassment, while over a quarter said they had taken sick leave after such incidents. One in five workers said they had been threatened with violence, the highest level that the group had recorded. Jo Causon, chief executive of the Institute of Customer Service, said the research showed how 'frontline workers are facing unacceptable levels of assault and abuse from some customers'. Common assault is already an offence and the previous Conservative government had originally rejected calls to create a separate offence specifically linked to shopworkers, arguing it did not think it was 'required or will be most effective'. However, the retail industry argued that incidents were rising and Rishi Sunak's government reversed its position, although its plan to introduce a new offence was abandoned when parliament was dissolved for the general election. • Shops 'at breaking point' as thefts and abuse rocket While there has been a crackdown on retail crime, with a standalone offence of assaulting a retail worker in England and Wales set to be introduced as part of the government's Crime and Policing Bill, which is making its way through parliament, businesses are calling for the bill to be amended to include all those working in public-facing roles. In a letter to the government, 76 businesses said that current legislation provided 'only a partial solution to an endemic and preventable issue'. The signatories of the letter include Sky, Hays Travel, Wickes, Virgin Media 02, United Utilities and DPD. 'These professionals form the bedrock to our society and our economy,' the letter said. Causon added: 'Introducing appropriate protection for customer-facing workers is not only the right thing to do on a societal level, it is critical the UK's business performance isn't impacted by workers up and down the country taking time off sick or thinking about leaving their jobs altogether.'
Times
31 minutes ago
- Times
Community Fibre eyes mobile market launch to rival big networks
A broadband company led by the former bosses of EE and Virgin Mobile, and backed by Warburg Pincus, the American private equity firm, is considering the launch of a new mobile telecoms operator. Community Fibre is exploring opportunities to start offering e-Sim services as early as this summer, before eventually rolling out virtual Sim-only contracts, in an effort to capitalise on its existing customer base of almost 400,000 through cross-selling mobile services. An e-Sim replaces the physical Sim card in a phone and enables users to switch easily between different providers, using a cheap local network when travelling. The new operator would initially be launched under the company's existing brand and, like other mobile virtual network operators (MVNO), would use the network of another provider rather than building its own infrastructure. Community Fibre is one of a number of alternative network providers, or 'altnets', that have sprung up in recent years to challenge Openreach and Virgin Media O2 in building full-fibre networks. However, its management team has ample experience in the UK mobile market. Graeme Oxby, its chief executive, previously led mobile operations for Virgin Media, which was later bought by Liberty Global and merged with O2, while Olaf Swantee, Community Fibre's chairman, was the former chief executive of EE before its takeover by BT. Such a move would mark the latest shake-up of the UK's mobile sector, which has led to MVNOs gaining a greater share of the UK market, heaping pressure on the larger network infrastructure operators: EE, O2 and the newly merged Vodafone-Three. Research by Enders Analysis showed that the UK's network operators lost contract subscribers for the first time last year, while MVNOs gained 1.65 million. The research specialist attributes the rise of virtual operators to the cost of living crisis and longer handset lifespans, which has increased demand for Sim-only contracts, 'a traditional area of strength' for the MVNOs. Vodafone-Three has said it is aiming to attract more MVNOs, a market that it has traditionally underplayed in, with only 10 per cent of virtual operators in the UK using its network. However, altnets have also come under increasing pressure from rising costs and debt levels, as well as heightened price competition as providers attempt to recoup the huge investment in building their infrastructure by bringing more customers on to their networks. Community Fibre, which has built out its network to 1.3 million premises, generated adjusted earnings before interest, taxes and other items of £8 million last year, which it expects to increase this year. • VMO2 to merge enterprise operations with Daisy Group However, it made a pre-tax loss of £119 million last year, according to its latest accounts filed at Companies House. It has said it expects to be 'cashflow positive' during the first half of next year, from an outflow of £8 million the year before. The challenges have raised expectations of a consolidation within the sector, although merger and acquisition activity has yet to gather momentum, which some analysts have attributed to a lack of potential buyers able to pay cash for targets and institutional backers being unwilling to accept a writedown in the value of their businesses at takeout.
