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industry & government news

BP LEADS ENERGY COMPANIES PREPARING

TWO MAJOR UK CARBON CAPTURE PROJECTS

NORTHERN ENDURANCE PARTNERSHIP
AFTER DECADES SPENT extracting Equinor and power generator Drax in commercial use worldwide, but
fossil fuels from the UK’s North hopes to capture at least 17 million the IEA believes that in the last
Sea, a consortium of oil companies tonnes of CO₂ from hundreds of three years plans for more than 30
is preparing to pump Britain’s refineries and factories. commercial carbon capture facilities
greenhouse gas emissions back The new alliance will operate the have come forward, representing a
beneath the seabed to help meet the pipes and storage facility needed to potential investment of about $27
government’s climate ambitions. transport the emissions from both billion (£20.7 billion).
The Guardian reports that BP has set industrial zones and dispose of almost The UK government has promised
out plans to lead an alliance of energy 50 per cent of the UK’s industrial £800 million to decarbonise at least
companies in siphoning off the carbon emissions in saline aquifers beneath two heavy-industry ‘carbon clusters’,
dioxide from factory flues under new the North Sea seabed. the first in 2025 and the second
plans in which almost half the UK’s Andy Lane, BP’s Head of Carbon by 2030, falling short of calls from
industrial emissions will be stored Capture Solutions, said the project MPs and the government’s official
beneath the North Sea from 2026. represents a “significant milestone” independent climate advisers at the
The veteran North Sea oil extractor towards developing the offshore Committee on Climate Change to roll
is leading a partnership including infrastructure needed to safely out multiple carbon capture projects
Italy’s state oil company Eni, Norway’s store carbon, and the oil industry’s within the next five years.
Equinor, National Grid, Royal Dutch “willingness to come together and The Northern Endurance Alliance
Shell and French energy company Total collaborate has applied for funding from the
in a plan to transport 17 million tonnes wherever government’s £170 million industrial
of carbon dioxide every year from two possible” to decarbonisation challenge, which was
separate carbon capture projects based contribute to the set up this time last year. The support
in the Teesside and Humber industrial UK’s climate goals. is part of the government’s
clusters on England’s east coast. Carbon capture £4.7 billion Industrial
At Teesside, BP will work with the and storage is Strategy Challenge
same oil companies, in a separate considered vital Fund, set up by
venture, to capture up to 10 million to the UK’s legally the government
tonnes of carbon dioxide a year from binding target to create to address
the industrial cluster – equivalent to a carbon neutral economy by 2050. the biggest
the same emissions produced from the It would also be “virtually impossible” barriers to the
energy used by three million UK homes for the world to meet its climate UK’s future
– from the mid-2020s. targets without it, according to the productivity
Meanwhile, at the Humber a separate International Energy Agency. and earning
alliance including National Grid, There are still only 20 projects power.

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19/11/2020 16:31
News.indd 2
News.indd 2 19/11/2020 16:31