Government commitment to low carbon technology provides a major step forward for green recovery

Pale Blue Dot, the lead developer of the Acorn carbon capture and storage and hydrogen project in Scotland warmly welcomes today’s announcement of a further investment in low carbon technology.

Nick Cooper, CEO of Pale Blue Dot, said,

‘The ability to capture and store significant volumes of CO2 under the North Sea in CCS projects such as Acorn will be a crucial part of the UK’s journey to reaching net zero by 2050. The UK has the geology, the expertise and now the Government will, to make world-scale CCS projects a reality. These ingredients will allow the UK to not only provide global leadership in developing this vital tool to mitigate climate change, but create a whole new industry in carbon management.’

The project, which will be storing CO2 by the mid-2020s will create around 2,000 direct jobs during the five-year construction period of the initial CCS and hydrogen projects and around 300 long term jobs as the projects become operational. As the Acorn carbon management chain grows, the number of new jobs created is expected to grow substantially beyond these initial levels. Crucially, however, because Acorn capitalises on infrastructure that is for the most part already in place, it can be developed cost-effectively and quickly, helping the UK Government to achieve its CCS ambitions as part of a green recovery

Acorn has received match funding from the UK and Scottish Governments and has benefited from two rounds of Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) funding from the European Commission.

St Fergus in North East Scotland could be home to critical net zero infrastructure. Image Credit: Shell