UK Turns to Big Oil in £20 Billion Carbon Capture Push

(Bloomberg) -- The UK selected projects from developers including BP Plc and Equinor ASA to enter into negotiations for the country’s first large-scale efforts to capture and store carbon emissions. 

In total, eight projects are set to receive government support to trap carbon from industrial clusters in the north of England. The technology could be a key tool to help the UK reach its goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. Britain plans to spend £20 billion ($24.6 billion) subsidizing the technology in the coming years. 

The projects are from what’s known as the East Coast Cluster in the northeast of England and Hynet in the northwest. Developing multiple carbon capture projects nearby can drive down costs by sharing infrastructure to transport and store CO2 emissions. 

The winners include two projects under development from BP. One is an 860-megawatt power plant known as Net Zero Teesside Power that it’s developing with Equinor. Another is H2Teesside, which aims to produce 1-gigawatt of hydrogen by 2030. Both projects in the northeast will rely on offshore transportation and a storage network that would be operated by BP. 

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