The UK government has pledged nearly £22bn for projects to capture and store carbon emissions from energy, industry and hydrogen production.
It said the funding for two “carbon capture clusters” on Merseyside and Teesside, promised over the next 25 years, would create thousands of jobs, attract private investment and help the UK meet climate goals.
Sir Keir Starmer, who is to visiting the north-west of England with Chancellor Rachel Reeves and Energy Secretary Ed Miliband to confirm the projects, said the move would “reignite our industrial heartlands” and “kickstart growth”.But some green campaigners have said the investment would “extend the life of planet-heating oil and gas production”.
Carbon capture and storage facilities aim to prevent carbon dioxide (CO2) produced from industrial processes and power stations from being released into the atmosphere.Most of the CO2 produced is captured, transported, and then stored deep underground.
It is seen by the likes of the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Climate Change Committee as a key element in meeting targets to cut the greenhouse gases driving dangerous climate change.
Despite Miliband first announcing plans to develop carbon capture projects for power plants in 2009 during the last Labour government, little progress has been made since in the UK.
Speaking at a glassmaking factory in Cheshire, Sir Keir said: “For our energy intensive industries like glassmaking here, or cement, or steel, or ceramics, you are familiar with these, the security that the future belongs to them.”That the necessary mission of decarbonisation does not mean de-industrialisation.
This if you like, is the politics of national renewal in action.”Speaking to the Today programme, Miliband said the project was “essential if we are to decarbonise without industrialising”.He said: “This is a government willing to invest in the future of Britain to create good jobs of the future, as the good jobs used to exist in coal but this is a new era for Britain and a new set of good jobs bringing us energy security.
“He paid tribute to the end of coal-fired energy production in the UK, saying: “If Monday was the end of an era, today with this government’s decisions a new era begins.
“Carbon capture and storage, a new industry, a new generation of good jobs in our industrial heartlands.”