Britain promises up to 21.7 billion pounds for cleaner energy

Britain will provide funding of up to 21.7 billion pounds ($28.46 billion) over 25 years to develop carbon capture and storage (CCS) and hydrogen technology in northern England, the government said on Friday.

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 as well as to create jobs.

"This game-changing technology will bring 4,000 good jobs and billions of private investment into communities across Merseyside and Teesside, igniting growth in these industrial heartlands and powering up the rest of the country," Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves said in a statement.

CCS involves the capture of emissions from power plants and industry to allow them to be stored underground but has been slow to take off due to the high cost of projects.

Britain's previous conservative government, which was voted out of office in July, had in 2023 promised 20 billion pounds of CCS funding that was never fully awarded.

The two sites in northern England will have a combined annual carbon capture capacity of 8.5 million tonnes a year, equivalent to taking 4 million cars off the road, the government said.

The HyNet North West cluster in Merseyside seeks to capture emissions from industrial plants and store them in depleted gas fields in the Irish Sea. It is being developed by a consortium led by Italian energy group Eni.

"HyNet… will decarbonize one of the key energy-intensive industrial districts as well as unlock significant economic growth in this region of the UK," Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi said in a statement.

Oil and gas majors Equinor and BP are involved in developing a project in Teesside that would store captured emissions under the North Sea.

($1 = 0.7625 pounds)

(Cover: Britain's Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves speaks on the second day of the annual Labour Party conference in Liverpool, north-west England, September 23, 2024. /CFP)