New Arup report shows high-value opportunities within the UK CCS supply chain

The UK is uniquely well-positioned to lead the global development and deployment of carbon capture and storage. World-leading capital investment landscape and the storage supporting geography and geology, provide the UK with a clear opportunity to develop and maintain a CCS focussed industry and supply chain.

CCS has the power to rapidly decarbonise our existing industry, power sectors, and support the production of low carbon hydrogen, while enabling growth and the creation of high-value UK jobs. As we progress towards our national target of capturing between 20 and 30Mt of CO₂ per year by 2030, we will only be just beginning to take advantage of our estimated 78 gigatonnes (Gt) total national reserve of CO₂ storage.

This report ‘A Remarkable New Infrastructure System’: opportunities for economic growth in the UK’s Carbon Capture & Storage Industry’ looks in detail at the CCS value chain: from capture, through filtration, compression, and transport, and through further compression and processing prior to subsea storage and monitoring.

Key findings and recommendations include:

• Enable planning and consenting corridors. An integrated, coordinated approach to the planning system for multiple capture/condition/transport and storage plants is needed to speed up assessment process in major energy transition hubs.

• Investment in UK R&D. Innovative techniques across industry and policy makers can be used to monitor and track CO2 across the CCS chain, to ensure minimal leakage and high capture rates.

• Ensuring procurement opportunities are accessible and transparent to UK companies, including SMEs. Policy makers are recommended to give early clarity on size, number and types of projects to receive funding and to make & communicate project selections as early as feasible.

• Mitigate risk of engineering constraints. A Commission for the Net Zero Supply Chain’, led jointly by policy makers and industry associations would enable communication and coordination around the delivery of major capital projects and programmes, enabling the UK to meet its legally binding commitment of Net Zero by 2050.

• Packaged CCS Provisions. Publicising the opportunity represented by the UK CCS sector for ‘as-a-service’ and packaged decarbonisation of power and industrial processes via CCS.In addition to the above recommendations, the report also calls for a single taxonomy for the CCS supply chain in the UK. This taxonomy gives the first ever CCS-led view of the equipment and services in the UK CCS value chain for use by all stakeholders including regulators and supply chain participants.

The purpose of the CCS Supply Chain taxonomy is to enable greater transparency and consistency in the monitoring of procurement across the CCS supply chain. It is intended to support the development of policy interventions to ensure that UK supply chain companies can successfully compete and secure valuable opportunities as the new UK CCS Infrastructure system takes shape.

Insights outlined in this report can act as a precursor to potential policy initiatives, to ensure that alongside the UK government’s wider CCS Supply Chain Strategy, this work represents, as far as is possible, a consensus view of industry and policymaker stakeholders. It draws on previous reports from the UK’s energy industry representatives such as Offshore Energies UK (OEUK), the Carbon Capture and Storage Association (CCSA) and the Nuclear Catapult (NAMRC), in addition to others commissioned directly by the UK government.