Responding to today’s announcement in the Chancellor’s Spring Budget promising up to £20 billion in funding for carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS), Simon Virley CB, Vice Chair and Head of Energy and Natural Resources at KPMG in the UK, said:
“The announcement of up to £20 billion of funding over 20 years is welcome, but this should be viewed as a ‘down-payment’ on creating the hydrogen and carbon capture industries of the future. The UK has some unique advantages, like the co-location of potential CO2 stores close to the main industrial clusters, but an average spend of £1 billion a year won’t be enough to hit the Government’s own target for CO2 capture by 2030.
“The Government also needs to provide greater clarity for those projects involved in the ‘Track 1 Expansion’ and ‘Track 2’ clusters by setting out the process and funding for the next rounds of deployment. We are in a race for global investment, given the Inflation Reduction Act in the US and the counter measures being implemented under the EU ‘Green Deal’, so the UK can't afford to be half-hearted if we want to build world leading hydrogen and CCUS industries."