Podcast transcript: How CCUS technology will help the UK achieve a net-zero economy

Ed Reed

Hello and welcome to The 10 Point Pod, a special podcast boxset from Energy Voice Out Loud in which we assess, point by point, the UK Government’s plan for a green industrial revolution. We’re drawing this together with expertise from our sponsors for this series, EY, and leaders from across the energy industry. 

My name is Ed Reed. I’m an editor at Energy Voice, where we are leading the global energy conversation, and I’m delighted to be joined for this conversation by my co-host, Graham Beal, Partner at EY, and David Richardson, Director of Decarbonisation Solutions at Costain.

Today, we’re going to be looking at point eight of the Government’s 10-point plan, which is on carbon capture usage and storage, sometimes called CCUS. The Government has set the target of reaching net-zero and CCUS will necessarily play an important part in this plan.

Not all sectors are going to be able to shift to clean fuels and those that can’t, will have to act to capture emissions. How this is going to be achieved though is still a question with challenges. The concept of CCS is widely understood. Emissions can be reinjected underground, for instance into the North Sea’s depleted oil fields, but there are challenges.

While projects have made progress in a number of locations, the UK has not moved so quickly. It’s almost exactly ten years since the Longannet plan was dropped but time is passing and progress is needed. The 10-point plan set out the aim to capture ten million tonnes per year of CO2 by 2030 with a stated investment of £1 billion to support four industrial clusters.

The Government has also set out the aim of the CCS industry supporting 50,000 jobs by 2030. CCS will also be an important part of decarbonising hydrogen production, produced from natural gas, which we’ve talked about previously.

The sector is not without its detractors, though. Chevron’s CCS work at an Australian LNG export scheme has struggled and missed targets, with one suggestion that it may be only capturing 30% of emissions. Graham, starting with you, given these aspirations and challenges, what is different this time around for CCS in the UK?

Graham Beal

I think what’s different this time round, Ed, is that we actually have a firm target for removal of CO2 and not only that but the Government has a pathway to net zero and a commitment to achieve that by 2050.

In previous programmes and projects those targets didn’t exist and I think what got in the way of those deals was sorting out the value for money of the deals and taking into account certain key risks which investors weren’t prepared to take but, as you say, this time round it is different because there are hard targets and I think overall a commitment to achieve net-zero.

Ed Reed

Dave, do you think things are getting more tangible now that we’ve got some numbers, that plans are maybe starting to feel a bit more real?

Dave Richardson

Yes, definitely. I was involved in the past opportunities around carbon capture and storage and I see a completely transformational change this time around. Stakeholders from across a number of areas are really heavily engaged and starting to focus on what will make a difference for them and what will make a difference for the industry.

The fact that the Government has set a clear plan and clear objectives with some clear targets has allowed those stakeholders to really focus in on those projects and start to develop those projects and make them seem to come to reality.

Graham Beal

Yes, I think I’d add to that as well, Ed, that the Government is very keen this time round to make sure that CCUS is not seen as a competition. Yes, there will be kudos for the clusters that go first but I think Government has come to a dawning realisation that an awful lot of the cost of the first-of-a-kind projects will have to fall on Government and so, therefore, what it’s actually doing is running a process which will support a number of clusters, removing that competitive element which last time round I think didn’t really work.

Ed Reed

Sure. Looking at those numbers, the ten million tonnes and going from pretty much a sort of a standing start I suppose currently, what’s the scale of the challenge? Graham, what do you think we need to reach that target by 2030?

Graham Beal

Well, I think I’d start in a slightly different place, Ed. I’d start with what does the UK need to do to reach net-zero in terms of carbon removal or should I say CO2 removal?

Estimates vary but if you were to work on the basis that to reach net-zero from our current economy with current emissions, we’d probably need to remove about 175 million tonnes of CO2 per annum, it gives you an idea of the scale of the issue and indicates that ten million tonnes in the first instance is a start but it’s not a very ambitious target I think in the first instance.

So, what does it actually mean? Over the next three to five years and certainly beyond we’ll be needing to see a whole range of additional industries step up with emissions that can be captured.

I think if you look across the five pillars of main CO2 emissions which can be captured which empower industrial processes, what I would call bioenergy, direct air capture and from hydrogen, I think that mix changed over time and certainly, as you mentioned the other day with the publication the other day of the UK hydrogen strategy, I think you’re going to certainly see a lot more removal of CO2 from that industry. Dave, you’re looking after a cluster down in the south. What’s your view?

Dave Richardson

I think down in South Wales, the cluster that has emerged and developed down there has some challenges in respect of the fact that we’re not connected directly to one of the stores that you mentioned earlier, Graham, but we see we can overcome that.

We see that we can develop a new infrastructure solution for the UK and maybe even a global infrastructure solution to liquify and transport CO2 to those storage sites and we see that as a very exciting prospect, not just for the region in South Wales but for other regions across the UK where perhaps they’re not well-connected to storage sites.

But, actually, there is a challenge for industry. Most of the industries that are needing to capture CO2, it’s not their core business. Their core business is manufacturing products. This is about changing the way that they work and changing the way they operate for the future, and they’re not all best placed to do that. There’s a lot of learning to be done. There’s a lot of support that is going to be needed and certainly the initiatives that we’ve seen coming out of central Government are going to help those businesses along the way.

Ed Reed

Dave, just picking you up on that point of companies not having that CO2 experience as a core part of their business, do you think there’s an opportunity for a CO2 handler-as-a-service companies emerging that could act as intermediaries in that way and provide that transportation from an industrial site right through to injection into an oilfield or wherever else?

Dave Richardson

Yes, absolutely. I think, like any emerging market, it becomes shaped over a period of time and we’re seeing that shaping taking place now. We are seeing companies coming forward offering that type of solution and I think it’s going to be very important for certainly some of the hard to capture industries and also the industries that are located a long way away from storage sites to have options and have different choices than they currently have at the moment.

I think, from an investment point of view, it makes sense for investors to think about those opportunities and I’m sure that we’ll see some of the business models that the Government are looking at actually favouring those opportunities and bringing on investment from global investors into the UK as a marketplace and developing solutions that can actually then be used across the world and allowing us to grow skills.

One of the things that we’ve been very good at in the UK in our historical past is to develop new technical engineering skills and transfer those skills and use them elsewhere in the globe and I could see this being a great export opportunity for UK engineering and UK skills.

Graham Beal

I think that’s a very interesting point that Dave has just raised there and touched on, which is the concept of the decarbonisation-as-a-service company and how that industry will develop. For a lot of emitters, they will have to do a single capture plant on their facility in order to remove CO2 from their processes.

The question is whether a decarbonisation company will be able to do that more efficiently in a repeat business, so they’ll work with the emitters over a range of industries and a range of different technical solutions in order to remove the CO2.

I think the other piece which Dave touched on there, where I think is going to be very important as well, is the fact that we could be seeing an international trade and movement of CO2 across borders. The UK, because of its geography and proximity to the, I think it’s defined as the North Seat basin and the gas reservoirs up there or the redundant reservoirs, gives the UK the unique ability to be able to undertake carbon capture.

There are other economies with some quite significant emissions across Europe that don’t have access, so you could actually see quite a trade, a cross-border flow of CO2 from other jurisdictions to the UK to injection points directly in fields in the North Sea.

So, I think the interesting piece will be how the industry develops. I’ve looked hard into the crystal ball and polished it a few times. I can’t quite see where it’s going to end up but you could see the industry develop in a number of different ways.

I think, to emphasise the point that Dave was touching on, what the UK is trying to do at the moment is to be a first mover in this industry, to use the skillsets that it has from the oil and gas industry, to direct those towards a carbon capture and storage industry.

At its essence, it’s the reverse of what we’ve done with North Sea gas. It’s a case of collecting gas onshore, piping it offshore and then injecting it. It’s a reverse of that process. So, the skillsets exist and the capital and knowhow exists. It’s can we generate a business model that can sustain it?

Ed Reed

So, looking at that idea about creating this new industry, there are links obviously to the existing oil and gas industry but I suppose at the same time there is going to be an evolution of sorts and that hope that the UK can claim a place in the global pecking order.

Other countries are making progress. Norway, obviously. The US has got a sort of established CO2 infrastructure. What does the Government need to do to take this from being a potential and make it into something that is real, that we can see as something that could play a major part in the energy transition and future jobs for, say, former oil workers.

Dave Richardson

The business models that that Government through BEIS are seeking to establish and are consulting on even or going to consult on, those are going to be the real seed for this new industry, those are going to set the basis from which others can decide how do they best approach that market, what part to they play in that market.

From our perspective, in Costain, we’ve been following these for quite some time now. We’ve been assisting the Government on the expert groups that they’ve had on these business models and I know others have been very vocal about how those business models are going to play out on those expert groups.

But, realistically, if they can achieve something which is attractive to the market, the market will come forward and invest and if the market comes forward and invests, projects will take off. I think that is a big, key difference to what we saw a number of years ago in the previous round of CCS. The whole pieces of a jigsaw are starting to now emerge and be put together. I think we’ve got all the four corners and we’re starting to fill in the middle.

Graham Beal

I’d add to that. I think the role of Government in this space is to look at the market and see whether the market is active or whether there’s an evidence of what economists would call market failure.

I think what the Government has got to do at this moment in time is stimulate the market which, in one way, is create the business model and I think in another way is probably to identify how it is going to subsidise or pay for the first investments in this new industry.

Everybody knows about climate change. You can only see around the world, as we here are today, to see the impact of what’s actually happening. I think people understand it but at the moment there is a huge cost involved in removal of CO2 and I think Government’s role at the moment has to be to stimulate that investment in the first instance.

Then, as we all face the burden of green taxes going forward, is to work out how to wean Government off that subsidy and move it more to consumers. I think that’s going to be the big debate in the years to come, how Government does that.

Ed Reed

Sure. In terms of costs, the Government has set out that £1 billion of investment. Is that going to be enough to get the ball rolling? Dave, what are your thoughts? Is that enough? How much more might it cost?

Dave Richardson

I think if you were looking to put a figure on it, I think you’d be talking billions. We know the Government has provided that seed funding. That £1 billion is being talked about. It’s starting to be pushed out in various different forms of innovation funding coming out of BEIS and others.

So, the seed funding is coming along and it is starting to attract investment. If you look at the numbers, the amount of money that’s been invested in the clusters thus far and the amount of money that’s been promised going forward, that’s in the hundreds of millions and it’s starting to grow.

That money is not being offered without businesses having a true understanding that there’s a real pathway that we’re following here and I think that brings us back to the confidence levels that business has and that people who work in the industry have, that we are now starting to look to tackle climate change.

Are we doing it quick enough? There will never be a quick enough. Are we spending enough money on it? We’ll never spend enough money on it. But, it is going cost a lot of money. It’s not going to be inexpensive. I couldn’t put a figure on it. I would suggest it’s going to be billions.

If you look over the years and use the analogy that Graham gave about the development of the gas market and us extracting natural gas and putting pipelines in and all that infrastructure and you reverse that number back and the time that it took to do that, then that will be a credible way of saying that’s how much it’s going to cost. It’s going to be expensive.

Graham Beal

I would do some prorating here. I would say, look, the CIF as it’s known, which is the Carbon Capture and Storage Infrastructure Fund, at £1 billion is targeting the initial capture of around ten million tonnes.

When I quoted earlier, removal of about 175 million tonnes per annum, if you were to start multiplying that up, yes, there will be economies of scale but at the moment the first networks are likely to be built close to stores in either the North Sea or potentially in the Liverpool Bay area, which are the clusters which have been formed.

Over time there may be a need for a UK-wide network. Whether that involves coastal shipping, physical shipping in vessels or whether it involves pipelines across the UK will have to be determined from an economic analysis but I think the answer that Dave gave is many billions is going to be the answer. Where I think Government is starting from is it needs the seed fund and it’s hoping that over time, as it saw with wind and solar, that the cost of technology will come down.

Dave Richardson

You’re very right there, Graham. Over time the cost of technology will reduce and we will see over time not just the cost of technology reducing but how that technology actually starts to play out on the UK in growing an industry in its own right.

We’ve already seen in the hydrogen market that there are electrolyser manufacturers starting to come to the fore in the UK market on hydrogen and I think we’ll see the same in the carbon capture and storage market.

I think businesses will invest in manufacturing, in the hardware that’s needed, in the steel that’s needed to make it happen, the control systems and the safety systems that are needed to make it work and the people.

I will bring it back to people and skills. The younger generation that are starting to come through schools and universities now are going to be the ones that are going to prosper from this industry, not just from the perspective of them benefitting from the reduction of the impact on climate change but also on the fact that those skills and careers will be there for them in the future.

Ed Reed

I think that’s a really interesting point, Dave, about that question of longevity and how long the CCUS industry might be around for. Obviously, as you say, I think there’s clearly scope for this sector to grow into 2050 and beyond but do you have a feeling because, presumably, as emissions come down, is there a risk that this is an industry with a limited shelf life?

Graham Beal

I think it’s an interesting question and one that we could probably hypothecate about what might happen now and what might happen in the future. We might lay down some markets and then maybe in 50 years’ time, if we were having the same conversation, we could come back and have a look at it and see whether we were right.

I think the first point is that there will definitely be shifts in the way that business and manufacturing and other processes work that I think will naturally see the removal of carbon emissions from those processes but I think the scale of the challenge at this moment in time, the substitution, the energy transition piece is going to take a number of years.

It may well be that that estimated removal of CO2 that we have today does fall because carbon emissions naturally fall away but I think you have to look at some of the industries like, certainly, the developing hydrogen industry which may replace the hydrocarbon industry that we may see a transition from oil and gases to hydrogen as the new super fuel is going to raise some interesting questions about the long-term sustainability of this industry.

What do I mean by that? I mean that we’ve got a number of assets out there producing gas, producing oils and petroleums and they can be processed into hydrogen but they need to be attached to a carbon store to be able to be used.

I think if you look at the Government’s recent hydrogen strategy, you will see that there are a number of applications for electrical vehicles or electric trains or electric ships that possibly don’t work, so hydrogen is going to be a fuel of the future.

I think in the UK we’re not yet necessarily geared up to produce what’s known as green hydrogen, so we’re going to be using blue hydrogen and I think what that means is that there could be a big switch happening in the oil and gas industry whereby actually there’s now a big move to producing hydrogen as the fuel for the future.

Now, if that happens we could see or not see but I think what may happen is that carbon capture and removal will have to be around for a number of years in order for those assets to be continually used.

Dave Richardson

I would agree with you there, Graham. I think in the short-term we’re going to see hydrogen produced from natural gas as being the base load of hydrogen usage for the next ten or 15 years but we should see green hydrogen starting to come to the market.

We are blessed with abundant forms of renewable energy. We’ve got the wind. We’ve also got tidal that we can use. Not so much solar but if we could generate electricity from rain I’m sure we’d do really well and there’s an invention for the future isn’t there, energy from rain.

But, I do believe that over time we will get the green hydrogen story right. There are companies out there now that I’m aware and are working with that are seeking to develop large scale hydrogen production facilities using renewables. Those projects are going to come at 100 MW to 300 MW scale in the future.

Perhaps in the next five years we might see them starting to come to the market and that will be very exciting for hydrogen but it also means, as Graham rightly points out, that there is a question mark over whether carbon capture and storage is going to be there for longevity but I think in my lifetime it will be there.

Ed Reed

Looking that project side of things, you mentioned the role of blue hydrogen and I suppose that’s maybe a good time to talk about that, the extent to which you can bank on CCUS. We saw, I think it was in July, these concerns raised around Chevron’s CCS at I think it was Gorgon LNG in Australia and not capturing as much.

I suppose that’s a concern and then also this question about trapping emissions underground. Is it safe? How do we keep an eye on the continued holding of emissions? What are the guarantees that this won’t come out again? Dave, what are your thoughts? What do you say to that sort of concern?

Dave Richardson

I look at it quite simply. If we’re putting CO2 down into a store where natural gas had been for millions of years, then I don’t think there is an issue with the safety of storing it. I see that the issue becomes in the onshore transportation and the capture of the CO2 where it’s more visible or more in the public backyard as it were.

But, actually, the industry has got safe systems in place. There’s no issue with the technology. There’s no issue with the materials that we need. It’s nothing new and therefore we can do it and we can do it safely and that would always be our intention.

Ed Reed

Sure. I think this might be a good time to take a short break but we’ll be back afterwards to pick up with this discussion.

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Ed Reed

So, Dave, just coming back to you on that point. Looking at transportation and obviously I suppose this is something you’re looking at in your South Wales cluster. What sort of transportation infrastructure do you think that the UK might need? Is there a possibility that we can retool existing pipelines? What’s the scale of that challenge?

Dave Richardson

I think there’s always an opportunity to reuse existing assets and of course that should always be our first port of call, shouldn’t it. We should try and minimise the cost and disruption that new infrastructure brings but I think realistically for most regions, as industry seeks to capture CO2, it’s going to be looking for a route to export it and that export is generally going to head towards the coastline, be it to a port where it can be shipped or be it to terminal where it can be exported by pipeline to a store.

I think if you look at any geographical regions, laying new infrastructure pipelines is a challenge no matter where you are. We historically install pipelines for water and for delivery of natural gas over many, many decades in the UK, and the one not to be forgotten about is that, of course, most of our sewage goes down a pipeline. Sometimes, we forget about that.

But, I think realistically going forward CO2 as an emission is going to go into pipelines. It’s going to be exported to hubs where it can be exported. There may be some local transportation by tanker or even maybe rail freight, but I think that will be relatively small in scale and will be specific to unique applications. I think, for me, the volumes of CO2 that might be captured, you’re going to have to use infrastructure. Graham, I don’t know whether you see a similar view.

Graham Beal

I think I see a number of different scenarios and I’ll just try and cover those off. I’ll start that, though, with I think it will be the economics which come into play here, whether you build pipelines or whether you do physical shipping.

Once again, it’s that sort of crystal ball moment where you look into it and you think, well, how is the industry going to develop and what do we see as the long-term what I’d call sustainable industry?

I have a view that in the longer-term there will be multiple stores. I don’t think that the current stores which are targeted for first operation will have capacity to take all of the CO2 emissions that we need to capture. So, I see a scenario with multiple stores, which means current owners of stores or current permit holders on certain stores may suddenly find their assets become interesting.

I think that then brings in a range of different points for discussion which then become do you build pipeline for those stores or do you have essentially a rig sat on top as an injection point? So, you might actually bring a ship alongside and then directly inject into those stores.

The economics will, I think, decide where we actually end up and I think you raise a really good point, Dave, which is how do we get emissions from what I would call locations in the UK which are remote from current stores to those stores and it will either be by pipeline and it will be by shipping?

As it happens, recently there have been plans announced to build a pipeline from the Ruhr to Rotterdam to transport CO2. Obviously, the Ruhr is a big industrial area in Germany. It’s going to be pumping out large-scale emissions and obviously it needs to be able to export it somewhere. So, I think we’re going to see the development of infrastructure over time and it will be a mixture of pipelines and physical shipping is my guess.

Dave Richardson

I’ve seen that pipeline, Graham, and I’ve seen some of the local reaction. I think we touched on a point earlier about safety and public perception and the like. I think this is where the challenge starts to become more difficult for the public.

The public have thus far I think supported the fact that we need to do something about climate change. We need to cut our emissions, we need to capture our emissions and we need to reduce the intensity and improve our efficiencies of what we do.

As a global thing nobody would want to necessarily see a pipeline installed close to their home but I guess it’s going to be a challenge for the public going forward, that these things are going to come along and we need to decide does the public back it or does the public not back it, and if the public doesn’t back it then what alternatives do we have as an industry?

Ed Reed

Absolutely. We’ve been talking about CCUS and obviously that’s the point that Government’s 10-point plan leads on but we seem to have largely been talking about the CC and the S but not so much the U so far. Looking at that usage part of that initialism, what can we do with the excess CO2? Is there an industry that that can feed into? Graham, what are your thoughts?

Graham Beal

It’s an interesting question and at the moment the majority of the work, as you say, is focused on the capture and storage and less on the usage. I think the volumes that we’re talking about capturing will be far in excess of potential usage.

There are some industrialised processes, I understand, at the moment in the manufacture of steel where you might be able to use CO2 in that process and then actually lock it into the end product but I don’t think that there are going to be huge uses for CO2 going forward. Dave, from a technical perspective, what do you think?

Dave Richardson

I would agree, Graham. I think the challenge for the U in CCUS is the differential on the volume. There’s going to be large amounts of CO2 produced but the usage side of it hasn’t developed at the same pace that the capture side has.

There are some projects coming along. There’s a project ongoing in the North West, which is the UK’s first carbon capture and utilisation project. That’s currently in construction and that’s going to take food grade CO2 and it will be used in the manufacture of sodium bicarbonate in Cheshire.

Now, if we used billions of tonnes of sodium bicarbonate a year then you could say that maybe that’s an answer to the problem but I don’t think I’ve used more than two teaspoons of sodium bicarbonate in the last 12 months, so I don’t think I’ll be able to solve that problem.

There are other uses of CO2 under development. I’ve certainly seen it, particularly in Continental Europe where they use it for food cultivation. I remember doing some projects a few years back in Holland piping a small amount of CO2 into a tomato farm.

I think realistically the amount of CO2 that would be demanded by agriculture for cultivation is going to be relatively low compared to that that’s produced so we’re always going to have to capture it and find a way of storing it.

But I think, as we talked about over time, we’ll see new sources of use of CO2 start to come to the market but I don’t think they’ll ever be big enough that it will solve that problem between volume produced versus volume used.

Ed Reed

Sure. I suppose the nation will hopefully step up its sodium bicarbonate consumption and I, for one, will do my best to play my part. Looking at our current rate of change, how fast do you legitimately think we can make progress in taking CCUS from its current state of knowledge but not actually shovels in the ground into actual tangle products?

Graham Beal

I think the first instance is that the Government set itself a target several years ago in terms of the ten million tonnes. It’s working on revised targets now as part of its Carbon Budget 6. I think when those budgets are published, we’ll get a much better feel for the pace of change.

But, I think if you just do the maths on the equation that I was talking about earlier, which is if you remove ten million tonnes by 2030 and in the next 20 years, i.e., up to 2050 you increase to 175 million tonnes per annum, then you can basically see that the pace of change is going to pick up, I think quite significantly.

I think what you always see with complex projects of this nature is they are slow in their gestation and it takes a while for the projects to get stood up but once we’ve got a working network of pipes and stores, I think the pace with which emitters or new emitters can be added to that network is going to be one of economics and it goes back to the equation of green taxes and subsidies from Government.

So, I suspect we will see quite a bit of this coming out of COP26 in terms of the potential move across the global economies towards some form of carbon taxation and if you see those principles being put in place at COP26, then I think you will start to see a mechanism by which the funding or payment for carbon emissions is going to be laid down.

The interesting point which will come out of that is whether or not some of the world’s developing economies will move at the same speed. Many of us will have read with interest the recent carbon border tax paper that the EU released last month, which effectively says if you don’t remove carbon from your processes then you’re going to get taxed at the point of import of the European Union.

It actually starts to set out the fact that many of the world’s economies will need to move and will need to move fast in order to remove carbon from their processes. It means that if you’re importing and you haven’t got a carbon sequestration system in place or basis of carbon taxes, you’re going to get taxed at the border when you import, which basically is way of levelling up for those industries which have already introduced carbon capture which has a cost. But, I think how the world harmonises all of this is going to be the most interesting point.

Ed Reed

Dave, reflecting that question to you about that pace of change, obviously you’ve got the South Wales industrial cluster. How fast do you think that could come online if the stars align?

Dave Richardson

I think there’s several aspects to not just our project in South Wales but to all the other clusters as well. There will be certain aspects that could move at faster pace than others. I think what drives the pace that projects can move at has to be the economics and it has to be the upfront financial support that’s needed to develop projects and bring them to financial close.

I’m sure, as Graham will be well-versed in, there’s lots of mechanisms that can make projects move faster by providing more cash up front to allow that investment to take place. But, I think also there’s an appetite of industry and I would say up until the last two years the appetite of industry has been lacking in my view, not necessarily in South Wales but everywhere, to actually make that change.

But, we’re not seeing that industry is starting to think it has to do something. I think the carbon border tax that Graham mentioned I think will be a big driver in the future. Most of our UK industry has an export market into Europe. If Europe introduces a carbon border tax then they’ll have to apply to that and they’ll comply with that and I think that will start to make them start to accelerate their growth into that market.

As far as the projects are concerned, I don’t see any reason why this market can’t be up and running by 2030 and that we won’t be storing CO2 by then. I think we will be storing CO2 in 2030. I think that we’ll be storing it at scale in both the North Sea and the Liverpool Bay area. I think both the credibility is there, the licences are there, the technology is there, the skills are there to make it happen and now we’re seeing the will and the political drive.

One risk and challenge that I see, having worked in industry for many, many years, I’ve seen many instances of initiatives coming and going. We need to maintain the initiative. We need to maintain the political drive. We can’t have a change in Government come in and change the whole policies again. We have to stand by the policies no matter what Government is in place.

We have to stand by the policy that we as a country, we as individuals want to tackle climate change and this is the way that we’re heading and this is what we’re going to be doing in the future.

Graham Beal

I’d also add to that as well. I think there’s a wall of capital waiting to be deployed into carbon capture and storage facilities as well. The work that we’ve been undertaking indicates that investors are ready, that banks and lenders are ready. Provided the right business model is presented to them, they will invest.

I think a comment to me from one set of lenders was, well, we funded the release of carbon through all the money we’ve lent to oil and gas industries over the years. We have a moral obligation to fund the removal of it.

So, I think Dave touches on a really interesting point. Get the policies right, get Government aligned behind it, get the investment in place and the industry will take off. But, it all needs to be aligned and it does feel sometimes like all the planets and everything else have got to be aligned to get there which, in itself, is difficult.

Ed Reed

Sure. I think that’s probably a good point on which to end our discussion today, so I’d like to say thank you both to Graham and Dave for taking part. I think there have been some really interesting points raised always around that question about commerciality.

I think that’s always what it comes back to, isn’t it, and at which point you can move it from being something that we’ve thought about and talked about and planned for so long into actually delivering those projects and I think that’s going to be a really interesting point on which to watch.

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We’ll be digging into two remaining points of the 10-point plan this year leading up to COP26, so please do look out for those. Next month, we’re going to be talking about protecting the natural environment but for this, the eighth episode of the 10 Point Pod, I’ve been Ed Reed. Thank you for listening.

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