Prospective North Sea CCS sites sought to ‘turbocharge’ UK’s path to net zero

UK regulator the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) has called on interested parties to submit their proposals for potential carbon storage locations in the North Sea.

After issuing a carbon storage license to the Northern Endurance Partnership in December last year and three carbon storage permits to Eni for Liverpool Bay CCS last month, the NSTA opened nominations for other locations for carbon capture and storage (CCS) to make best use of North Sea space.

As stated by the NSTA, the latest call for nominations is a means to pick up the pace as the North Sea continues to be key for the UK to meet net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The UK government’s Climate Change Committee has insisted there is no credible path to net zero without carbon storage.

“We are pleased by the ongoing enthusiasm from industry, and aware that pace is needed as we help to effect the transition, and that is why we are calling for nominations now,“ said Stuart Payne, NSTA’s Chief Executive.

“Carbon storage is a crucial part of the energy transition and an essential element of the path to net zero. We’ve been talking about carbon storage for many years, but now we have reached the milestone of having permitted two projects which will turbocharge the UK’s drive to unlock investment, jobs and economic growth and reach net zero emissions by 2050.”

According to the NSTA, the process of seeking pre-application nominations is meant to encourage companies to focus on areas where they have already done some technical work. This is expected to yield higher quality applications and reduce time to project delivery.

Companies will need to submit spatial data and a high-level project description, which will allow the NSTA, Crown Estate Scotland (CES), and The Crown Estate (TCE) to consider spatial planning interactions and opportunities. The submission deadline is July 31, 2025.

After that, the UK regulator intends to evaluate the proposals, working closely with CES, TCE, and the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero to align carbon storage licensing and seabed leasing, and ensure there are no overlaps with other offshore sectors and users, such as current or planned windfarms and tidal schemes.

According to the NSTA, the UK Continental Shelf has the potential capacity to store up to 78 gigatonnes of CO2 in depleted reservoirs and saline aquifers. Good-quality sites for a prospective licensing round are therefore expected to be submitted.

The UK government pledged to make up to £21.7 billion of funding available over 25 years to make the country a global leader in carbon capture and storage. In line with this, the NSTA offered 21 licences in the world’s first large-scale carbon storage licensing round, which ended in September 2023.

One of the projects for which permits were recently issued, Eni’s Liverpool Bay CCS project, will serve as the backbone of the HyNet industrial cluster, situated in what is said to be one of the UK’s most energy-intensive industrial districts.

CO2 will be captured from plants across North West England and North Wales and transported through new and repurposed infrastructure to permanent storage in Eni’s depleted natural gas reservoirs, located under the seabed in Liverpool Bay in the Irish Sea.

After getting the green light for the CCS project, Eni handed out two engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contracts to compatriot Italian players. Under the first deal, Saipem was put in charge of the new CO2 electrical compression station. Under the second, Rosetti Marino was picked to handle the delivery of four platforms to be used for CO2 storage in depleted reservoirs.