The Crown Estate has awarded an Agreement for Lease to global energy company, Eni, for the first carbon capture and storage project in the UK to repurpose existing pipeline infrastructure, reducing both cost and the environmental impact of construction.  

The Agreement for Lease will enable Eni to access the seabed and repurpose existing pipelines and platforms to transport and store carbon dioxide (CO2) from the HyNet industrial cluster.

CO2 will be captured at large industrial emitting sites in the North West of England and North Wales. It will then be transported for safe and permanent storage in Eni’s depleted natural gas reservoirs under the seabed of the Irish Sea, preventing emissions from entering the atmosphere.

Once operational, the project will remove up to 10 million tonnes per year after 2030 of CO2 from the atmosphere, equivalent to storing emissions from about two million UK households. This will help the UK’s decarbonisation ambitions, significantly boosting progress towards the target of capturing and storing 20-30Mt of CO2 per year by 2030.

The Crown Estate is working to develop leasing opportunities for carbon storage as a priority, as part of its role as manager of the seabed around England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is also working with industry and governments to support projects participating in the CCUS Cluster Sequencing Programme and the NSTA’s licensing round.

This is the second Track 1 project awarded an Agreement for Lease by The Crown Estate in the past year, following an agreement in October 2023 for what could become one of the world’s largest CCS projects, located in the North Sea.

Eni will leverage its decades of experience in developing natural gas fields, applying its knowledge, technical capability and skills in managing complex projects, to efficiently repurpose some of its existing assets to deliver reliable CO2 storage hubs with rapid time and at competitive cost, allowing the decarbonisation of its own, as well as third parties’ industrial activities.

Beyond the UK, Eni has also established a leadership position in Italy and is further expanding other CCS initiatives at different stage of maturity in the North Sea, North Africa and Far East.

Nicola Clay, Head of Infrastructure, Coastal & Energies at The Crown Estate, said: “Carbon capture and storage will play a pivotal role in helping the UK reach net zero, and this agreement represents important progress to achieving ambitious carbon capture targets. The Crown Estate is proud to be involved with pioneering projects that support the UK’s transition to net zero and we welcome Eni’s innovative approach to reducing environmental impact by reusing existing transportation and storage infrastructure.

“At The Crown Estate, we have a unique ability to look across sectors to manage competing and complementary demands on the seabed. As part of this, we have been collaborating with partners and recently launched our approach to a Marine Delivery Routemap, helping to provide a forward strategy for our marine space. The Routemap aims to support broader objectives across net zero and nature recovery and deliver a thriving marine economy whilst supporting onshore communities.”

Great British Energy chair, Juergen Maier said: “Carbon capture and storage is a key part of meeting our clean power targets and decarbonising heavy industry. Working alongside The Crown Estate, Great British Energy will be at the forefront in investing in the latest cutting-edge technology.

“Today’s announcement will support the development of the Hynet industrial cluster – one of two being backed today by £21.7 billion of funding over 25 years from the Government.

“Great British Energy’s partnership with The Crown Estate will help ensure these new industries can thrive – benefiting communities and creating good jobs in our industrial heartlands.”

Pauline Innes, Supply Chain and Decommissioning Director at the North Sea Transition Authority, said: “The North Sea hosts a world-class network of oil and gas infrastructure, much of which can be repurposed for vital carbon storage and hydrogen projects. These measures can potentially save developers billions of pounds and make a huge contribution to the energy transition.

“Screening work by the NSTA found that pipelines have the greatest potential for repurposing and it is great to see that HyNet will become a living, breathing example of this. We continue our work with asset owners to identify and grasp further opportunities.”

Great British Energy: The Crown Estate

The progress on Track 1 comes as the UK Government continues to set out details of Great British Energy, including a new partnership with The Crown Estate to support the accelerated delivery of clean energy infrastructure, benefiting millions of homes and businesses across the country.

The partnership will bring together Great British Energy’s ability to invest and critical strategic industrial policy, with The Crown Estate’s long-established expertise and new investment and borrowing powers recently announced by government, boosting new technologies such as CCS, hydrogen, wave and tidal energy.

Further details on the new partnership are available here. 

Supporting CCS

The UK is recognised as having some of the world’s best natural resources for CCS. This  technology has the potential to deliver environmental, economic and social value for the country by supporting hard to abate generation and heavy industries to remove emissions from the atmosphere, creating and new jobs in communities in industrial heartlands.

The Crown Estate is supporting this technology by:

• Entering into a new partnership with Great British Energy to support the accelerated delivery of clean energy infrastructure, benefiting millions of homes and businesses across the country.

• Working in close collaboration with the NSTA and Crown Estate Scotland (CES) to help meet UK carbon storage targets of 20-30 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year by 2030, and over 50 million tonnes by 2035, supporting acceleration towards net zero.

• Working to design and deliver an efficient leasing process for CCS developers in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, taking a coordinated approach to ensure we make the most of the vital seabed resource for our country and for nature, including the introduction of a new agreement for developers to enable them to carry out their exploration and appraisal activities without having to enter into an Agreement for Lease – the Storage Exploration and Appraisal Agreement (see more above).

• Establishing the Offshore Wind and CCS Colocation Forum in recognition that the co-location of offshore wind and CCS – both vital technologies on the road to net zero – may be required on a busy seabed in the future. The forum seeks to identify solutions to the challenges presented by co-locating offshore wind and CCS, and help to make co-location a reality.