The Government and its advisers believe CCS is crucial to achieving the net zero by 2050 target, particularly for industries that are difficult to decarbonise such as concrete manufacture.
The technology works by stripping the Co2 created during industrial processes, before compressing it and transporting it to storage, in this case under the North Sea and Liverpool Bay.
The infrastructure being greenlit on Friday could ultimately transport as much as 8.5Mt of Co2 a year to storage facilities, around 2 per cent of the UK’s annual emissions.
But green groups say the technology is not proven to be commercially viable at scale, and say it provides poor value for money in reducing emissions.
There are around a dozen CCS facilities around the world, including in the US, Norway and China, but none have been shown to be profitable.
“It is unfathomable that a government, that has taken great pains to point out the £20 billion black hole, is spending exactly that amount of public money on so-called ‘carbon capture’, something that has failed to deliver despite hundreds of millions already invested,” said Rosemary Harris, senior campaigner at Oil Change International.