The UK must accelerate and scale up carbon capture & storage (CCS) and low carbon hydrogen projects to reach its net zero goals, experts have said.
Nick McDonald and Stacey Collins were commenting following the publication of the UK’s National Energy Systems Operator’s (NESO) Future Energy Scenarios 2025: Pathways to Net Zero (170 pages/ 6.1MB) report, which highlights the potentially crucial role of CCS in supporting the UK’s net zero target for energy supply and demand by 2050.
Echoing calls earlier this year by the UK government’s climate change advisory body, NESO underlines the need for sustainable, sector-wide action in line with the government’s clean power goals with a strong focus on four areas: energy efficiency; demand flexibility, infrastructure and energy supply – including hydrogen and CCS – and switching to low carbon technologies.
Building on its 2024 report, NESO identifies three ways the UK can meet its net zero targets. The first, holistic transition, involves a mix of electrification and hydrogen, whereby the reliance on fossil fuels is reduced, nearly all the remaining power gas emissions are is abated through CCS, and hydrogen is used mainly around industrial clusters. The second route involves electric engagement, which focuses on mainly electrified demand and requires high nuclear and renewable capacities.
The third pathway centres on hydrogen evolution, whereby net zero is met through fast progress for hydrogen in industry and heat, and natural gas is still used for electricity and hydrogen production in 2050, but is abated through CCS.
In terms of the specific role of CCS in meeting the 2050 net zero target, the report says 66 million tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent (MtCO2e) per year by 2030 and 99 MtCO2e per year will be required to be captured. For carbon removals, up to 37 MtCO2e per year will need to be removed via bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), and up to 8 MtCO2e via the use of direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS). For dispatchable gas, both CCS and hydrogen, installed capacity will need to be increased to between 48 gigawatts and 55 gigawatts.
NESO recognises increased investment by the UK government in carbon capture projects – not least recent funding to progress the Acorn project in Scotland and the Viking project in Humberside as track 2 CCUS clusters – but warned that the UK faced “a complex picture of CCS developments and operation” with “no formal planning role for the development of these networks” to meet the energy sector’s decarbonisation needs. “CCS infrastructure should be strategically planned alongside electricity, gas and hydrogen to ensure alignment across the whole energy system,” the report said.
CCUS projects were also identified as a key pillar of the UK’s clean energy transition in the Labour government’s clean energy industries sector plan (90 pages / 9.5 MB). The plan was published in June as part of the annual spending review, alongside a 10-year industrial strategy (160 pages / 15.6 MB), which underscored the government’s commitment to “at least” double the current investment in clean energy industries to over £30 billion per year by 2035.
Commenting on NESO’s latest report, Nick McDonald of Pinsent Masons, said: "Following on from announcements in the Comprehensive Spending Review and Industrial Strategy, NESO's report continues to set out the necessity for and potential scale of CCS and low carbon hydrogen. Depending on the scenario that is followed, we will require CCS to remove between 66 and 99 MtCO2e per year by 2050, and up to 8 of those megatonnes will be through DACCS.”
Despite considerable progress in this area, McDonald reiterated NESO’s calls for greater investment to bring more projects online. “Whilst material progress is now being made through Track 1 projects and there's other positive news such as the National Wealth Fund investment in Peak Cluster, we are a long way from achieving those kinds of numbers,” he said.
Stacey Collins of Pinsent Masons said the report recognises some of the operational challenges posed by certain alternative carbon removal technologies, particularly DACCS. “The report summarises the challenges to it coming forward, principally energy requirements, lack of useful energy by-product – unlike BECCS – and most of all cost,” he said. “Those challenges are well known and make BECCS the current more likely route for engineered carbon removals in the UK, but the report does acknowledge the potential for technological innovation to make DACCS more competitive."
In a separate paper published in November 2024, NESO said (84-page / 18.5MB) a clean power system could be delivered in the UK by 2030 provided enough renewable and cleantech projects – including CCS and hydrogen projects – were accelerated.
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