by Andrew Symes, Co-Founder and CEO of OXCCU
As of mid-2026, not a single industrial-scale Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) project is operational in the UK. BP has announced plans to slash its stake in Net Zero Teesside. Drax has shelved its carbon capture plans entirely. The primary backer of the Acorn project in Scotland is trying to sell its position, with any final investment decision now slipping toward the early 2030s. Twenty-seven projects have been cancelled or paused since 2023. Those that remain active are running an average of two years late. Westminster’s own Public Accounts Committee has warned of a “high degree of uncertainty” about whether this investment will pay off.
None of this is accidental. It reflects something structural about what CCS actually is and what it can realistically achieve.
The important question is whether this is a sensible use of public money at a time when British industry is fighting for its future.
The government has committed £22 billion to CCS projects over 25 years, with some analyses suggesting the full cost through to 2050 could reach several hundred billion pounds when subsidies, infrastructure and operating costs are included. That is a serious industrial policy choice, and it deserves serious scrutiny.
The core problem is that CCS does not make British industry more competitive. Rather than £22bn being spent on either supporting crucial British industries or on backing new innovative companies as other countries will, it is instead a large tax payer funded CO2 landfill tagged on to a struggling industry. It doesn’t help the few industries left, instead it adds cost and complexity to existing processes in exchange for an emissions reduction that regulators and customers are unlikely to reward sufficiently to justify the investment. The subsidy burden falls ultimately on consumers through levies on energy bills, or taxpayers, at a time when both households and businesses are already struggling with high electricity prices. That is not a temporary problem to be solved with better policy design. It is the fundamental tension at the heart of the CCS model.
It is also not an exportable technology. Very few countries have the right geological conditions for large-scale underground CO2 storage. The UK’s North Sea geology is genuinely unique in this respect, but that advantage does not translate into a replicable export industry. Contrast that with British expertise in advanced manufacturing, renewables, grid, storage, or novel fuel production pathways, where the addressable market is the entire global energy transition. A UK company that develops a cheaper way to produce sustainable aviation fuel, green hydrogen or low-carbon chemicals can licence that technology worldwide. A CO2 storage site cannot be exported, and asking countries to pay the UK to store CO2 on its behalf rather than back its own industry is a fantasy.
Relevant: NSTA Publishes Critical Operational Guidance For UK Carbon Storage
There are also unresolved questions about the permanence of what is being stored. Injecting CO2 at scale into geological formations under sustained pressure is not a trivial engineering challenge, and the long-term behaviour of those formations over the 1,000 year timescales that matter for climate is not fully understood.
The track record of fossil fuel operations, which routinely leak both CO2 and methane throughout the supply chain, offers little reassurance about the industry’s ability to manage containment at scale over decades. And because of the upstream leaks, no process will capture100% of emissions, meaning CCS always leaves a residual tail that still needs to be accounted for.
The current lack of focus on competitiveness means that at the rate UK heavy industry is contracting, there may be significantly less CO2 to capture by the time any infrastructure is ready to use it. CCS is being designed around an industrial base that is shrinking partly because it is uncompetitive, and CCS does nothing to address competitiveness over the longer term. Yes, jobs will be created in the design and construction of the CCS infrastructure, but it does not mean the industry it serves suddenly becomes more profitable.
Relevant: UK Greenlights Development Funding For Viking CCS Project
The stronger industrial policy is to direct public money toward innovative British companies developing technologies that make low-carbon products at a competitive price; things the world actually wants to buy. In other developing technologies that are exportable. That is where durable, high-skilled employment in growth markets will come from.
That is what will actually make the UK’s industrial base more resilient, rather than simply prolonging its dependence on subsidy. Long term taxpayer or consumer support is not required, and the impact is larger as it helps reduce emissions all around the world, including countries with far higher emissions than the UK’s 1%.
The test for any major public investment in decarbonisation should not just be whether it reduces UK emissions on paper. It should also consider whether it leaves Britain with industries and capabilities that the world wants. On that test, a CO2 landfill under the North Sea is a poor answer to a question British industry urgently needs to get right.
Editor’s note: Following the publishing of this op-ed, Drax UK reached out to Carbon Herald and stated that they have not discontinued their carbon capture plans.
“Carbon removals from BECCS have a key role to play in the fight against climate change and delivering the UK’s binding carbon budgets,” a Drax spokesperson said. “In March 2023, we paused our investment in the UK BECCS project owing to lack of certainty on the required policy support. This includes the appropriate commercial and regulatory agreements for carbon removals in the UK and the development of CCS infrastructure in the Humber.”
“Following the signing of the low-carbon CfD, we have been working on future development options for Drax Power Station. UK BECCS is one of these, but in absence of a clear policy framework for BECCS, we are focusing on supporting UK energy security by growing our FlexGen portfolio and helping deliver the Government’s AI ambitions by exploring the potential option for a data centre at the Selby site.”
