Scotland's Net Zero Infrastructure (Onshore)

This project, known as Scotland's Net Zero Infrastructure (SNZI) project, will focus on onshore elements of the Acorn CCS and low carbon hydrogen project at St Fergus in north east Scotland, and the Scottish Industrial Cluster. The project will fund important engineering studies which will develop the executable scopes of key components within the cluster, increasing investor confidence and providing the infrastructure to make a net zero industrial cluster in the UK a reality.

It paves the way for over 10 million tonnes per annum of CO2 storage by 2030, growing to 20 million tonnes per annum by 2035, and unlocking access to over 20 gigatons of CO2 storage capacity. This world-class storage capacity provides a route for much of the UK's emissions to be safely stored in well-characterised storage sites offshore in the North Sea.

This proposal seeks to develop the major onshore decarbonisation components of the Scottish industrial cluster, capturing CO2 in the Central Belt of Scotland, developing a pipeline infrastructure to transport the CO2 from the Central Belt north to St Fergus and offshore for long term storage.

Other aspects of the proposal seek to:

* Develop Britain's first low carbon blue hydrogen manufacturing facility, beginning the process of decarbonising the natural gas supply system
* Develop a viable CO2 shipping infrastructure at Peterhead Port, enabling projects on Teesside, Humberside, in South Wales and in Europe to safely and economically send their CO2 to the Acorn store.

The initial development of CCS and low carbon hydrogen production at the St Fergus gas terminal will store approx. 750,000 tonnes per annum of CO2 from late 2024, rising to 10 million tonnes per annum before 2030, and 20 million tonnes per annum by 2035. This represents 5% of all current UK emissions.

The project provides a clear and tangible path to decarbonisation of the Scottish industrial cluster, including advancing SSE's low carbon thermal power generation at Peterhead Power Station as well as opening up opportunities to support other industrial clusters in the UK and abroad. The ability to support multiple clusters and locations with access to the world class offshore storage locations accessible from the Acorn infrastructure is of vital importance to the UK's net zero ambitions. In addition, there will be significant economic benefits to UK Plc as a result of this cluster progressing to be a major CO2 storage hub