Insider Brief:
- Italian energy company Eni and the UK government announced they would work together to develop the Liverpool Bay carbon capture project.
- The CCS will collect carbon from plants across North West England and North Wales, and deposit the carbon in the Irish Sea
- Eni contracted Italian services firm Sapiem with a €520 million contract to transform a gas processing facility in Wales into a carbon dioxide compression station.
The UK government and Italian energy company Eni announced April 24 that they would work together to launch the Liverpool Bay carbon capture project.
In 2024, London said it would invest £21.7 billion to invest in the first two CCS clusters in the country, over a period of 25 years.
Project Scope and Storage Capacity
The agreement means that Liverpool Bay will begin construction, and will transport carbon dioxide from industrial sites in North West England and North Wales. The carbon will then be stored in depleted gas fields in the North Sea. The project is part of the HyNet cluster, a major UK decarbonization project.
Liverpool Bay has a storage capacity of 4.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year, and the possibility to increase to 10 million tonnes per year in the 2030s. Startup is targeted for 2028.
“This investment from our partnership with Eni is government working together with industry to kickstart growth and back engineers, welders, and electricians through our mission to become a clean energy superpower,” UK Secretary for Energy Security and Net Zero Ed Miliband said.
Eni’s Strategic Vision for CCS Development
Eni CEO Claudio Descalzi hailed the agreement as a step towards developing the carbon capture industry.
“The strategic agreement with the UK government paves the way for the industrial-scale development of CCS, a sector in which the United Kingdom reaffirms its leadership thanks to the promotion of a regulatory framework that aims to strengthen the development of CCS and make it fully competitive in the market,” he said.
Infrastructure Upgrades for Carbon Capture
On Monday, Eni awarded Italian energy services company Saipem with a €520 million contract to convert a traditional gas compression and treatment facility in northern Wales into a carbon dioxide electrical compression station.
This will allow for permanent carbon dioxide storage in offshore depleted fields under the Liverpool Bay project.
