Words by Smiley Team
A Direct Air Capture [DAC] facility with the capability to remove thousands of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere is being developed for installation in North East Scotland.
Anticipated to extract between 500,000 and 1 million tonnes each year, the CO2 will then be contained in safe and permanent storage sites below the seabed.
Currently in the engineering and design stage, the project is being run by carbon capture pioneers Storegga and Carbon Engineering, with the aim of being up and running by 2026.
“DAC technology is critical to remove large quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere in order to meet our climate goals,” said Nick Cooper, CEO of Storegga.
“The development of a DAC facility in the UK will put our country on the map as being at the forefront of net negative technologies and the technology will enable hard-to-abate sectors to create plans to reach net-zero emissions.”
Striving for Net Zero
Once complete, it will be the first of its kind to be built on a large scale in Europe, helping to meet targets for carbon neutrality whilst simultaneously generating thousands of new employment opportunities.
Although a specific construction site is yet to be selected, Scotland has been chosen as an ideal location for its ample sources of renewable energy, infrastructure and a skilled workforce, transferring expertise from the North Sea oil and gas industry into this environmental project.
Storing CO2 this way is both verifiable as an effective strategy and has the potential to not only progress the journey towards net zero emissions, but also to extract past emissions, supporting the ambition of full climate restoration.
“At Carbon Engineering, we’ve spent the last decade optimising a highly scalable and affordable solution for removing carbon from the air and now our focus is on global deployment to help meet the climate challenge,” said Steve Oldman, CEO of Carbon Engineering.
“These facilities will demonstrate that large-scale DAC technology is a feasible, affordable and available tool that is ready to help bring global emissions down to net zero, and eventually net negative.”
For additional information on Storegga’s work, visit storegga.earth.
