BP PLC (LSE:BP.), Royal Dutch Shell PLC (LSE:RDSB), Drax Group (LSE:DRX) PLC and SSE PLC are among the beneficiaries as two carbon capture and storage projects in England were chosen as the first projects to get money from a £1bn dedicated government funding pot.
The East Coast Cluster project will store emissions from the Humber and Teeside regions under the North Sea and is led by BP alongside Shell, Drax, SSE, Total, Eni, Equinor and National Grid.
The project aims to store nearly half of all UK industrial CO2 emissions by 2030, up to 27mln tonnes of CO2 a year.
The HyNet project, led by Eni Essar and Cadent, will store emissions in a depleted gas field in Liverpool Bay and aims to take on 10mln tonnes per year.
Three projects were not given the green light in this 'track1' round of funding: Acorn in Scotland which aimed to decarbonise the Grangemouth refinery; the V Net Zero Humber project, which aims to decarbonize the Humber and Lindsey refineries; and the Delphnus project in South Humber.
The funding announcement came alongside the government's unveiling of the UK's net zero plan, which ministers say would create up to 440,000 jobs and “unlock” £90bn of public-private investment by 2031.
It included an additional £620mln of funding for electric vehicles and £3.9bn for decarbonising residential and office buildings.