n 19 October 2021, the UK government announced the Hynet and
East Coast Clusters as Track 1 clusters in the £1 billion
carbon capture and storage (CCS) Infrastructure Fund. In the days
since, there has been a significant reaction from various parties
regarding the Acorn project in St Fergus in the North East of
Scotland missing out on funding, and being set as a
"reserve cluster".
It is important to set aside the politics, and step back to
consider what the funding means. Carbon Capture Utilisation and
Storage (CCUS) represents a suite of technologies aimed at
preventing quantities of carbon dioxide from being released into
the atmosphere from the use of fossil fuels. Early technology in
CCUS has been in use since the 1970s in some sectors and is a
proven technology. However, in order to meet the UK's 2050 net
zero commitment, the pace of CCUS usage needs to be accelerated to
utilize and/or capture emitted CO2. CCUS is one of the innovative
technologies which form