The grant, provided under the Direct Air Capture and Greenhouse Gas Removal Technology Innovation Programme Award, will be used to help with developing a project in Direct Air Capture (DAC), a technology that captures carbon dioxide (CO2) directly out of the atmosphere.
The Dreamcatcher Project is a partnership between Storegga and leading Canadian DAC provider, Carbon Engineering, and together they hope to deploy the UK’s first large-scale DAC with Storage (DACS) facility.
The facility will capture between 500,000 and one million tonnes of atmospheric CO2 each year. Utilising offshore geological storage, the captured gas will then be safely and permanently stored deep below the seabed.
Nick Cooper, CEO of Storegga, said, “We are pleased to have been awarded funding under the Direct Air Capture and Greenhouse Gas Removal Technology Innovation Programme Award which will enable Storegga and our project partners to advance the development of the UK, and Europe’s first large scale DAC facility.”
“The world needs to remove large quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere to meet the Paris Goals.”
A proposed location for this facility is in North East Scotland. This will allow access to the Acorn CCS and Hydrogen Project (Acorn).
Positioned to be the most cost-effective and scalable CCS project in the UK, Acorn is planned to be operational by the mid 2020’s.
About the project, Amy Ruddock, VP Europe Carbon Engineering, said, “At Carbon Engineering, we’ve spent the past decade developing a highly scalable and affordable Direct Air Capture solution so it can play a mainstream role in addressing climate change.”
“As the UK, and nations around the world, create plans to reach net zero emissions, DAC is a feasible, available, and affordable tool that can be added to the net zero toolkit.”
“It is a tool that has the potential to realise significant greenhouse gas reductions while creating thousands of local jobs and businesses.”
The Dreamcatcher Project is a collaborative initiative with project partners including Pale Blue Dot Energy, Carbon Engineering, Petrofac, Cambridge and Edinburgh Universities and Virgin Group.