United Kingdom – Storegga and Mitsui have signed an MOU on the commercialization of Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology, paving the way for the UK’s first DAC facility to be built in North East Scotland.
Mitsui is already a shareholder in Storegga, and this memorandum formalizes their partnership to build Europe’s first large-scale DAC facility, capable of removing one million tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere annually.
The UK government has stated that by 2030, it wants to deploy at least 5 M/T of engineered carbon removals per year. This direct air capture facility will play a significant role in achieving this goal. Once completed, this ground-breaking project will serve as a model for deploying this critical carbon reversal technology in other parts of the UK and around the world to help achieve global net zero targets. The facility will be critical in meeting the UK’s and Scotland’s legally binding net zero targets by 2045 and 2050, respectively, as well as serving international customers. Virgin Atlantic will be one of the facility’s first customers.
Storing CO2
The CO2 will be transported to the Acorn Carbon Capture & Storage project in the North Sea, where it will be permanently stored in depleted oil and gas reservoirs and saline aquifers. The Acorn project is currently in the detailed engineering and design stage of development, with a target completion date of the mid-2020s.
Storegga’s first DAC facility will be built near the Acorn CO2 Transport and Storage system in the North East of Scotland. In the beginning, the company will sell carbon credits to large corporations in order to offset their carbon emissions. A regulated carbon credit mechanism will be required to support this. The United Kingdom’s government is currently consulting on the best business models for supporting direct air capture in the country.
