Minister: CCUS Is Economic Infrastructure, Not Just Environmental – News and Statistics

Oct 14, 2026

The new minister responsible for carbon capture, utilisation and storage used an address to the sector to argue that CCUS should be understood primarily as economic infrastructure rather than only as environmental infrastructure. According to the government speech published on GOV.UK, the minister, who was asked by the Prime Minister in July to continue in the department as Minister for Local Energy and Jobs, framed the role around people and places rather than abstract strategy.

The minister said the brief sits at the heart of the Prime Minister’s reindustrialisation agenda, describing energy as a sector that employs tens of thousands of people and contributes to the national economy. The speech set out that the transition away from fossil fuels toward clean homegrown power is intended to maintain independence, reduce reliance on dictators and petrostates, rebuild industrial strength, create good jobs and restore opportunity across the country.

CCUS as an enabler of industry

The minister identified cement, chemicals, refining and low-carbon power generation as strategically important sectors that CCUS enables to remain competitive in a carbon-constrained global economy. The speech said the technology helps decarbonise existing industries, safeguard foundational sectors and create conditions for new low-carbon products and services.

Engineering expertise, project-delivery capability, offshore infrastructure and technical skills developed over decades in the North Sea were described as directly transferable to carbon capture, transport and storage. The minister argued that CCUS creates new markets and supply chains and attracts private investment into industrial heartlands, and that pipelines, capture plants and storage sites matter because of the industries they allow to continue and grow.

Industrial decline and local jobs

The speech described reindustrialisation as the lived experience of millions of people, saying too many places have been left behind with opportunities cut off and people moving away from their homes or abroad to find decent jobs. The minister said young people often feel they have little choice but to leave communities they love because secure jobs, training and well-paid careers are no longer available nearby, and that when this happens a community loses skills, spending power and potential entrepreneurs.

The minister said meaningful work provides purpose, independence and the ability to plan for the future, and that the damage from industrial closures is not only economic but also affects confidence and the social fabric of a place. Former mining communities, manufacturing towns and communities built around steel, chemicals, oil and gas, and engineering were cited as examples.

Representing a shipbuilding community in parliament, the minister said they are from the first generation in their family not to work in the yards or associated trades because the jobs are no longer there. At the end of the 1950s, around 10,000 people in that community worked in shipyards, and the number is now about to fall below 200. The speech said that when decline set in through the 1970s and 1980s, promised new jobs arrived as call centres and semiconductor manufacturers but most disappeared in the 1990s and 2000s.

Government role and cluster progress

The minister said the government has a responsibility to shape the economy, work with industry, invest strategically in the long term and build the infrastructure businesses need, so that economic change happens with communities rather than to them. The speech said reindustrialisation is not about recreating the economy of the past but about building future industries in places with the skills, experience and ambition to lead them.

The minister said the clean energy transition will only succeed if people can see good jobs created, investment arriving, local businesses winning contracts, young people getting apprenticeships and communities having a real stake in change. The role was described as ensuring projects support people and places by strengthening local supply chains, helping engineering firms win contracts and grow, making sure experienced workers know their skills are needed, and giving businesses confidence in infrastructure, skills and long-term certainty.

The speech said government has secured five Final Investment Decisions with industry. In the East Coast Cluster, the Northern Endurance Partnership and Net Zero Teesside Power were said to be helping build a low-carbon industrial heartland and supporting around 3,000 jobs during construction while delivering secure, flexible low-carbon power. In the North West and North Wales, as part of HyNet, Liverpool Bay CCS was said to be supporting over 1,400 jobs.

Padeswood was described as the UK’s first carbon capture-enabled cement plant, securing the future of a vital foundation industry, protecting an important industrial site, its workers and surrounding supply chains, and creating a new generation of low-carbon construction materials. Protos was described as the UK’s first carbon capture-enabled energy-from-waste facility. Combined, Padeswood and Protos will support over 600 jobs, according to the speech.

Projects in the East Coast Cluster have announced over PS2 billion of supply-chain contracts awarded to more than 260 UK suppliers to date, and investment of over PS1 million in local skills development with 175 local young people in training. The minister said two Teesside-based competitions are running this year to support expansion, with next steps to be set out soon taking into account the readiness of additional store capacity along the East Coast.

The government is funding development of CCUS infrastructure in the Humber region as part of the Viking cluster and supporting development of Acorn CCS, which the minister said is important to Scotland’s carbon capture infrastructure and will help strengthen industrial competitiveness, attract private capital and ensure Scotland can play a leading role in the UK’s growing carbon-management industry. Together, the industry and these projects are already supporting around 5,500 jobs in the UK, the speech said.

Funding pressures and next phase

The minister said the next phase of the CCUS programme will take place in the context of broader difficult decisions on funding, given a challenging fiscal environment and the government’s commitment to its fiscal rules. Public investment must be targeted where it can deliver the greatest value while confidence in the sector’s long-term future is maintained, which may mean decisions about priorities, sequencing and pace, and recognition that progress will not always happen everywhere at once.

The speech said the next phase also brings opportunity, with policies being developed to offer industry and private investment greater leadership and flexibility, including simplifying access to networks, enabling non-pipeline connections and allowing international transfers of CO2. The Prime Minister has been clear that UK projects must deliver for UK plc and UK workers, and the requirement for government subsidy will need to reduce as the sector grows if it is to be sustainable long term.

The minister said the government wants a strong CCUS sector in the country and will continue to engage closely with industry, adding that one of the first actions after the reshuffle was to arrange a meeting with the CCSA, and that cluster visits will follow. The government was described as being in delivery mode two and a half years after the election, and the minister asked the sector to come forward with examples of how it is boosting local economies.

The closing message was that success will not be measured only by how much carbon is captured but by what is built and the message sent in doing so, and that the transition to clean energy need not be a threat to British industry but can be the beginning of its renewal.