UK’s massive 1 gigatonne carbon capture project advances towards permitting

Spirit Energy’s Morecambe Net Zero (MNZ) Peak Cluster development – described as the world’s largest cement decarbonisation project – has moved one step closer to reality, advancing to the second stage of its Carbon Dioxide Appraisal and Storage Licence.

The UK’s North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) confirmed that Spirit entered the ‘Assess Phase’ of its carbon storage licence (CS010), moving it closer to receiving a permit application to inject and store CO2 emissions into the North and South Morecambe fields in the East Irish Sea. Once the Access Phase is completed and all detailed technical and environmental data is verified by the NTSA, the project would move to the Execute Phase, where final construction CO2 injection would begin. The 1 gigatonne carbon capture project would inject carbon dioxide once the gas fields cease production by the end of the decade.

To demonstrate the gas fields’ suitability for storing approximately one billion tonnes of CO2 and to achieve the Access Phase, Spirit’s subsurface, wells, projects, HSE, commercial, and engineering teams conducted three years of work, including new high-resolution 3D seismic acquisition and advanced 3D seismic imaging of the Morecambe fields.

The seismic acquisition, covering 500 square km, was carried out by Shearwater Geoservices.

Working with its Peak Cluster partners, MNZ Peak Cluster would safely transport 3M tonnes of CO2 annually from four cement and lime plants within Derbyshire and Staffordshire to the depleted gas fields.

Spirit Energy is jointly owned by Centrica (69%) and German utility Stadtwerke München (31%).

The MNZ Peak Cluster would provide a UK economic boost of approximately US$2.4Bn by 2050, supporting more than 13,000 jobs across Derbyshire, Staffordshire, and Cumbria, and attracting US$6.7Bn investment for construction and operations work.

Centrica chief executive Chris O’Shea said: “This takes us another step closer to delivering one of the UK’s most important infrastructure projects, protecting 13,000 jobs and contributing billions of pounds to the UK economy while cutting emissions at scale. By repurposing the Morecambe fields for carbon storage, we can put existing infrastructure to work again, helping secure the future of essential British industry while making real progress towards net zero.”

Spirit Energy’s Director of Energy Transition, Decommissioning and Projects, Matt Browell-Hook, said the MNZ was “the biggest cement decarbonisation project on the planet, the first CCS development to secure investment from the National Wealth Fund and potentially the largest offshore carbon store in the UK.”