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23 min ago 8 min read
The UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) has published final phase 2 projects for direct air capture (DAC) project funding.
Phase 2, open only to successful Phase 1 applicants, takes forward the most promising designs from Phase 1, to pilot key components or further develop the design of new DAC and other greenhouse gas removals technologies. In 2020, the UK government announced up to £100m of new research and development funding to help develop DAC technologies in the UK as the country aims to meet net zero by 2050.
The 15 projects listed under phase 2 are as follows:
Advanced Biofuel Solutions
The project will construct, commission and operate a demonstration plant that will take a synthesis gas produced from household waste and convert it into low carbon hydrogen for use in road transport while capturing carbon dioxide from the process for use in industry.
Location Southwest
Budget £4.75m
Black Bull Biochar
This project seeks to pilot a business-to-business (B2B) platform that creates the first fully integrated biochar system, enabling the sustainable scale up of biochar as a greenhouse gas removal (GGR) technology. The company foresees a future where suppliers and users of GGR technologies are connected through our easy-to-use online platform that allows them to buy, sell and verify the impacts of their solution.
Location London/Cumbria
Budget £2.9m
Cambridge Carbon Capture
The Direct Air CO2 capture and mineralisation project aims to deliver a pilot plant capturing 100 tonnes per year of CO2 directly from the air using Cambridge Carbon Capture CO2LOC technology. The project will successfully construct, operate, test, refine and evaluate the CO2LOC processes and technologies and provide data to support a computer model of a full-scale plant designed to deliver 50kt CO2 capture per year.
Location East of England
Budget £2.99m
CO2CirculAir B.V.
The Smart-DAC technology is a natural wind driven process that captures CO2 directly from air using membrane gas absorption with a liquid absorbent and regeneration of the absorbent by electrodialysis. CO2CirculAir’s a smart-buffer system assures a continuous 24h/d CO2 absorption and enables the use of low-cost electricity for regeneration at moments of surplus or by direct use of electricity from solar cells or wind turbines.
Location Netherlands/Northern Ireland
Budget £2.94m
Coal Products Limited
Biochar can potentially make a major contribution to the UK target for GGR of 35M tonnes of carbon (MtC) per year by 2050. However, there are some significant challenges to overcome, particularly the availability of feedstocks where supply of virgin wood could be limited.
Biowaste, particularly anaerobic digestate, has significant potential to extend the range of feedstocks for biochar production. This pilot will establish the feasibility of the “Biowaste to Biochar” approach and optimise process design and operation for largescale biochar production.
Location Yorkshire and the Humber
Budget £4.99m
Equinor
Equinor is developing a DAC system to enable low-cost removal CO2 from the atmosphere. The Encore system uses a low regeneration temperature, highly durable and non-toxic absorption liquid technology, coupled with engineering expertise, to provide a highly efficient and flexible product.
This project was originally being delivered by Rolls-Royce. In April 2024, Equinor acquired the DAC technology intellectual property and assets developed by Rolls-Royce and novated the Project Encore contract.
Location London/Derby
Budget £2.8m
Ince Bio Power Limited
The Ince Bioenergy Carbon Capture & Storage demonstrator project (Phase 2) will design and deliver a 10 tonne per day (tpd) carbon capture pilot plant safely and cost effectively at the heart of the HyNet North West industrial cluster. It aims to pioneer the first commercial scale carbon capture on a biomass waste gasification facility in an area of the UK which is aligned to the UK government policy for Net Zero carbon status by 2050, the Industrial Clusters Mission and the North West Cluster Plan. The pilot plant will be located at the Protos Energy Park near Ellesmere Port.
Location Northwest
Budget £4.99m
Kew Projects
Carbon capture and hydrogen production from biomass (CCH2) will demonstrate a modular, cost effective BECCSH2 system capable of delivering 50ktCO2/year of GGR during 2025-2030 and scaling to a potential 24 MtCO2/year in the subsequent decade. The CCH2 demonstration will combine two major units (TRL6) into a fully integrated BECCS hydrogen system.
Location West Midlands
Budget £4.99m
Lapwing Energy Limited
Reverse Coal is an engineered natural solution to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and bury it back into the geological reserve in the form of a carbon rich char, akin to coal. Reverse Coal is a disruptive system change that can be scaled to remove in excess of 1Mt of CO2 a year, supporting the UK in delivering its Net Zero strategy. Lowland peat is rewet preventing CO2 emissions from the oxidation of peat, wetland trees and reeds are planted to produce sustainable biomass that captures CO2 from the atmosphere.
The woody biomass is heated to produce energy and solid carbon, which is then buried in deposits which can be easily monitored and verified to confirm long term carbon sequestration.
Location East Midlands
Budget £2.99m
Mission Zero Technologies
Project Drive is led by Mission Zero Technologies alongside Optimus Plus (Aberdeen) and O.C.O Technology to build, deliver, and operate a 120 tCO2/year DAC pilot plant based on Mission Zero’s IP.
With an energy efficient, heat free, and continually operable DAC system, Mission Zero’s DAC technology has the potential to reduce the costs and energy consumption of DAC by up to five times compared with today’s levels and brings CO2-to-value applications that also permanently lock away carbon, like O.C.O Technology’s manufactured limestone (M-LS) production, into greater focus. This pilot plant is the first key step in realising that potential.
Location Southeast
Budget £2.99m
NNB Generation Company (SZC) Limited
Sizewell C, together with its partners, University of Nottingham, Strata Technology, Atkins and Doosan Babcock, is developing and constructing a heat-powered DAC demonstrator plant that could in the future be scaled up and integrated with the Sizewell C power plant. Heat from a nuclear power plant is the cheapest form of low-carbon heat (according to a recent study by Columbia University) and the heat-powered DAC design will offer increased efficiency and less reliance on electricity compared to existing DAC technology.
Location London
Budget £3m
Ricardo UK
This project aims to design, build and test a biomass pyrolysis-based cogeneration system with biochar production and carbon capture, utilisation and storage (BIOCCUS) to enable highly significant, practical and scalable GGR systems to help progression towards net zero carbon. The BIOCCUS system uses forestry waste to create biochar, CO2, electricity and heat.
Location Southeast
Budget £2.9m
SAC Commercial
GreenShed addresses the need for the livestock farming sector to reduce its GHG emissions whilst improving productivity, by developing an integrated low carbon, circular, cattle and vertical farming system, which captures methane (global warming potential 26 times greater than CO2 over 100 years) from housed cattle and utilises its combustion outputs (heat, power, CO2) to yield low carbon produce (meat, vegetables/fruits) and optimise resource efficiency. If implemented across the sector this could equate to 50% GHG reduction from these systems. No system currently captures and scrubs methane from housed cattle, and utilises outputs from its combustion.
Location Scotland
Budget £2.9m
Severn Wye Energy Agency
The Mersey Biochar project, led by Severn Wye and Pure Leapfrog, two charities with a drive to deliver community scale zero carbon energy solutions, combines new and existing technologies to create a carbon negative, community scale, flexible power and heat process. The vision is for small scale biochar processing facilities to be connected onto communal and district heat networks, decarbonising heat and providing flexible dispatchable power into the grid from the projects innovative energy storage system.
The process not only removes carbon from atmosphere, but critically it tackles the two of the biggest challenges in the energy transition, the decarbonisation of heat and the provision of zero carbon peak demand energy.
Location West Midlands
Budget £4.99m
University of Exeter
The SeaCURE system makes use of the natural behaviour of the carbon cycle – the ‘sucking’ of CO2 from the atmosphere in response to the atmosphere-ocean CO2 gradient generated by rising atmospheric CO2 levels.
SeaCURE accelerates this process by stripping more than 90% of the CO2 out of the seawater so that the CO2 gradient between air and seawater is enhanced, and the amount of CO2 removed from the atmosphere is dramatically increased.
This approach offers enormous benefits over direct removal of CO2 from air, primarily because of the much higher CO2 concentration in seawater than in air and the availability of the vast surface area of the ocean to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere.
Location Southwest
Budget £2.99m
