investment to support clean technology early-stage funding.

Box 7.1 Carbon capture, usage, and storage

The United Kingdom’s Clean Growth Strategy places a strong emphasis on CCUS innovation, international collaboration, and domestic deployment subject to cost reductions. As noted by the Climate Change Commission, CCUS will be critical in meeting the United Kingdom’s carbon budgets.

Over the past years, the United Kingdom invested over GBP 130 million in research and development (R&D) and innovation support to develop CCUS, supporting the development of technologies that include NET Power’s Allam cycle, Carbon Clean Solutions, and C- Capture. On top of this, the United Kingdom is investing GBP 100 million in industrial energy and CCUS innovation to 2021.

The United Kingdom also has a dedicated GBP 70 million international CCUS programme, which has been running since 2012, which provides technical assistance for CCUS in emerging economies and developing countries, such as Mexico, South Africa, China, and Indonesia.

The United Kingdom leads the Carbon Capture Innovation Challenge under Mission Innovation together with Saudi Arabia and Mexico and is developing a closer collaborative working with countries such as Norway, the United States, Canada, and Australia, which includes joint work on innovation and carbon dioxide transport and storage solutions and working multilaterally through the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum and North Sea Basin Task Force.

On 28 November 2018, the government published a CCUS Action Plan (UK Government, 2018) that set out its view on the next steps that industry and government need to take to enable the development of the first CCUS facility in the UK, commissioning from the mid2020s, to achieve the government’s ambition to have the option to deploy CCUS at scale during the 2030s, subject to costs coming down sufficiently. The CCUS Action Plan can help support the Industrial Clusters Mission, which the government announced at COP24 in December 2018. The Industrial Clusters Mission is designed to establish the world’s first net zero industrial cluster by 2040, and CCUS will have a key role. The Mission is supported by GBP 170 million from an Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund to support the deployment of low carbon technologies and enabling infrastructure in one or more clusters.

Private funding and green finance

The government actively encourages private sector participation in energy technology RD&D as well as Entrepreneurship Training and Rural Development Initiatives programmes. The United Kingdom’s Office of National Statistics publishes estimates of total private sector R&D, but not broken down by energy R&D.

The UK has been leading on green finance. The government and the City of London’s Green Finance Initiative was established in 2016 and supported the LENDERS project through Innovate United Kingdom (which aims to improve the estimations of energy

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