Policy paper

NIC Greenhouse Gas Removal Technologies Study: Terms of Reference

Published 25 November 2020

The government asks the National Infrastructure Commission to provide recommendations to government on the technologies that should be deployed to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and deliver negative emissions, the policies needed to incentivise the rollout of these technologies and the timeline of decisions needed by government to enable the UK to use greenhouse gas removal technologies to achieve net zero.

In July 2019 the UK government passed legislation to update the 2050 greenhouse gas emissions target – the UK must now reach net zero emissions by 2050. Doing this will require a range of new technologies and infrastructure to be deployed, many of which the National Infrastructure Commission has previously considered and made recommendations to government on.

It may also be the case that, in order to meet the new statutory target, the UK needs to deploy some greenhouse gas removal technologies. These technologies take greenhouses gases out of the atmosphere for them to be permanently stored underground. These technologies are still at a nascent stage of development and there is no at scale deployment in the UK, and limited deployment internationally.

Greenhouse gas removal technologies are themselves large scale infrastructure. They will also require significant infrastructure to transport and store any captured carbon, which will likely be stored in depleted oil and gas reservoirs or saline aquifers off the UK coast.

There are a range of different ways to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, only some of which fall within the National Infrastructure Commission’s remit to look at economic infrastructure. Different direct air capture (DAC) technologies or methods for bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) are considered economic infrastructure and sit within the Commission’s remit. We refer to these as greenhouse gas removal technologies. But other ways of removing greenhouse gases, such as afforestation, peatland restoration or enhanced marine weathering are not considered economic infrastructure.

The focus of this study is on those technologies that can be considered traditional economic infrastructure, and therefore fall within the Commission’s remit.

In making its recommendations the government asks the Commission to consider:

• The need for negative emissions and the potential scale of their deployment. There is uncertainty about the amount of negative emissions the UK will need and the scale of the infrastructure that can realistically be deployed by 2050.
• The types of technologies that can provide negative emissions. Greenhouse gas removal technologies are still an emerging approach. The Commission will synthesise the latest evidence base on technology readiness levels, costs, operational parameters and other relevant evidence.
• The associated shared infrastructure. The work will develop an understanding of the enabling infrastructure requirements for greenhouse gas removal technologies to be deployed at scale, and how the location of these technologies could capitalise on emerging proposals for the rollout of carbon capture and storage technologies, and the associated carbon transport and storage infrastructure.
• An appraisal of current international projects in this area, and their capacity or prospects to function without subsidy.
• Any comparative advantage or disadvantage the UK has. The UK is not the only country that has negative emissions potential and its place in generating negative emissions in the global context will be considered.
• Appropriate market mechanisms and policy frameworks for greenhouse gas removal technologies. The work will consider a range of policy mechanisms to incentivise and fund deployment of these technologies, reaching a recommendation on the most efficient approach.
• Interactions with other sectors. There are potential interactions between these technologies and other sectors within the Commission’s remit. For example, DAC technologies require significant amounts of electricity and water, and BECCS can produce a range of different fuels which could be used across the UK’s economic infrastructure. A high-level evaluation will be made on the resource requirements of these technologies and the potential for fuels produced from BECCS to be used across the economy.
• Timelines for deployment. The study will consider an appropriate timeline for deploying greenhouse gas removal technologies and what this means for when actions will be needed from government and regulators.

In carrying out the work the Commission will not consider the role of “nature based” solutions for delivering negative emissions. It will also not consider sustainability criteria for biomass supplies. These sit outside the Commission’s remit.

Any recommendations made must consider the need to achieve the country’s net zero target by 2050 and be consistent with the fiscal and economic remits provided to the National Infrastructure Commission.

The study should provide a final report in Summer 2021.