Question to the Scotland Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland, whether he plans to provide support to the Scottish energy sector to secure investment in the Government’s Net Zero industrial cluster funding programme, including the Acorn Project; and what assessment he has made of the potential merits of adding the Acorn Project as a third cluster to the Track 1 2025 programme.

Following a robust, specialist-led assessment, the UK Government has identified the Acorn project as the reserve cluster for Track-1 as part of the Carbon Capture Usage and Storage Cluster Sequencing process. Since this was announced, the Government has engaged extensively with Acorn to allow them to continue their development and planning, with the support of over £40m in UK Government funding. As previously stated, there will be further opportunities for Acorn to deploy, including through a future allocation process for ‘Track-2’ clusters.