Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether his Department has taken recent steps to help ensure that (a) Whitetail Clean Energy and (b) other energy projects can be deployed at full commercial scale.

The Government took a significant step forward in the Cluster Sequencing process by announcing in August a shortlist of projects that represented a range of innovative CCUS technologies to progress to the due diligence stage for Track-1. CCUS-enabled clusters will be the starting point for a new carbon capture industry, which could support up to 50,000 jobs in the UK in 2030.

Officials are speaking to representatives from shortlisted projects, including Whitetail Clean Energy, to ensure they remain on track to support the delivery of 20-30Mt per annum of CO2 capture and storage by 2030, [subject to the results of due diligence and negotiations].

The Government is also accelerating many other key energy projects, as outlined in the British Energy Security Strategy.