Ed Miliband has agreed to bankroll Britain’s first net zero cement factory in North Wales using taxpayer cash.
In a deal designed to reduce emissions across the carbon-intensive industry, the Energy Secretary has partnered with Heidelberg Materials in Flintshire, Wales.
The agreement aims to help Heidelberg produce the UK’s first carbon-neutral cement facility in Padeswood by capturing around 800,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year.
The project is one of two sites to have secured taxpayer backing under Labour’s plans to invest £9.4bn in carbon capture and storage technology that can remove CO2 from the atmosphere. The other project is a new energy-from-waste facility at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire.
The facility, developed by Encyclis, will capture CO2 from burned waste and transport it via pipes for offshore storage. The plant intends to save 400,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.
The two projects have received contracts through the Government’s Low Carbon Contracts Company, although the final value of the deals is yet to be disclosed.
It comes as Mr Miliband scrambles to meet his net zero targets, with the cement industry contributing around 8pc of greenhouse gas emissions globally.
The Government has already agreed to fund a network of carbon-removal pipelines in the North West, called HyNet, while it has also backed plans for £4bn of carbon capture projects in Teesside.
Labour has pledged to spend £22bn on carbon capture projects over the next 25 years in the hope that it can propel the UK towards net zero.
However, MPs on the Commons Public Accounts Committee warned earlier this year that the technology remains “unproven” and threatens to increase energy bills.
b’
0108 Carbon Capture
‘
The MPs warned that carbon capture technologies “may not capture as much carbon as expected”, pointing to the struggles of projects in Norway that pioneered the technology.
However, Michael Shanks, the energy minister, said the UK was “leading the charge in the clean industries of the future”. The funding will help create 500 jobs.
Mr Miliband on Wednesday defended the UK’s green push after Donald Trump told the UN General Assembly that “suicidal energy ideas” would be the “death of Western Europe”.
The Energy Secretary said Mr Trump’s “enthusiasm for fossil fuels is well known”, but that Labour had a “mandate” to pursue renewable power.
Simon Willis, UK chief executive of Heidelberg Materials, said carbon capture was “a growing sector worldwide and our Padeswood project is an exemplar, helping position the UK as a global force at the forefront of this technology”.
Mark Burrows-Smith, chief executive of Encyclis, added: “This first full-scale carbon capture deployment in the UK enables us to continue providing an essential treatment service for non-recyclable waste while reducing carbon emissions.”
