Describing the move as a vital step towards creating the robust industrial policy necessary for capturing the high value, high skills jobs that could be created by a £6 billion CCS market in 20 years’ time, Prospect’s Deputy General Secretary Mike Clancy said:

“CCS remains an option for the balanced energy policy Prospect supports. The experience of the dash for gas in the 1990s, when highly skilled design and research jobs for gas-fired generation went overseas, shows the importance of investment in the supply chain so we can capture the export opportunities offered by CCS.

“Although coal is no longer dominant, our members in coal-fired power stations make a significant contribution to ensuring secure electricity supplies. CCS is the only viable future for coal and gas power stations therefore we should be making every effort to secure the jobs that this new technology shall create. We hope that the importance of a proactive industrial policy is recognised in the Energy Bill expected later this year.”

The £20m competition aims to complement the £1 billion the UK has separately committed to funding commercial scale CCS projects, under the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s CCS commercialisation programme. A competition for that programme is anticipated within the next few weeks.