The United Kingdom has signed contracts for two commercial carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects aimed at reducing industrial emissions. The selected projects include Heidelberg Materials’ Padeswood cement plant in North Wales and Encyclis’s Protos waste-to-energy facility located in Ellesmere Port, in the northwest of England. Together, they are expected to capture 1.2 MtCO₂/year.
Captured emissions will be transported by pipeline for permanent storage at Eni’s Liverpool Bay CCS project. Heidelberg Materials has announced that its site will become the world’s first carbon capture facility enabling fully decarbonised cement production, with construction scheduled to begin later this year and first net-zero cement production expected in 2029. The government has not released financial details of the contracts. However, both projects are part of the £9.4bn committed to CCS technologies under the spending review announced in June 2025.
As part of its strategy to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, the UK considers CCS essential to reducing emissions in energy-intensive industrial sectors.