Policy innovation for offshore CO2 transport and storage deployment

The UK Government's decision to cancel its CCS commercialisation competition in 2015 highlighted that the delivery of the first power CCS projects with transport and storage infrastructure at scale has to take place in a policy environment that is broader than one focussing on low carbon electricity and competitive procurement from the private sector. This paper describes the insights gained from detailed work undertaken during the period of the UK commercialisation programme into the market failures holding back investment in CO2 transport and storage infrastructure and the types of business models that can be used in public-private partnerships to enable finance to flow and projects to be deployed. Policy innovation is more important than technical innovation to kick-start CCS infrastructure investment and the need for new holistic policy portfolios that recognise the importance of this infrastructure for decarbonising multiple sectors of the economy such as heat, transport and industrial processes is discussed. (C) 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.