Scotland: Developing CCS is vital to our low carbon economy Scotland has the resources to position itself as a global leader in carbon capture and storage (CCS), according to a new paper.

The Scottish government yesterday (March 10th) laid out a 'roadmap' to position itself ahead of other countries in Europe in developing CCS.

Its proposals include initiating an offshore carbon licensing regime, training people to meet industry demand for the new skills and setting up a number of test projects to demonstrate the technology.

In 2009, the government gave funds of £75,000 to a dedicated centre for identifying where carbon dioxide can be stored safely. In addition, it jointly authored the first UK report on CCS in the same year.

Jim Mather, Scotland's energy minister, said: "The North Sea alone has enough capacity to store emissions from industrial coal-fired plants for the next 200 years - a capacity greater than Netherlands, Denmark and Germany combined.

"Scotland already has elements of the required onshore and offshore infrastructure and our skills in the oil, gas and engineering industries can be utilised to help the industry grow and develop.

"As a hugely important technology in the fight against climate change, CCS offers Scotland a fantastic platform for low carbon economic growth."

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