UK CCUS industry needs to address skills issues, report warns

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Efforts toward net zero with carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) will require a significant effort to address the skills challenges facing the industry, a new report warns.

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Published by Cogent Skills, the report – A Greenprint on Skills for the Low-Carbon industries – says while government figures suggest CCUS could support up to 50,000 jobs by 2050, the availability of skills remains a ‘bottleneck’ as the sector competes with other industries for certain roles.

While the number of full-time employees in the sector more than doubled between 2014 and 2021 (from 300 to 700), there is a ‘significant gap in the research’ around CCUS’s current UK workforce with few specialised routes into the industry, the report adds.

In a statement, Cogent Skills’ CEO, Justine Fosh, said: “CCUS is seen as a necessary solution to reduce emissions in heavy carbon-emitting sectors which use high temperature industrial processes and long-distance transport. But while there is no clear plan to develop a workforce to support future CCUS facilities, the sector is under pressure to meet the ambition of capturing 20-30Mt of CO2 per year by 2030.”

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