Acorn

The Acorn CCS Project is a carbon capture and storage initiative in northeast Scotland that repurposes legacy oil and gas infrastructure to permanently store industrial emissions beneath the North Sea. Centered around the St. Fergus gas terminal, Acorn will capture CO₂ emissions from industrial sources and transport them through the existing Goldeneye pipeline to offshore sandstone reservoirs located about 100 km from the coast and 2.5 km below the seabed. These formations are capped by thick impermeable layers, making them well-suited for safe and permanent storage. The project is being developed by a consortium including Storegga, Shell UK, Harbour Energy, and North Sea Midstream Partners. It is one of the UK’s most advanced CCS efforts, with plans to begin operations by the mid-2020s at an initial capacity of about 0.3 million tonnes of CO₂ per year, scalable to over 5 million tonnes annually by 2030. Supported by significant UK government investment, Acorn is positioned to play a central role in building out national CCS infrastructure and reducing industrial emissions at scale.