Transforming the energy industry

Find out how we are leading the future development of technologies that will decarbonise the energy supply industry and enable the responsible management of our natural resources.

Geos-asset-Transforming-the-energy-industry

Our work supports global initiatives to mitigate the effects of climate change and accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy.

This includes work on new energy systems such as:

  • Hydrogen power and geothermal energy
  • Subsurface energy storage
  • Changes in individual and societal awareness and decision making
  • Negative emissions - such as Carbon capture and Storage

We have led the way towards the development and deployment of carbon capture and underground storage (CCS) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Our internationally renowned research on CCS and negative emissions has underpinned the development of crucial technologies needed to deliver decarbonisation of the UK and global industry. 

We work with industry and governments within the UK and across the world. We appointed the first professor in Carbon Capture and Storage in the world, Professor Stuart Haszeldine, and we are partners in the Scottish Centre for Carbon Capture and Storage (SCCS). 

We are among the world-leading researchers who have made crucial contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Reports.  These are the most comprehensive scientific reports about climate change produced worldwide. We are proud that governments and industry around the world rely on our work to guide their laws and regulations.

See below some of our impact on transforming the energy industry:

United Kingdom

The Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) report

Professor Stuart Haszeldine is one of two academics invited onto the Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) council, advising the UK Department for Business Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). He was the sole academic member of the UK Parliamentary Advisory Group on CCS and co-author of the report to the Secretary of State for BEIS in 2016. The 2016 report to BEIS was used to inform key recommendations on the UK Government's strategic investment into CCS infrastructure, separating investment in Carbon Dioxide capture and its transport and storage.

Successive civil servants and UK Energy Ministers adopted the recommendations of the 2016 report to BEIS. This culminated in the major commitment to invest in a new CCS Infrastructure Fund of at least £800 million in the March 2020 UK budget. The budget is to develop CCS clusters and to support the construction of a CCS gas power plant.  In November 2020, UK CCS funding was increased to £1 billion in the Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution.  

Carbon capture and storage is precisely the kind of exciting technology where Britain can lead the world over the next decade. I can announce today that we will invest at least £800 million to establish two or more new carbon capture and storage clusters by 2030…The new clusters will create up to 6,000 high-skill, high-wage, low-carbon jobs in areas like Teesside, Humberside, Merseyside or St Fergus in Scotland.

Rishi Sunak (2020) Chancellor of the Exchequer

UK Central and devolved government climate change legislation

Our research expertise in negative emissions made key inputs into the UK's world-leading net-zero by 2050 climate change legislation in 2019. 

Dr Vivian Scott was seconded to the UK Committee on Climate Change (CCC) to provide expert advice on net-zero and to lead the assessment of negative emissions potential. This provided formal advice on net-zero emissions to the UK and devolved governments. 

Informed by our work on negative emissions, the CCC's net-zero advice was subsequently adopted by the UK and Scottish governments in passing legislation in 2019. They updated their Climate Change Act targets to net-zero by 2050 and net-zero by 2045, respectively.

Furthermore, Dr Scott's work helped identify the importance of Direct Air Capture (DAC) technologies, machines that scrub greenhouse gases from the air, as a permanent and potentially rapidly scalable greenhouse gas removal approach. This led to the inclusion of a strategic cost discovery scale of DAC deployment in the CCC UK net-zero emissions pathway. 

From this, the UK government announced in June 2020 up to £100 million of funding for DAC research and development. In December 2020, the Scottish Government announced a further £180 million of funding for Hydrogen, CCS and negative emissions technologies. 

North East Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage 

Our researchers have played a major role in supporting the strategic case for CCS development and deployment in Scotland.

Our work on establishing the huge potential of the North Sea's opportunities for the repurposing of oil and gas pipeline infrastructures (and industry skills) to enable lower-cost deployment has informed Scottish policymakers in embracing CCS as a crucial component of Scotland's climate and energy strategy. 

In November 2019, our researchers and the Scottish Centre for Carbon Capture and Storage helped establish the North East Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (NECCUS) alliance. The alliance is comprised of 33 companies, government agencies and research institutions.

You can find out more about the NECCUS alliance on their website.

European Union

Dr Scott and Professor Haszeldine have worked extensively with policymakers in the EU Commission and the intergovernmental North Sea Basin Task Force. Their work has made crucial and valuable contributions in shaping EU CCS policy and securing EU funding for CCS planning and development around the North Sea region by applying their research on CCS projects and infrastructure development.  

This resulted in projects in the UK, Netherlands, Belgium and Norway being selected as EU Projects of Common Interest eligible for EU Connecting Europe Facility Infrastructure Funding. It has resulted in funds awarded in 2020 of 100 million Euros towards CCS infrastructure construction in the Netherlands, plus funding between 5 million Euros and 15 million Euros for engineering design of CCS infrastructures and shipping facilities linking Belgium, Netherlands, UK and Norway. 

Our work with the Acorn project, the UK's leading CCS cluster, and their CO2SAPLING Transport Infrastructure Project led to three cycles of investment of £15 milllion by Governments in the UK, Scotland, and EU alongside commercial partners. 

Acorn is an ambitious programme designed to tackle climate change by dealing with Carbon emissions in industry and other sectors. It is the UK's most advanced CCS technology cluster, underpinning the delivery of UK and European industry decarbonisation and low carbon hydrogen fuel.

Acorn can be scaled-up to support other carbon reduction projects across the UK and Europe in the 2020s. The project will also enable hydrogen to be used more widely as a source of clean energy. It is strategically located in the North East of Scotland with the aim to repurpose oil and gas industry expertise and infrastructure in the North-East of Scotland to emissions storage rather than undertake costly decommissioning. 

Work by our CCS researchers, led by Professor Haszeldine, has established the huge and strategic capacity of the North Sea subsurface to store Carbon securely, enabling North Sea oil and gas expertise and engineered infrastructures to transfer into a major global CCS industry.

Find out more at the Acorn CCS website.


We have instigated the world's first research programme to develop underground storage of Hydrogen.

This technology has the potential to transform the capabilities of renewable energy, which has far-reaching implications for industry and our planet. Hydrogen can be generated by electricity when wind is plentiful and stored underground, to be used as fuel at times when there is little wind. 

Through our HyStorPor project, we are working with a range of industry partners on the large-scale geological storage of energy in the form of hydrogen. This is significant as heating our buildings – both domestic and commercial – is currently the largest source of carbon emissions in the UK, exceeding those for electricity generation. However, the underground storage of Hydrogen in porous rocks has not yet been demonstrated commercially.

Our HyStorPor project is addressing the problems before commercial trials can begin. Through state-of-the-art laboratory experiments, our team will explore the geological underground storage of hydrogen in porous rocks.

Find out more about the HyStorPor project on their website.


We are leading the development of biochar, a carbon-negative technology that converts captured Carbon Dioxide into charcoal, which can be placed back into soils. This offers a bright future for organic resource management, soil improvement and energy production.

It contains a high proportion of extremely stable carbon, and so sustainable production of biochar can be a significant, viable Negative Emissions Technology for mitigating human-induced climate change.

Our School hosts the UK Biochar Research Centre (UKBRC), which leads strategic investigations of biochar and provides a range of research and advice to relevant government bodies and companies.

The Centre is also a partner in the Scottish Biofuel Program. Our partnership means that UKBRC can provide free initial advice, expertise in Scotland with the potential to integrate biochar with energy capture.

You can find out more on our work with biochar on the UK Biochar Research Centre website: 


Through her work with the European Marine Energy Centre, Dr Laura Watts contributed to development for a flexible-response integrated energy system embedded in the Orkney Islands, Scotland.  

This included expert advice to Aquatera, an environmental consultancy organisation that supported the establishment of a local energy company with increasing access to low-carbon home energy assets. This project has inspired many similar ones worldwide.

The Orkney Islands are now a centre for energy technology innovation, from marine energy to hydrogen fuel networks, attracting the interest of venture capitalists and local communities. 

You can learn more about the story of making energy futures from Dr Watt's book:

Book cover of waves crashing onto a rocky shore for 'Energy at the end of the world'
More about 'Energy at the end of the world'

For decades removing harmful carbon from the atmosphere and storing it safely under the sea was a mere pipe dream.  

Our researchers are helping make it a reality.

You can read our story on the University Impact website:

An oil rig in the sea with a tanker ship in the background
'Going underground' on Edinburgh Impact

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