The net zero technology getting an almighty £22bn cash injection from UK government

The plans are designed to generate private investment and jobs in Merseyside and Teesside, two industry-heavy areas that will be home to the new "carbon capture clusters".

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the move was "reigniting our industrial heartlands by investing in the industry of the future", though there are questions about how best to use this expensive technology.

Carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) has been developed to combat climate change. It captures the planet-warming carbon dioxide released from burning fossil fuels or from heavy industry, and puts it to use or stores it underground.

It is expensive and difficult, but the UK's climate advisers, the Climate Change Committee (CCC), and United Nations scientists say it is essential to get the world to net zero, which the UK is targeting for 2050

Net zero means cutting emissions as much as possible and offsetting or capturing the stubborn remaining ones.

Today the government has committed up to £21.7bn over 25 years, to be given in subsidies to sites in the Teesside and Merseyside "clusters" - from 2028.    

Sir Keir said the announcement will "give industry the certainty it needs" and "help deliver jobs, kickstart growth, and repair this country once and for all".

It hopes to fund the first large scale hydrogen production plant in the UK, and help the oil and gas sector and its transferable skills move over to green industries.

It has been welcomed by industry and the unions, coming just a week after job losses from the closures of Port Talbot Steelworks and Ratcliffe coal power station.

GMB general secretary Gary Smith said the news "shows what levelling up can really mean: good, well paid jobs reinvigorating communities".

CCUS has made slow progress: promised for decades but barely scaled, with just 45 commercial sites globally. However, it began to pick up in the last few years, with 700 plants now in some stage of development around the world.

The world's first CCUS plant has stored CO2 under Norway's waters since 1996, though elsewhere a few concerns linger about whether some projects leak gas.

James Richardson, acting chief executive of the CCC, said: "We can't hit the country's targets without CCUS, so this commitment to it is very reassuring".

Some believe expensive CCUS should be preserved for areas like cement or lime-production, that are very hard to clean up in any other way, rather than for sectors for which there are greener alternatives.

Greenpeace UK's Doug Parr warned of a "risk of locking ourselves into second-rate solutions". The government hopes this funding for the three sites that are ready to go will lay the foundations for further CCUS projects.