Scotland’s specialist capabilities in carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS)
02 Oct 2026 • 5 minute read
Learn about Scotland’s specialist supply chain capabilities for CCUS and the Scottish companies bringing these to life.
CCUS is an essential part of the energy transition, but this relatively new industry needs to significantly scale to meet its growing demand.
Without a strong CCUS sector, industrial decarbonisation efforts are less likely to succeed. To increase the chances of success, it needs other sectors to provide essential transferable capabilities for its developments. And that’s just what innovative Scottish companies are doing.
Belltree: finding sites for carbon storage
There are two distinct elements to CCUS. The first is carbon capture and storage (CCS), where carbon is permanently stored after capture. The second is carbon capture and utilisation (CCU), where any carbon captured is treated for industrial reuse.
One of the first steps for CCS is to identify locations with the necessary properties to store carbon. Scotland has many subsea oil and gas fields that fit the bill for long term carbon storage.
Edinburgh-based software provider Belltree is a prime example of a company applying its external expertise to CCS. While it traditionally served the oil and gas industry, it now provides data and analytics software, through its bMark™ platform, and consultancy services for CCS companies.
Belltree’s team of geologists, data scientists, and reservoir engineers help these companies assess potential CCS sites and optimise those already in use.
The idea behind expanding the bMark™ platform into CCS formed around 2019. Through the Scottish Enterprise Advanced Innovation Programme, the company began exploring innovation opportunities. CCS was identified as a new industry where Belltree solutions could be hugely beneficial. The company is now leveraging its extensive datasets to help its subscribers identify suitable locations for storing captured carbon via the bMark™ platform.
The Carbon Removers: capture and transportation
Once an appropriate CCS site has been identified, businesses need a way to capture and transport the carbon.
The Carbon Removers is a Scottish company using its experience to take a leading role in the develop of the CCUS industry.
Established by brothers Ed and Richard Nimmons, The Carbon Removers began as a supplier of dry ice blasting for oil rigs. The company later expanded to capture liquid CO2 and produce dry ice for use in the food and pharma industries.
More recently, it turned its focus to CCUS, and it now has aims to remove one million tonnes of carbon a year by the early 2030s.
The Carbon Removers is currently working in the CCS space, focusing on biogenic CO2. Biogenic CO2 is carbon dioxide produced from natural sources like biomethane plants and distilleries.
Using its proprietary Nimmon900 module, The Carbon Removers can capture CO2 on site and transport it via specialist cryogenic tanks. Once collected, the CO2 is converted into carbonated building materials. In the future, it plans to offer offshore geological storage as another way to permanently store the carbon.
The Carbon Removers isn’t just working in Scotland, though, it’s also expanded to Denmark. From 2026, it expects to capture an estimated 50,000 tonnes of biogenic CO2 a year from Danish industries, which it will then transport it to permanent storage sites.
A second life for captured carbon
Once the carbon is captured, it can be used again – but there’s a catch. For CO2 to be reused, it must have high purity. In the food and pharma industries, a purity of 99.9% is required for CO2 to be reused.
Biogenic CO2 from natural sources (like distilleries) has a natural purity of around 95%-97%. As such, pushing that up to 99.9% requires far less processing power than CO2 from other industries. For example, biogenic CO2 from biomass power stations typically begins with a purity of 12%-15%.
For businesses, it makes the most economic sense to capture Biogenic CO2 from natural sources, as it’s a cheaper process to achieve the required purity. This is why the Carbon removers “made a commercial business decision to only capture biogenic CO2 from the highest purity, lowest capture cost sources”, says Raphael Pfaeltzer, chief operating officer of The Carbon Removers.
Historically, most of Europe’s CCU activity came from just a few factories that produced ammonia. That process is unique because it creates high-purity biogenic CO2, which is even purer than what’s produced from biomethane or alcohol production. But things are beginning to shift. New technologies are emerging, and the CCUS industry is beginning to grow into a real, functioning market, with more diverse players and opportunities.
How Scotland leads in CCUS
A strong CCUS value chain with a range of diverse services is essential for developing this young industry. In Scotland, Aberdeen is emerging as a hotspot for Scottish businesses making CCUS innovation their focus.
Axis, an internationally recognised provider of oil and gas consultancy services, started offering CCUS services in 2015. It uses its knowledge of wells and reservoirs to identify areas for carbon storage. Another company, Precision Impulse, can confirm locations for safely storing carbon through seismic monitoring technology. While Kraken Robotics can monitor the integrity of subsea CCUS infrastructure.
Bolstering the Scottish CCUS value chain is the experience and talent from the North Sea oil and gas industry, along with world-class research from the country’s universities. The growing industry also has support in the form of government funding and help from economic development agencies such as Scottish Enterprise.
“Scotland is seen to be a leader in the energy transition, and it obviously has a huge depth of talent in oil and gas. Frankly, it’s oil and gas people who you want to be implementing CCS projects,” explains Peter Clark, Technical Director and Senior Reservoir Engineer at Belltree.
“There's a huge opportunity to use the highly respected talent we have in Scotland. We've been exporting training and oil and gas knowledge to the rest of the world for years.
“We can become world-leading experts in CCS and export that to countries who may be years behind us.”
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