Italian energy company Eni has reached financial close with the United Kingdom’s Department of Energy Security and Net Zero ( DESNZ ) for the Liverpool Bay CCS ( carbon capture and storage ) project.

Among the lenders were Mizuho as mandated lead arranger, hedging bank, facility trustee and security agent, and KfW IPEX-Bank, which is providing £100 million ( US$134.21 million ) to the project. Norton Rose Fulbright advised the lenders while Linklaters acted on behalf of Eni.

Eni is the operator of the carbon dioxide transport and storage system of the £2.5 billion HyNet Industrial Cluster in the northwest of England and North Wales. HyNet is one of the UK’s initial Track 1 carbon capture and storage projects.

Over its 25-year lifespan, the Liverpool Bay CCS ( carbon capture and storage ) project will operate as the backbone of the HyNet Cluster to transport carbon dioxide from capture plants across the northwest of England and North Wales through new and repurposed infrastructure.

The project will make use of established oil and gas technologies and reservoirs. It will also focus on asset re-use by repurposing approximately 149 kilometres of existing onshore and offshore pipelines to transport CO2 delivered by regional industrial emitters to depleted gas fields in the Irish Sea. 

The financial close allows the Liverpool Bay CCS project to move into the construction phase, unlocking key investments in supply chain contracts.

The UK government has allocated £21.7 billion to be invested over a 25-year period across the first two CCS clusters in the country. Following the recent financial close of the Northern Endurance Partnership project, this transaction is the second commercial project for financing a major CCS hub in the UK.

The government is prioritizing the development of the CCS sector as a key lever in its decarbonization and industrial strategy, in line with the broader objective of creating growth opportunities in the country’s industrial heartlands.

“We are proud to support this European landmark project that creates state of-the-art infrastructure for combining decarbonization and industrial production,” says Andreas Ufer, member of the management board of KfW IPEX-Bank. “HyNet is a forward-looking example for the transition to a net-zero economy in heavily industrialized areas.”