The UK and Norway will launch a new Green Industrial Partnership to combine their capabilities on clean energy and drive economic growth.
The new agreement – which the two countries have a joint ambition to sign in spring 2025 – will support the UK’s aim to secure home-grown energy and protect billpayers.
The Prime Minister will visit a cross-border carbon transport and storage facility in Norway to see how the benefits of such projects for the UK will reignite industrial heartlands, create jobs, and turbocharge growth for decades to come.
BP and Norwegian company Equinor are playing a major role in the UK’s first carbon capture usage and storage (CCUS) projects, called the Northern Endurance Partnership and the Net Zero Teesside.
The projects will deliver thousands of skilled jobs to the region, and Net Zero Teesside will provide up to 1 million homes with clean power from 2028.
UK prime minister Keir Starmer said: “This Green Industrial Partnership will allow us to seize the opportunities from a new era of clean energy, driving investment into the UK and boosting jobs both now and in the future.
“It will harness the UK’s unique potential to become a world-leader in carbon capture – from the North Sea to the coastal south – reigniting industrial heartlands and delivering on our Plan for Change.
“Our partnership with Norway will make the UK more energy secure, ensuring we are never again exposed to international energy price spikes and the whims of dictators like Putin.”
Alongside the new Green Industrial Partnership, the two countries have committed to initiate work to identify gaps and challenges to the development of our common North Sea as a hub for carbon storage and to develop a bilateral agreement or arrangement on cross-border transport of CO2 under the London Protocol.
Norwegian prime minister Jonas Gahr Store said: “We need cooperation, knowledge and innovation to better equip us to face the future. The partnership with the UK will be important to facilitate more green jobs both in Norway and the UK, and for advancing the green transition.
“We work closely with the UK in a wide range of areas. We have cooperated in the field of carbon capture and storage for more than 20 years, and further strengthening our cooperation with the UK will help us to cut emissions and create green jobs.
“It is important to show our partners what Norway can bring to the table in our joint efforts to achieve our common goals.”