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Japanese trading house Mitsui & Co Ltd said it would invest in the development of a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in Britain.

The Japanese company will take a 15.4% share in Storegga Geotechnologies which is developing the Acorn CCS project to store carbon dioxide emissions in depleted North Sea oil and gas reservoirs.

CCS traps emissions and buries them underground but is not yet at the commercialisation stage.

The project is being led by a wholly-owned subsidiary of Storegga Geotechnologies, Pale Blue Dot Energy, with support from Macquarie Group with a 21.5% shareholding and Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC with a 15.4% shareholding.

The project is expected to be operational by the mid-2020s and will capture some of the 340,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions at the St Fergus gas terminal.

There will also be a project there to convert North Sea natural gas into hydrogen and the CO2 emissions will be captured by CCS. The hydrogen will be used in transport applications, and in gas grids to decarbonise heating in homes and industries.