UK: The company has become the first aviation industry partner for the direct air capture (DAC) facility being created by Storegga alongside technical partner Carbon Engineering – whose backers include Bill Gates.

The partners have started preliminary engineering and design of the proposed plant, which would be located in the vicinity of the St Fergus gas terminal near Peterhead.

It is hoped that the DAC plant will be up and running by 2026 and capable of sequestering one million tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually.

DAC technology is viewed by some as a viable way for difficult-to-decarbonize industries to reduce their emissions and progress towards net-zero.

They can enter into contracts with DAC plant operators, who will capture an agreed amount of carbon dioxide for the customer.

DAC has also been likened to “time travel” as it lets companies take responsibility for and scrub out past emissions.

If businesses know how much carbon dioxide they emitted following their launch, they could pay to have that same volume removed from the atmosphere.

Nick Cooper, chief executive of Storegga, said he was “really pleased” Virgin Atlantic had become an early DAC customer.

He said: “It is excellent that Virgin have chosen to embrace DAC as an offsetting solution and to support our facility in north-east Scotland; Europe’s first at-scale deployment of DAC.”

“The need for high quality, permanent, engineered offsetting is clear.

“To reach our net zero goals and prevent significant temperature rises, we need to utilize all the tools available to us.

“Technical offsetting with DAC is urgently needed at scale to sit alongside nature-based offsetting.

“Last week’s IPCC report is an alarm call to all of us. The quicker we wake up to this, the better our chances of reaching net-zero.”

Juha Jarvinen, chief commercial officer at Virgin Atlantic, said: “Innovation and sustainability leadership is firmly in our DNA and we’re excited to be the first in the aviation industry to partner with Storegga to progress the development of DAC solutions in the UK.