Virgin Atlantic turning green after signing up for Scottish air capture facility

Storegga, the firm behind a major carbon capture and storage project in Scotland, has signed up Virgin Atlantic as an early customer for its direct air capture facility.

The large-scale North-east facility is being developed in partnership with Carbon Engineering, utilising its direct air capture (DAC) technology, promising a cost-effective way to permanently eliminate CO2 emissions from the atmosphere.

Virgin Atlantic, which has signed a memorandum of understanding with Storegga, has committed to purchase the “permanent and verifiable removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere” through the planned facility.

Juha Jarvinen, the airline’s chief commercial officer, 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 direct air capture solutions in the UK.

Virgin Atlantic: 'Innovation and sustainability leadership is firmly in our DNA'

“Reducing Virgin Atlantic’s carbon footprint is our number one climate action priority and the removal of CO2 directly from the atmosphere has the potential to become a powerful tool in reaching our target of net zero carbon emissions by 2050.”

Nick Cooper, chief executive of Storegga, added: “We are really pleased to welcome Virgin Atlantic as an early DAC customer. 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 utilise all the tools available to us.”

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