A plan to position Scotland as the world leader in carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been published.

The carbon capture and storage roadmap, produced by the Scottish Government and Scottish Enterprise, is a comprehensive set of actions to put Scotland at the forefront of CCS development.

These include:

* Setting out a vision for CCS in Scotland including aiming to develop a number of demonstration projects;

* Maximising EU and UK support for Scotland's ambitions;

* Developing of an offshore carbon licensing regime;

* Identification of the skills and training needs to match industry demand.

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Energy Minister Jim Mather said: "Scotland has all the attributes to become a world leader in carbon capture. The North Sea alone has enough capacity to store emissions from industrial coal-fired plants for the next 200 years - a capacity greater than Netherlands, Denmark and Germany combined.

"Scotland already has elements of the required onshore and offshore infrastructure and our skills in the oil, gas and engineering industries can be utilised to help the industry grow and develop. As a hugely important technology in the fight against climate change, CCS offers Scotland a fantastic platform for low carbon economic growth.

"We now want to see a number of CCS demonstration projects developed in Scotland. Today's plan takes us further down that road by setting out our ambitions and the actions needed if our vision of CCS playing a part in our future energy supply is to be realised."

The Scottish Government will work with their partners in industry, academia and in the UK Government and Europe to ensure that Scotland can deliver on the opportunities that CCS provides.

(GK/BMcC)