Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s criticism of Britain’s investment climate brings two different energy questions into the same debate: how to keep industry competitive, and how to reduce its emissions. In September 2026, the INEOS founder said he had lost confidence in the UK and argued for more investment in North Sea oil and gas. His assessment was a business leader’s judgement, rather than a measure of the economy’s overall condition.
The setting made the argument particularly revealing. Ratcliffe was in Denmark for the opening of Greensand, an INEOS-led carbon storage project. The company was putting a new industrial facility into service while its chairman questioned whether Britain offered the conditions needed for comparable investment.
What Greensand actually does
The Greensand transport and storage operation connects facilities on land with a depleted offshore oil reservoir. INEOS says carbon dioxide initially comes primarily from Danish biomethane plants. It is liquefied, delivered by truck to a terminal at Port Esbjerg and loaded onto the dedicated vessel Carbon Destroyer 1.
The ship carries it to the Nini West reservoir, about 250 kilometres offshore, for injection roughly 1,800 metres beneath the seabed. INEOS describes the facility as the EU’s first full-scale carbon dioxide storage site. Its initial commercial phase is designed to handle up to 400,000 tonnes a year. That figure describes capacity, not a statement that this quantity has already been stored.
Ratcliffe’s argument at the launch was that cutting emissions should be compatible with keeping industrial activity in Europe. That is a commercial and policy position. Whether projects can deliver it at an acceptable cost depends on more than building a ship or opening a reservoir: capture facilities, customers, transport and long-term financing also have to connect.
Britain has funding commitments to convert into operations
Ratcliffe said he had wanted to develop carbon capture in Britain but considered government support insufficient. The government’s response was that it was supporting growth and investing in the technology. Those positions should be tested against identifiable projects and milestones, rather than treated as proof that either country offers a universally better business environment.
The government’s carbon capture programme records the commitment announced in October 2024 of up to £21.7 billion over 25 years. It describes support for clusters in north-west and north-east England, with projects at different stages of financing and development. Its published timeline envisages the first East Coast Cluster projects becoming operational from 2028.
A funding commitment is therefore different from an operating facility, just as a target date is different from a completed project. The useful comparison concerns which parts of the chain are financed, which are being built and which can already take customers’ carbon dioxide. Public funding alone does not establish commercial performance.
The programme also records intermediate steps: initial East Coast Cluster projects reached financial close in December 2024, followed by HyNet’s transport and storage network in April 2025. These milestones show why a comparison needs more detail than a headline funding total. Financing infrastructure and connecting individual capture plants are related but distinct tasks.
A warning about winter is not a shortage forecast
Ratcliffe also warned that a severe cold spell could expose weaknesses in gas supply. The government said it was confident in security of supply. Gas resilience needs its own assessment, separate from the case for storing captured carbon: the latter keeps carbon dioxide underground and does not provide fuel for a cold winter day.
National Gas’s review of winter 2025/26 provides useful context. It describes supplies from the UK Continental Shelf and Norway, supplemented by liquefied natural gas, storage and continental imports. It reports that flexible supplies responded during periods of high demand. That experience helps explain the system’s operation, but cannot guarantee conditions in a later winter.
The review also records lower overall demand than in the preceding winter, alongside sharper swings during cold periods. Network planning therefore has to consider the shape of demand as well as its seasonal total. A comfortable average can coexist with much more demanding individual days.
In a statement dated 22 October 2026, National Gas described a proposed agreement to maintain interconnector import capability at winter 2025/26 levels, subject to consultation and regulatory approval. The operator explicitly distinguished an assessment of resilience under unusually stressful conditions from an indication that gas shortages were expected.
The practical test is delivery
For industrial businesses, the debate is ultimately about dependable infrastructure and a credible route from policy to investment. Greensand provides a concrete example of a carbon transport and storage chain entering service. Britain’s funding programme offers a different set of projects and timetables to examine. Meanwhile, fuel supply requires its own evidence. Keeping those questions distinct makes Ratcliffe’s intervention more useful to assess without turning his confidence, or lack of it, into an economic forecast.
