Good morning everybody, I’m Neil McCulloch, CEO of Spirit Energy … and while my West Midlands accent has acquired a bit of an Aberdonian twang don’t let it fool you … I, and Spirit, know this region very, very well indeed. 

We have an important, meaningful and historic connection with the North West … one that goes back five decades … and history is the key theme to keep in mind today … not least because we’re lucky to be spending the day in this absolutely magnificent venue.

I’m going to take you on a journey … a whistlestop tour that spans the Paleozoic era to the present day.

And, befitting our illustrious surroundings, it’s natural that we should reflect - a little bit - on the cyclical nature of history … of boom times and of economic growth.

Now, if this is your first visit to the museum, I’ll do my best not to ruin the tour … in fact, I’ll encourage you to check it out for yourself as you’ll find plenty of evidence to back up everything that I’m going to say.

But before we do head back in time, we’ll start here in the present, with the Spirit bit … as I said, we know this neck of the woods, and we know it well.

Three things happened in 1974, I started school, Barrow-in-Furness moved from Lancashire to Cumbria and SW of Barrow the South Morecambe Gas field was discovered. The UK’s single accumulation of natural gas. 1:0 to Cumbria.

Recently, we marked 40 years of production from the East Irish Sea fields just a couple of months ago. Throughout that time we have played a crucial role across many fronts … we’ve produced enough gas to meet the needs of about 2 million homes every day. And we helped create the conditions for the UK to wean itself off coal in our energy mix.

We’ve created and maintained hundreds of skilled, well-paid jobs in Barrow directly … and through long lasting partnerships many thousands jobs indirectly, across the supply chain throughout the region. 

Today, we are embodying the energy transition that everyone’s talking about … we’re actually evolving as a company and evolving what we do … we’re committed to move from producing gas to storing carbon dioxide in those very same fields. As a strong believer in partnerships and local content, as well as evolving what we do and how we do it, we are evolving who we work with to maximise the opportunity and spread the benefit. 

We’re creating the UK’s - and potentially Europe’s - biggest carbon storage development … we call it Morecambe Net Zero or MNZ and you’ll come to know it very well too … not the intricacies of the development, no … but the economic benefits it can help unlock for this region.

We’re working with our Peak Cluster partners – the UK’s leading cement and lime producers – to safeguard and create 13 thousand jobs in this region … to deliver £5 billion of direct investment in this region … and to deliver the decarbonisation capabilities that will make this region a most attractive proposition for the data centres, AI developers and other major infrastructure developers who are eyeing up the UK for billions of pounds of investment.

Imagine if zero carbon cement travels a short distance by electric vehicle and is employed in building whatever has been and will be announced by the government in this region. 

Who doesn’t want that? Well therein lies one of the issues … every region in the UK wants that – and plenty of countries outside the UK want it too … so how do we secure it for the North West? 

Well, we know how.

Now, this is where I break with tradition … ordinarily, I’d continue with an impassioned speech on carbon capture and storage. 

I’d be extolling the virtues of the technology … I’d be praising the ingenious yet mature processes involved in capturing carbon molecules.

I’d tell you all about how those molecules are transported safely and deposited permanently in geological formations … in formations that are so perfect, so secure, so absolutely fit-for-purpose, that you’d be forgiven for thinking Mother Nature herself had decided CCS was absolutely the way to go, many millennia ago.

But I’m not going to do any of that … I – and I’m sure you – would rather hear about what MNZ can do for the UK more broadly, and for the North West in particular.

How it can protect traditional industries and unlock new ones.

How it’s part of a new industrial revolution and what that can mean for this city and this part of the world.

How it can deliver both economic growth and a cleaner, greener energy future.

The fine city of Manchester and the North West region itself have always been at the very centre of things … and, in keeping with the purpose of the Good Growth Summit, we can make sure they continue to be.

And, you know, we’re got a pretty damn good track record to build on.

So, let’s go back to around 200 million years ago. Hard to believe though it may be, it didn’t always rain in Manchester … and we were a lot further away from the coast than we are today.

This patch of dirt – as it was then, respectfully - was very hot, very arid. Think Death Valley.

In fact, we were tucked in, near the centre of the super-continent Pangaea – an enormous landmass that included all of today’s continents … over time they drifted apart from one another and ended up where they are today.

It was back then that adjacent sediments were being deposited that would later become the very building blocks of the first industrial revolution. 

Now wind the clock forwards to 200 years ago.

Manchester is now the geographic centre of a small island called Great Britain … and the people here were experiencing a mix of emotions and fortunes. (There’s an obvious Man United or Man City joke to be inserted here but let’s move on…)

Now, there was a sense – a real, and palpable feeling - that both Manchester and the wider region were on the cusp of something special … the industrial revolution as we know it.

Newly-built mills had begun to tower overhead … warehouses were bustling with activity … optimism and excitement were in abundance.

There was rapid growth in the cotton industry … it was driving expansion … it was creating jobs … it was breathing new life into the area. 

This growing industry was connecting Manchester and the North West to the wider world. It was establishing new, global networks of trade … it was putting Manchester on the map as a hub for manufacturing excellence and technical ingenuity.

Now fast forward another 100 years and we’re in the 1920s.

The country was slowly recovering from the horrors of the Great War … recovering, rebuilding, rediscovering itself.

Hard and horrible as those days were, once again, there was that feeling … a feeling of optimism … a renewed hope ... a sense of breaking new ground and starting on a new and exciting journey of growth.

The North West was experiencing rapid industrial growth all over again ... this time through the construction of major infrastructure … making best use of new technologies and techniques … creating new jobs and prosperity.

Manchester in particular was once again experiencing a real period of economic success … major projects were underway like the rebuilding of the Royal Exchange … the opening of the Wythenshawe Aerodrome – the UK’s first municipal airport, by the way – not to mention the construction of the first greyhound track at Belle Vue.

History was repeating itself and the region was embracing new industries and reaping the economic rewards with this forward-thinking approach brought with it.

Can you see where I might be going with this?!

But wait, let’s fast forward another 100 years and we find ourselves, my friends, here today … together, in the Science and History museum for the Good Growth Summit … and once more at the threshold of the next industrial revolution … fuelled by clean energy and decarbonised industry.

We find ourselves at a tipping point for a new period of growth driven by what our Secretary of State for energy has rightly termed “the economic opportunity of the 21st century” – the transition to net zero.

Now … I recognise I have been flirting with the very real risk of a lifetime ban from the museum … for summarising a good proportion of the tour in under 10 minutes … sorry guys … but I do think it was important to reflect on the region’s heritage … and to remind ourselves that we’ve got history on our side. 

When it comes to taking the lead on delivering real, value-creating, responsible and sustainable economic growth, this part of the world has the track record that others can only dream of.

The evidence is all around us, in here … and it’s all around us, out there … and it’s in your DNA.

We’ve got Jane Gaston from Net Zero North West in the audience here … where are you Jane? …. it was at the launch of Net Zero North West’s manifesto at the House of Lords late last year that Sarah Jones, minister of state for energy and DBT, told the audience the North West can be “a beacon for low carbon investment”.

I’d go further than that.

Aberdeen became known as the oil and gas capital of Europe …. the North West can and should become the Low Carbon Capital of Europe … or, why not, the World.

But it won’t happen by accident … and it won’t happen without us all, collectively, making very loud, very clear calls to decision-makers and policy-makers to make it happen.

If we all get behind the opportunity of the energy transition, we can safeguard the existing, traditional industries that this region’s economic prosperity was built upon.

We can create the new, green jobs that go along with the low carbon energy developments that companies – like Spirit and our Peak Cluster partners, also in the audience here – are eager to build. 

It has to be sustainable … it has to be responsible … it has to be affordable … it has to provide value for taxpayers and it has to be delivered by the worldclass workforce that already exists, right here in the North West.

Now, like you, I’m looking forward to hearing from all of today’s speakers so let me wrap this up with a request.

Don’t wait for someone else to transform the North West into the low carbon capital … write to your Mayors … write to your MPs … talk to your council leaders … tell them you expect them to secure this investment for the North West … tell them you’re not prepared to see it go elsewhere … tell them you expect the North West to be the epicentre of the net zero industrial revolution … and do it now, become a MIMBY, it Must Happen in my Backyard!

With our partners in the Peak Cluster we aim to bring in up to £5bn of private sector investment.

In the outline business case we submitted ahead of the Comprehensive Spending Review, we showed that this helped the UK Government get back on track for its pledges to scale CCUS to 50MTPA by 2035 … we showed this can be done at a best-in-class value-for-money measure for Government … and we showed it can be done without extension of the proposed funding envelope. 

We showed a story that is the beginning of a new industrial sector in the North West that will crowd other industrial sectors around it … and the footprints it leaves will be in the economy, in employment, in education, in greater equity and in a lower atmospheric concentration of CO2.

So, let’s stop looking back and instead look forwards 75 years to 2100 … alright, I’ll be pushing up daisies but what should have happened is that this region:-

1. Grasped the economic opportunity associated with its natural and human capital.
2. Created equity of opportunity meaningfully and its institutions played a key role. 
3. The experience gained resulted in knowledge transfer allowing the region to continue to be at the centre of things domestically and globally; and
4. One billion tonnes of CO2 that otherwise would have gone into earth’s atmosphere is now stored safely for geological time.

Every human alive benefits from that being true … but it was this region that secured the profound economic impact of doing it by using its blessings wisely.

This is good growth writ large, and it needs your support. Even if your only pledge today is to say “I need to find out more about this”, then that is a great first step …  better still if you become a MIMBY by 4pm today.

Thank you.