Ten years on: why the north east’s best energy chapter is still ahead

As the Net Zero Technology Centre comes to the end of the 10-year, £180m Aberdeen City Region deal, CEO Myrtle Dawes sets out its future vision.

A decade ago, I remember conversations in the industry where the phrase “net zero” was still met with a raised eyebrow.

The North Sea was in a downturn, confidence was fragile, and the idea of Aberdeen positioning itself as a global energy transition hub felt, to some, like wishful thinking. What a difference ten years makes.

The Net Zero Technology Centre – born as the Oil and Gas Technology Centre in 2016 as a recommendation of the Maximising Economic Recovery UK strategy and as a flagship project of the Aberdeen City Region Deal (ACRD) – was a bet on the future of this region. It was a bet that the skills, infrastructure and ingenuity concentrated here could be harnessed to help solve one of the defining challenges of our era: delivering a secure, affordable and lower-carbon energy system.

That decade of work is now behind us. Over 130 startups accelerated. More than 70 technologies commercialised. Over £270 million in industry funding secured. More than 170 field trials completed or underway. Technologies like Mission Zero and their award-winning direct air capture (DAC) solution, AirControl’s autonomous inspection systems, and GDI’s digital asset management platform are now being adopted at scale across the industry. These businesses represent real tools doing real work, reducing emissions and costs for operators across the basin.

A decade on, NZTC’s role is now to turn this innovation into real-world, large-scale impact.

The Aberdeen City Region Deal funding was always time-limited, and we have long been preparing for what comes next.

Our mission isn’t changing, our model is. The work of the first decade was to take technologies from concept through to demonstration and early commercialisation. That was the right focus for that time. The work of the next decade is fundamentally different: it is about getting technologies deployed at scale, across real assets, in the real world.

This is a shift that the industry itself is demanding. The conversations I am having with operators, investors and supply chain leaders across the north east of Scotland are not about whether new technologies work – in most cases, we’ve already proven that they do. The question now is: how do we get them deployed faster, more cheaply, and more consistently? How do we remove the barriers between the testing ground and the field?

That’s the challenge we are building our next phase around. Our new technology testing hub, opening later this year at the former Weatherford site at Bridge of Don, is a statement of intent. By autumn, a 32-metre rig will be visible once more on Aberdeen’s skyline – not as a symbol of the old economy, but as a working facility for validating the technologies that will define the next chapter of energy. From geothermal and carbon storage to well integrity and advanced robotics, the subsurface capabilities concentrated here matter enormously for the energy transition, and for energy security.

We are also evolving how we work with industry and government. Rather than a broad, grant-funded innovation programme, NZTC is becoming a more focused, commercially-driven organisation: one that earns its place by delivering measurable value to the companies and sectors that need it most. We will still support our award-winning TechX accelerator – one of Europe’s leading startup hubs – and we will continue to run industry-funded collaborations and technology qualification programmes with both government and partners.

None of this diminishes the role of the north east of Scotland in the energy transition – if anything, it reinforces it.

Aberdeen has skills, infrastructure, and a track record that no other UK region can match when it comes to delivering complex energy projects at scale. That is as true for offshore wind and geothermal as it is for oil and gas. We are not choosing between old energy and new energy. We are focused on doing both better, faster and more sustainably.

This transition will not be without its challenges, and I have been honest with our industry partners and colleagues about that. Reshaping an organisation is never easy – I am deeply proud of what our team, past and present, have built together. And I am determined that the next phase of NZTC will justify the confidence that industry, government and our partners have placed in us.

Ten years ago, through the ACRD, industry came together to believe that this region could lead. That belief was justified. Now, we need the same conviction again – that the north east’s greatest contribution to the global energy transition is not behind us, but ahead.

Article first published in Energy Voice on 1st May 2026. Read here.