A group of twelve companies and organisations have submitted a £75 million bid for government funding to help create a zero-carbon industrial hub in the Humber region by 2040.
The Zero Carbon Humber partnership said the project could reduce the UK’s total annual carbon emissions by 15 per cent, save businesses around £27.5 billion in carbon taxes over the next two decades, safeguard 55,000 existing jobs and create thousands more.
The cluster would be anchored around the Hydrogen to Humber (H2H) Saltend project led by Equinor, which is aiming to build the world’s largest hydrogen production plant at PX Group’s chemicals park in Saltend.
The plant would convert natural gas to hydrogen while capturing and storing most of the carbon emissions from the process. This low-carbon hydrogen would be supplied to facilities in the park, including Triton Power’s gas power station, which would burn a blend of hydrogen and methane in its upgraded Mitsubishi turbines.
A pipeline network developed by National Grid Ventures would transport hydrogen and carbon dioxide to and from other energy-intensive industrial sites in the region.
The CO2 pipeline would extend to the Drax power station in North Yorkshire, which would enable the generation of “negative emissions” by capturing those from its biomass units. They would be compressed at Centrica Storage’s Easington site and stored under the North Sea using offshore infrastructure shared with the Teesside industrial cluster.
The network would also run to SSE’s Keadby site, where it would enable the creation of the UK’s first gas-fired power station fitted with carbon capture and storage as part of its Keadby 3 project, and to Uniper’s Killingholme site, where it is planning to build another low-carbon hydrogen production facility.
The Zero Carbon Humber partnership has applied for a share of £131 million being offered by the government from its Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund as part of a competition to implement plans for the decarbonisation of industrial clusters.
The group was awarded a share of £1 million in April to develop its plans in the first phase of the competition. Grants of between £10 million and £20 million per project are now being offered in the second.
“The Zero Carbon Humber bid demonstrates the ambitious action needed to drive a low carbon recovery and reach net zero,” said Equinor executive vice president and country manager Al Cook. “This proposal, supported by a broad group of companies, will bring huge benefits to the Humber economy, protecting and creating jobs and reducing emissions.
He continued: “The H2H Saltend project at the centre of this bid will both demonstrate the value of hydrogen and carbon capture across the wider energy system and unlock the transformation of the Humber into the UK’s largest and greenest industrial cluster.
Jon Butterworth, managing director of National Grid Ventures, said: “The Humber region offers unmatched potential to protect and grow jobs and decarbonise the UK’s largest industrial heartland. A key to unlocking that potential will be to deliver the transport and storage infrastructure that will incentivise industrial emitters to adopt carbon capture technology.”
Drax chief executive Will Gardiner said: “Advancing the Zero Carbon Humber plan is a major opportunity to decarbonise the UK’s most carbon-intensive industrial region – protecting jobs, tackling climate change and helping this uniquely well-placed area to deliver clean growth after Covid.
“Drax’s pioneering work developing bioenergy with carbon capture and storage could deliver 16 million tonnes of negative emissions a year – critical for the Humber’s efforts to reach net zero and also positioning the UK as a world leader in a vital carbon removals technology that will be needed globally to meet climate targets.”
Carlos Gonzalez Peton, chief executive of Mitsubishi Power Europe, said: “Combined-cycle power plants are currently the UK’s largest flexible power source and converting gas turbines to burn hydrogen will allow for a deep decarbonisation of the UK power sector while providing reliable and clean power to the grid. Zero Carbon Humber is a monumental step towards 100 per cent hydrogen gas turbine operations which we are working towards.”
Other partners in the project include Associated British Ports, British Steel and the University of Sheffield.