BP Plans UK's Biggest Hydrogen Project

BP has unveiled plans for the UK's largest hydrogen project in north England, capable of producing up to 1 GW of blue hydrogen from natural gas by 2030, the UK major said on March 18.

The proposed H2 Teesside project would help decarbonise industry in the Teesside region, one of the UK's biggest industrial clusters. It will account for 20% of the UK's target for 2030 hydrogen production capacity. The project will be developed in tandem with Net Zero Teesside, a decarbonisation project led by BP, Eni, Equinor, Shell and Total, which earlier this week secured government funding.

H2 Teesside will also capture and store 2mn metric tons/year of CO₂, equivalent to capturing the emissions from heating 1mn UK houses. The CO₂ will be stored in geological structures under the North Sea seabed.

"Clean hydrogen is an essential complement to electrification on the path to net zero," BP's vice president for gas and low carbon energy, Dev Sanyal said. "Blue hydrogen, integrated with carbon capture and storage, can provide the scale and reliability needed by industrial processes. It can also play an essential role in decarbonising hard-to-electrify industries and driving down the cost of the energy transition."

BP has also signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to supply Venator, a major producer of titanium dioxide pigments and performance activities, with clean hydrogen from H2 Teesside. It agreed a second MoU with gas distributor Northern Gas Networks, to co-operate in decarbonising the grid.