Equinor expands UK hydrogen, CCS ambitions
Expanding its commitments in the country, Norway’s Equinor said June 28 during meetings with UK officials that climate ambitions cannot be achieved without hydrogen and carbon capture technology.
In a bilateral meeting in Oslo with the UK and Norwegian energy secretaries, Equinor said it was tripling its ambitions for hydrogen in an effort to decarbonise the Humber industrial region in the UK. That level brings Equinor’s commitment to 1.6 GW of hydrogen production.
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The Norwegian company leads a 600 MW facility in the UK that can produce blue hydrogen from natural gas, along with carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. The company said it will allow a regional power station to switch over to a hydrogen fuel blend, which could reduce overall CO2 emissions from the plant by as much as 1mn tonnes/year.
“Without CCS and hydrogen, at scale, there is no viable path to net zero and realising the Paris goals,” Equinor CEO Anders Opedal said. “Our low-carbon projects in the UK build on our own industrial experience and will play a major role in setting the UK’s industrial heartlands in a leading position.”
The announcement came the same week that Equinor made a preliminary deal with United States Steel to study CCS and hydrogen development in the states of Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Hydrogen is pitched as a solution for decarbonising energy-intensive industries like steel manufacturing. If produced from natural gas, the resulting CO2 emissions can be captured in order to make the fuel low carbon.
Equinor in the US produces gas in the Marcellus and Utica formations of the Appalachian basin. It is also spearheading Norway's Northern Lights CCS project in the North Sea, and is participating in several schemes to produce hydrogen from gas in the UK.