Equinor, Partners Make Bid for UK Hydrogen/CCS Funding

Norway's Equinor and its 11 partners in the Zero Carbon Humber (ZCH) project have applied for funding to decarbonise the UK's most carbon-intensive industrial region, they said on October 7.

The companies and organisations have jointly applied for £75mn ($97mn) in public and private sector Phase 2 funding for the project in northeast England, which would "create a low carbon cluster in the Humber, the UK's largest and most carbon-intensive industrial region." The group secured Phase 1 funding in April.

ZCH involves building the Hydrogen to Humber (H2H) Saltend plant, which will convert North Sea natural gas arriving onshore at the Easington terminal into hydrogen. It will be the largest plant of its kind in the world, combining a 600-MW autothermal reforming unit with carbon, capture and storage (CCS) technology.

H2H Saltend is expected to reduce CO₂ emissions by around 900,000 metric tons/year in its first phase. ZCH also involves a hydrogen and CO₂ network that will be developed by National Grid Ventures to connect H2H Saltend with other industrial sites in the Humber region, including the Drax power station, SEE Thermal's Keadby complex, Uniper's Killingholme facility and the British Steel plant at Scunthorpe.

CO₂ will be transported offshore for storage in reservoirs in the southern North Sea.

The goal is to make the industrial cluster net-zero in terms of CO₂ emissions by 2040. Equinor is joined in the ZCH consortium by Associated British Ports, British Steel, Centrica Storage, Drax Group, Mitsubishi Power, National Grid Ventures, px Group, SSE Thermal, Saltend Cogeneration Company, Uniper, and the University of Sheffield's Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre.