UK CCS incentives attract Eni
Italian energy company Eni and UK project development company Progressive Energy have agreed to work together on carbon capture and storage (CCS) within the HyNet North West low carbon cluster project in Lancashire, UK, they said May 27.
The partners have drummed up potential interest from industrial emitters to move ahead with the scheme. The rising price of carbon on the UK emissions trading scheme is also an encouraging signal.
Eni will develop and operate both the onshore and offshore transportation and storage of CO2 in their Liverpool Bay assets and Progressive Energy will lead and co-ordinate the capture and hydrogen aspects of the project on behalf of Hynet North West. Eni's gas is delivered to the Barrow terminal.
The partners said the HyNet project is essential for UK government to achieve several objectives, as well as the local net zero targets of industrial centres in the northwest.
Eni has a CO2 storage appraisal licence that would use its fields in Liverpool Bay and earlier this year it founded Liverpool Bay CCS in readiness to operate transport and storage. The project was given a further boost when it secured a funding of £33mn from the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and £39mn from the HyNet consortium in March. And in May the government announced a £167 ($236)mn support package for projects to drive the net-zero carbon initiatve.
Eni said its Liverpool Bay infrastructure, near the industrial heartlands of the northwest and north Wales, would help HyNet transform "one of the most energy-intensive industrial districts in the UK into the world’s first low carbon industrial cluster."
The project is also "fully aligned with Eni’s commitment to energy transition, decarbonisation and the circular economy. It will help to ensure that we can play our part in the UK net zero targets."
The northwest industrial cluster is the largest concentration of advanced manufacturing and chemical production in the UK and is home to more manufacturing jobs than any UK region. But, Progressive Energy said, "this level of industry brings with it an environmental problem – high levels of CO2 emissions." It is planned to be operational in the middle of the decade, which would put it in the forefront of UK projects, although there were no details regarding annual injection capacity when at plateau injection.
Progressive Energy advised the upstream regulator the Oil & Gas Authority on the suitability of Bacton, on the east coast, as a blue hydrogen hub. That is an area without much industry but it is the landing point for a large share of UK continental shelf gas, as well as for imports from continental Europe.
The project that has been the longest talked-of is Acorn CCS, which, following a restructuring in mid-April, is owned and operated by a mix of banks and UK North Sea oil and gas producers. That is a blue hydrogen/CCS project based at the St Fergus terminal in Scotland. And there is also the possibility of developing another terminal, Theddlethorpe, as a hydrogen hub.