United Kingdom – The Hydrogen to Humber Saltend (H2H Saltend) production facility owned by Equinor has advanced through Phase 2 of the government’s cluster sequencing process, according to a statement from the Department of Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
The chosen projects will now move on to the Phase-2 cluster sequencing process’ due diligence phase so they can connect to the East Coast Cluster’s CO2 infrastructure and start operating in the middle of the 2020s.
The East Coast Cluster, which links the Humber and Teesside through CO2 transport and storage infrastructure, was previously chosen to become one of the first two “CCUS clusters” in the UK. Both of Equinor’s bids for two new gas-fired power plants with carbon captureā€”one in Teesside, developed in collaboration with bp, and one at Keadby, developed with SSE Thermalā€”were accepted.
Zero carbon catalyst
With a 600 megawatt low carbon hydrogen production plant situated at the Saltend Chemicals Park (SCP), east of Hull, H2H Saltend is Equinor’s flagship project. H2H Saltend could help a number of important industries at SCP and the larger East Yorkshire area reduce CO2 emissions by nearly one million tonnes annually. The Humber is the most carbon-intensive industrial region in the UK. The final projects chosen will begin operations in 2026 or 2027.
The H2H Saltend project serves as the catalyst for the larger Zero Carbon Humber initiative, a coalition of 14 organizations supported by UKRI and dedicated to making the Humber the first net zero industrial cluster in the world by 2040.
In addition, Equinor is preparing to build a second, 1.2-gigawatt, low-carbon hydrogen production facility in the Humber, which when combined with H2H Saltend, could meet 18% of the UK government’s 2030 goal of 10 GW of hydrogen production capacity. Equinor also has plans to build the first at-scale, 100% hydrogen power station in the world at Keadby as well as a potential hydrogen storage facility at Aldbrough in collaboration with SSE Thermal.
