The Zero Carbon Humber Partnership has made a £75 million public and private sector funded bid.
The partnership has applied for funding from Phase Two of the government’s Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge, with investment also coming from the companies themselves.
This follows the partnership’s successful application for funding from Phase One of the Challenge, which will go towards the various projects including low carbon hydrogen, carbon capture and carbon removal projects.
As part of one of the projects, Drax Power Station is to connect to a CO2 pipeline network – being developed by National Grid Ventures – to provide bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).
The network is also to link the Equinor-led Hydrogen to Humber (H2H) Saltend project – which is seeking to establish the world’s largest hydrogen production plant with carbon capture – to energy-intensive industrial sites throughout the region.
This, the partnership said, will enable further decarbonisation as additional businesses switch to low carbon hydrogen and capture their CO2 emissions, which will be compressed at Centrica Storage’s Easington site and stored under the Southern North Sea.
The scheme also has potential for other future projects to attract inward investment, including integrating offshore wind power into hydrogen production and supplying hydrogen transport fueling hubs.
The bid for matched funding covers obtaining land rights, development consents and front-end engineering design for H2H Saltend and the onshore pipeline infrastructure for CO2 and hydrogen needed for the scheme to move towards a final investment decision on construction during 2023.
Will Gardiner, Drax CEO, said: “Advancing the Zero Carbon Humber plan is a major opportunity to decarbonise the UK’s most carbon-intensive industrial region – protecting jobs, tackling climate change and helping this uniquely well-placed area to deliver clean growth after COVID-19.”
Zero Carbon Humber was first announced in May 2019, with Drax, National Grid Ventures and Equinor signing a memorandum of understanding. It then expanded into a much larger consortium in April 2020.
It now includes Associated British Ports, British Steel, Centrica Storage, Drax, Equinor, Mitsubishi Power, National Grid Ventures, px Group, SSE Thermal, Saltend Cogeneration Company Limited, Uniper, and the University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC).
