Energy giant bp announced today plans to develop a large-scale green hydrogen facility capable of delivering up to 500 MWe of hydrogen production by 2030, in Teesside, helping to establish the northeast UK region into a major clean hydrogen hub and advancing the decarbonization of industrial and heavy transport sectors.
The new project, HyGreen Teesside, is anticipated to be developed in multiple stages, matching production with demand, with bp planning in the initial phase to develop 60 MWe of installed hydrogen production capacity by 2025.
Hydrogen is viewed as one of the key building blocks of the transition to a cleaner energy future, particularly for sectors with difficult to abate emissions, in which renewable energy solutions such as wind or solar are less practical.
Despite being the most abundant element in the universe, however, there are no pure hydrogen deposits on earth, and it must be extracted from other materials. The extraction process often creates pollutants and GHG emissions. Significant investments are required to develop clean extraction processes, such as green hydrogen, which uses a renewable energy-powered electrolysis process to extract hydrogen from water, or blue hydrogen, which converts natural gas into hydrogen and CO₂, which is then captured and permanently stored.
bp’s plans for HyGreen Teeside follows the company’s announcement earlier this year of plans for a blue hydrogen production facility in the region, H2Teesside, with production capacity targeted at 1 GW by 2030, making it the largest hydrogen project in the UK.
Louise Jacobsen Plutt, bp’s Senior Vice President for Hydrogen and CCUS, said:
“Low carbon hydrogen will be essential in decarbonizing hard-to-abate industrial sectors including heavy transport. Together, HyGreen and H2Teesside can help transform Teesside into the UK’s green heart, strengthening its people, communities and businesses. This is exactly the type of energy we want to create and more importantly deliver.”
According to bp, the projects are helping Teesside to emerge as the UK’s first major hydrogen transport hub, aimed at enabling the large scale decarbonization of heavy transport, airports, ports and rail in the UK.
The development of the Teesside hydrogen hub marks a significant contribution to the UK’s decarbonization strategy. In November 2020, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the launch of a 10-point plan for the UK’s Green Industrial Revolution, including billions of pounds of investments in areas including renewable energy, clean mobility and green building initiatives. Low carbon hydrogen generation is a key element of the plan, with the country targeting 5GW of production capacity by 2030.
UK Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said:
“This exciting project builds on our ongoing development of hydrogen in the area through the Tees Valley Hydrogen Transport Hub. It’ll help pave the way for its use across all transport modes, creating high-quality, green jobs in the process.”
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