BP has announced a new green hydrogen plant in Teesside in northeast England that it hopes will help develop the region as the UK’s first major hydrogen transport hub.

The Hygreen Teesside project will be developed in stages, with FID in 2023 being followed by first-phase construction of a 60MW electrolyser that will be ramped up to 500MW by 2030.

The firm is already the lead developer on a 1GW blue hydrogen facility in the region called H2Teesside.

“Together, Hygreen and H2Teesside can help transform Teesside into the UK’s green heart, strengthening its people, communities and businesses,” says Louise Jacobsen Plutt, senior vice-president for hydrogen and carbon capture, utilisation and storage at BP.

H2Teesside and Hygreen will have a combined capacity of 1.5GW—nearly a third of the goal outlined by the UK in its recent hydrogen strategy to develop 5GW of green or blue hydrogen capacity by 2030.

Transport hub

The government and local council hope the two projects will form the basis of a major hub for the use of hydrogen in transport.

1.5GW – Capacity of BP’s planned Teesside hydrogen plants

“This exciting project builds on our ongoing development of hydrogen in the area through the Tees Valley Hydrogen Transport Hub,” says UK transport secretary Grant Shapps.  

“It will help pave the way for its use across all transport modes, creating high-quality green jobs in the process.”

Global project development

H2Teesside aims to start up in 2027 and is planned to capture and store 2mn t/yr CO₂ via the Northern Endurance Partnership, with an FID expected in 2024.It forms a key part of the Net Zero Teesside cluster—one of the industrial clusters that will likely receive cash from the UK’s CCS funding programme.

BP has already signed a number of offtake deals as it looks to develop the facility. The firm has also recently signed a memorandum of understanding with vehicle manufacturer Daimler Truck to pilot both the development of hydrogen infrastructure and the introduction of hydrogen-powered fuel cell trucks in the UK.

BP is also pursuing green hydrogen production projects at its refineries in Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Lingen in Germany and Castellon in Spain.

In addition, it has carried out a feasibility study identifying opportunities for green hydrogen production at its Kwinana site in Western Australia. The study found that significant scale will be required for general hydrogen fuel use to be commercially viable.

Aberdeen City Council recently chose BP as the preferred bidder for the Aberdeen Hydrogen Hub—a green hydrogen transport hub hoped to be operational by 2024.

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Author: Tom Young