* Northern England project part of low-carbon industrial
zone
* Expected to have 1 GW of blue hydrogen capacity
* For hydrogen factbox, click
(Adds detail)
By Ron Bousso
LONDON, March 18 (Reuters) - Energy group BP aims to
build Britain's largest hydrogen plant by 2030, it said on
Thursday, as part of the country's push to boost use of the fuel
and cut greenhouse gas emissions.
The Teesside plant in northern England will have capacity
of up to 1 gigawatt (GW) of so-called blue hydrogen, about a
fifth of Britain's target of 5 GW of hydrogen capacity by the
end of the decade.
Blue hydrogen is produced by converting natural gas into
hydrogen and storing the CO2 emissions from its production.
BP has begun a feasibility study on the project to explore
technologies that could capture up to 98% of carbon emissions
from the hydrogen production process. The Teesside project,
dubbed H2Teesside, is expected to capture up to two million
tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) a year and pipe it into storage
below the North Sea, BP said.
H2Teesside will be linked with Net Zero Teesside (NZT), a
planned industrial zone that will also be linked to a carbon
capture and storage project. The hydrogen could also be used for
heating residential homes in the region or for transportation,
BP added.
Governments and energy companies are placing large bets on
clean hydrogen playing a leading role in efforts to lower
greenhouse gas emissions, but its future uses and costs are
highly uncertain.
Britain on Wednesday announced an industrial decarbonisation
strategy aiming to cut emissions from industry by two thirds in
15 years through projects including carbon capture and hydrogen.
"Clean hydrogen is an essential complement to
electrification on the path to net-zero carbon emissions," said
Dev Sanyal, BP's head of gas and low carbon energy.
"Blue hydrogen ... can also play an essential role in
decarbonising hard-to-electrify industries and driving down the
cost of the energy transition."
The company will make a final investment decision on the
H2Teeside project in early 2024 and production could begin in
2027 or earlier, it said.
Norwegian energy company Equinor last year
announced plans to construct a blue hydrogen plant in the Humber
region in northern England.
(Additional reporting by Aby Jose Koilparambil in Bengaluru and
Susanna Twidale in London
Editing by David Goodman)