Saltend Hydrogen/CCS Site Get Green Light
By Paul Homewood
h/t Doug Brodie
Plans for a hydrogen and carbon capture plant which could create thousands of jobs have been approved for a site in East Yorkshire.
Equinor, an energy company based in Norway, is behind the plans for "H2H Saltend".
The idea is to cut emissions at the Saltend Chemicals Park by up to a third – the equivalent of taking around 500,000 cars off the road.
It is understood work could begin by 2026 and create about 2,200 jobs.
The plant is being described as "one of the UK’s key decarbonisation projects" according the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS).
Under the plans a 600-megawatt, low-carbon hydrogen plant will be built at the existing energy park to the east of Hull.
The site will also create a carbon capture and storage facility.
The hydrogen produced will be used by companies on the park and directly replace natural gas in a number of industrial facilities.
It’s hoped almost 900,000 tonnes of CO2 will also be captured and sent for storage below the North Sea.
The Humber is one of the most polluting regions in the UK, producing vast amounts of harmful greenhouse gases.
The Saltend hydrogen project is one of several schemes across the region attempting to clean-up this industrial cluster, as the UK strives to phase-out fossil fuels on its journey towards "net zero" carbon emissions.
Hydrogen is seen as a significant fuel of the future because its combustion – perhaps in power stations, buses or cars – mainly produces water and oxygen, rather than the gases that contribute to global warming.
Some projects use wind turbines to produce so-called green hydrogen. The Saltend project will use natural gas to make a product often referred to as blue hydrogen. But the process of making blue hydrogen produces large quantities of harmful C02.
The plan at Saltend is to capture this CO2 and store it in caverns under the North Sea.
But carbon capture and storage is a controversial form of technology with environmental campaign groups raising concerns about its cost and effectiveness at scale.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-humber-68353393
Note how the BBC raised the concerns of environmentalists, who hate all things fossil fuel, but fail to raise the real concern about the project’s gross inefficiency and cost.
What Saltend will do is take the gas, which would otherwise be used on site, convert it to hydrogen in an expensive process which is only about 70% efficient, thus wasting a third of the energy input, and then capture the carbon dioxide in another expensive process, which again wastes a lot of the energy input, maybe another third.
In short you would need roughly two units of natural gas to produce one unit of hydrogen, in terms of energy. Clearly the process will be extremely expensive, probably approaching the cost of green hydrogen, which is about seven times the cost of gas.
If that’s not bad enough, carbon capture never captures all of the carbon dioxide. I recall CCC figures suggesting around 60% or so. As more CO2 is captured, the cost becomes progressively higher.
Moreover there are all of the upstream emissions to consider – drilling, extraction, flaring, liquification, shipping and so on. The little bit Saltend saves is insignificant in overall terms.
Worse still, it doubles our reliance on imports of natural gas, because of all the energy wasted.
Needless to say, the Saltend project will only go ahead with massive government subsidies. All they have so far is the Planning Approval.
The next stage is to bid for subsidies via the CCUS Cluster scheme:
Lord Callanan, the Energy Minister, said: “I am pleased that H2H Saltend has been granted planning permission, a vital step forward in decarbonising the Humber while delivering jobs and growth to the region. CCUS clusters [Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage] will be the starting point for a new industry in the UK, which is why we’ve committed up to £20bn in early support and expect to bring forward 4GW of low-carbon hydrogen production by 2030.”
The fund will provide revenue support to cover the cost of operating with carbon capture, as well as in some cases, capital support to cover some of the cost of installing capture equipment and connecting to the CO2 transport and storage network.
But how can these carbon cluster schemes possibly be sustainable financially.
Government cannot afford to subsidise these projects indefinitely, and if the cost is loaded onto the chemical refinery,they will simply go bust, faced with competitors who still have access to cheap natural gas.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Why is the government stupid enough to propose subsidising all these foreign companies to produce something that is hugely uneconomic, which nobody in their right mind would want and which would ultimately bankrupt the country? That is a rhetorical question – we all know the answer.
The Norwegians should know better: they tried CCS at Mongstad (twice iirc) and couldn’t get it to work. Maybe they are bringing their expertise……in subsidy farming?!
They probably want the UK to share in the abundance produced that they have enjoyed with earlier projects :)
Wish we had a sovereign wealth fund like the one they have founded!!
Norwegians have TEN times the oil wealth of Brits. And they created a SWF because their small Stock Exchange couldn’t cope, unlike Britain’s.
After paying for exploration (success and failure), staff, equipment, borrowed money (as the revenue appears long after the investment is made), licences, etc, the rest went into dividends and taxes.
I remember the government being bombarded by demands for ‘investing’ in dysfunctional organisations, when everyone knew there was a money tree. And this was after the Winter of Discontent, when the government ran out of road, and times were desperate.
Most of the dividends went, and still go, into the pension funds of those that don’t have the luxury of a state financed pension.
And corporate taxation has been far higher for oil companies. Recently it has become so high that oil companies are not investing in the North Sea, and some are leaving. They are international companies.
So I don’t know where the money for the SWF would have come from.
Robert; absolutely! Norway had greater revenues and less than 10% of our population, plus they weren’t paying the huge cost of shutting down swathes of industry.
Your last point about the level of taxation: the old story about the golden goose is about to be lived out for real.
So did the Canadians for their Boundary Dam Power Station.
It was a hopeless disaster.
The Graus was up to its usual tricks, puffing the project:
“Canada switches on world’s first carbon capture power plant
Boundary Dam held up as first commercial-scale CCS plant and proof that coal-burning is compatible with cutting emissions”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/01/canada-switches-on-worlds-first-carbon-capture-power-plant
It failed to mention that coal plant had to be de-rated by 20%, and, the energy-intensive CCS operation’s parasitic load further reduced output by 25%.
Within 4 years, CBC reported:
“SaskPower abandons carbon capture at Boundary Dam 4 and 5”
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/saskpower-abandons-carbon-capture-at-boundary-dam-4-and-5-1.4739107
It can work sometimes. From Wiki:
“The Weyburn and Midale fields combined are expected to produce at least 220 million additional barrels of incremental oil, through miscible or near-miscible displacement with CO2, from fields that have already produced over 500 million barrels (79,000,000 m3) since discovery in 1954.”
The CO2 injection has been running for 30 years, using gas piped over 300 miles from a synfuel plant where it is a by-product.
However for power plants it has yet to be made viable, at least as a retrofit/add-on to a conventional plant. If the industrial-scale Allam cycle plant now under construction in Texas is a success, it could be a game-changer for new gas plants.
Mikehig: I think we have discussed this before. The Allam process depends upon the fuel being oxy-combusted i.e. no nitrogen in the exhaust. If this route is chosen the absorption issue goes away – any old amine process will do the job. But oxy-combustion is fiercely expensive and inefficient due to the parasitic power demand of the ASU. Concerning the other comments, “blue” hydrogen is produced by steam reforming so conventional amine absorption will provide any % removal required. I think around 70% would be easy but if 99% is demanded that’s also fine – just costs more money. But why?
Vernon E: NetPower (who are building the plant in Texas) claim that their cost will be competitive with conventional CCGT + CCS. If that proves correct they will be onto a winner.
Iirc the plant should be starting around the end of this year – then we’ll see.
The potential to produce oxygen, nitrogen and argon for the merchant market could be attractive here in the UK since the closure of our blast furnaces probably means the shutdown of the large ASUs which provided the oxygen.
The whole idea is mad.
1 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere is 7.821 billion metric tons, so they’re really giving themselve a big pat on the back. So just build another 8,690 similar plants and were reducing Co2 by 1 ppm a year. Don’t see any issues with that.
Jobs are a cost – ask anyone running a business. The cost of labour is ultimately paid by the consumer as part of the selling price.
To create 2 200 costly jobs to create no additional wealth but in fact consume wealth in an inefficient process which offers no benefits to consumers makes everyone poorer.
Additionally it is mis-allocation of resources which could be used elsewhere for wealth creation.
Spot on.
Have all the chemical companies bought in to the money they will have to spend to convert from using natural gas to using hydrogen?
It all sounds like one big carbon clusterf**k.
well put
Once they have buried this CO2, what is to stop a well-blowout and a Lake Nyos Disaster?
I would not live within 50 km of a CO2 storage site.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Nyos_disaster
R
I suspect most “carbon capture and storage” schemes will ultimately leak out all the carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
But this will never be able to be proved, so the scamners getting large Govt subsidies to build and operate these schemes will never have to prove that they actually work. Laughing all the way to the bank comes to mind
Raf: Rather like the answer I give to Greens who ask if I’d like to live near a nuclear power station or a fracking site: would you like to live near Lake Nyos?
How many years will this need to run before it’s stored all the CO2 needed to construct it? And will these 2200 jobs be permanent or just during construction?
totally mad.
2150 during construction probably
Luke 23 verse 34.
Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
Except in this case, they know exactly what they’re doing.
Where is the science ( or is it cyense) which supports the claims against CO2?
Where is it? To have science there has to be empirical data. Where is it?
Geological History does not support what is claimed.
Physics does not support what is claimed.
There is not a remote chance that the steady climb of the Keeling curve will be checked. There is not a remote chance that UK will achieve Net Zero – whatever that means? There is not a remote chance that an increase in atmospheric CO2 will affect the weather. There is not a remote chance that global fiddling with the atmosphere will affect temperature in 2100
There is not a remote chance that the steady climb of the Keeling curve will be checked. There is not a remote chance that UK will achieve Net Zero – whatever that means? There is not a remote chance that an increase in atmospheric CO2 will affect the weather. There is not a remote chance that global fiddling with the atmosphere will affect temperature in 2100
Burning Hydrogen produces Oxygen? Who knew? No chemist in this universe, for sure. Don’t these people have editors?
All this blue, green, brown , white hydrogen is getting a bit confusing and a little silly. When will the LGBT community start to demand a pink version?
After capturing the carbon why do they not sell the oxygen?
It is valuable and has many uses.
The next time a BBC journalist hears one of these press conference announcements where green jobs are being created by a company such as Equinor, can they please ask what is the value add being produced by each job and if co2 is a dangerous greenhouse gas why are Dutch agriproduct companies pumping it into their green houses to increase crop yields
Did Paul Murphy do any basic chemistry at school ‘ burning hydrogen produces water and oxygen‘ ?????????????
It really is desperately worrying isn’t it? Then again none of the BBC journos have the slightest vestige of an appropriate science qualification.
“Hydrogen is seen as a significant fuel of the future because its combustion – perhaps in power stations, buses or cars – mainly produces water and oxygen, rather than the gases that contribute to global warming.“
If I complain to the BBC about this “Factual Inaccuracy” they will acknowledge my complaint. In two weeks time they will say they are working on my complaint but it is taking longer than they expected.
Shortly after they will say I have the right to complain to Ofcom that they haven’t responded in time.
Two weeks later an intern will concoct some response that discusses the “general thrust” of the argument and that they are broadly correct.
I will respond along the lines of how f*cking thick are BBC journalists to not know that combusting hydrogen in air cannot possibly produce oxygen.
They will then, weeks later, say their opinion is final but I can take the case to Ofcom………………bunch of W*ankers.
No mention of NOx……
could create thousands of jobs – we’ve heard that a lot about green energy. the jobs created are in China
“Worse still, it doubles our reliance on imports of natural gas, because of all the energy wasted”
Priceless, why not save money and frack the natural gas, cutting down on CO2 transportation emissions etc., oh hang on, we can’t do that because it’s not “environmentally” friendly.
Imports UP, balance of payments screwed – but we have made a major contribution to saving the planet from…………unscientific “facts” that cannot be be proven (therefore a fact).
Since CO2 rise follows, probably caused by, global temperature rise, the world will just emit more CO2 as we remove it, (Le Chateliers principle still applies).
CCS, (or the equally insane CCUS), will just thus accelerate the decline of Europe. But what virtue for the eco-warriors.
as the UK Government strives to phase-out fossil fuels on its journey towards “net zero” carbon emissions.
The majority of the people are not demanding this and the number that are would tumble if, as another article points, they knew the true cost and futility of doing this.
I am pleased that my company Equinor is not using our money for this project just the same way that Shell dropped its CCS project as soon as the taxpayer cash stopped.
Pyramids would be more practical, and maybe cheaper.
This is a huge scam. They are buying jobs with no productive/economic benefit. The only people who win are the consultants who get involved at every stage. [A consultant is someone who takes your watch, tells you the time, and charges you for the privilege.]