H2H Saltend has been awarded planning permission by East Riding of Yorkshire Council, marking a major boost for “one of the UK’s key decarbonisation projects”.
Equinor confirmed that the 600MW low carbon hydrogen production plant, with carbon capture, had been given the green light, making it one of the first facilities of its kind and scale to be granted planning permission in the UK. The approval from the council also strengthens the project’s case as it looks to potentially apply into the Cluster Sequencing Track-1 Expansion process, expected to launch later in the year.
This process will pave the way for decarbonisation projects in both the Humber and Teesside to connect to the East Coast Cluster’s carbon capture transport and storage infrastructure by around 2030.
H2H Saltend is expected to be operational around the end of the decade at the energy intensive Saltend Chemicals Park, where it will help to reduce emissions by up to a third. The low carbon hydrogen it produces will be used in chemical processes by Saltend-based companies, as well as other firms nearby, directly replace natural gas in several industrial facilities, and be blended with natural gas at Equinor and SSE Thermal’s on-site Triton power station. The amount of CO2 that gets captured and then safely stored in sub-sea aquifers as a result is expected to be close to 900,000 tonnes a year.
The project, as well as supporting the Humber’s drive to become net zero by 2040, also forms part of Equinor’s Hydrogen to Humber ambition, as it looks to deliver 1.8GW of low carbon hydrogen production within the region.
