By Elishya Perera
LONDON (CU)_Oil and gas giant BP announced on Thursday (18 March) that it was planning to set up the United Kingdom’s “largest hydrogen project” which could generate as much as 1 GW of “blue hydrogen” by 2030. The final investment decision on the facility – which will be based in Teesside, north-east England – will be taken in 2024.
Blue hydrogen is hydrogen produced using natural gas, while capturing and storing the CO2 emissions generated during the process.
According to BP, the development in Teesside will be able to capture as much as 2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide which will be sent for storage every year. The hydrogen produced in the facility will provide energy to homes and industries, as well as be used as fuel for heavy transport, amongst other uses.
“Blue hydrogen, integrated with carbon capture and storage, can provide the scale and reliability needed by industrial processes,” BP’s executive vice president of gas and low carbon energy, Dev Sanyal, said in a statement.
“It can also play an essential role in decarbonising hard-to-electrify industries and driving down the cost of the energy transition.”
The company said that if all goes according to plan, the facility would be able to produce 500 MW of blue hydrogen by 2027 or earlier.
There is also a term known as “green” or “renewable” hydrogen, which refers to hydrogen being produced using electricity which has been generated from a renewable source such as solar or wind.
Over the recent years, major economies, as well as large industrial firms have announced plans to integrate green hydrogen into their operations. The European Union, for instance, has laid out plans to install around 40 GW of renewable hydrogen electrolyzers by 2030.
Meanwhile, the United Kingdom plans to have a low-carbon hydrogen capacity of 5 GW by 2030.
