NZT Power and the Northern Endurance Partnership select contractors
Net Zero Teesside Power (NZT Power) and the Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP) have selected contractors for engineering, procurement, and construction contracts with a combined value of around £4bn.
The selection of nine leading specialist contractors across eight contract packages is a major milestone for the Teesside-based projects, which would contribute to the UK’s journey towards net zero emissions by 2050.
The final award of contracts is subject to the receipt of relevant regulatory clearances and positive Final Investment Decisions (FID) by the projects and UK government, planned for September 2024 or earlier. Following FID, the projects would be aiming for first commercial operations from 2027.
The contractors announced today are:
The projects represent a significant opportunity for the UK supply chain. The selected contractors will continue working with the local and regional supply chain, with further engagement taking place over the coming weeks and months.
NZT Power, a joint venture between bp and Equinor, could generate up to 860 megawatts of flexible, dispatchable low-carbon power equivalent to the average electricity requirements of around 1.3 million UK homes[1]. Up to 2 million tonnes of CO2 per year would be captured at the plant, and then transported and securely stored by the NEP in subsea storage sites beneath the North Sea. NZT Power could create and support more than 3,000 construction jobs and then require around 1,000 jobs annually during operations until 2050.
NEP, a joint venture between bp, Equinor, and TotalEnergies, is the CO2 transportation and storage provider for the East Coast Cluster (ECC). The Teesside onshore NEP infrastructure would serve the Teesside-based carbon capture projects – NZT Power, H2Teesside and Teesside Hydrogen CO2 Capture – that were selected for first connection to the ECC by DESNZ in March 2023 as part of the UK’s cluster sequencing process for carbon capture usage and storage (CCUS). It is anticipated that around 4 million tonnes of CO2 per year from these projects would be transported and stored from 2027.
Grete Tveit, Senior Vice President at Equinor, said:
“We are delighted to be taking significant steps towards the realisation of these vital decarbonisation projects through the selection of experienced contractors. It marks another major stepping stone on our route towards a final investment decision and ultimately towards a net zero East Coast Cluster.”
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[1] NZT Power’s ability to “generate dispatchable low-carbon power equivalent to the average electricity requirements of around 1.3 million UK homes” is based on average household consumption data from BEIS, ‘Subnational Electricity and Gas Consumption Statistics’, 22 December 2020 and total UK households equalling 27.8m, as stated in the Families and households in the UK: 2020 report published by the Office for National Statistics on 2 March 2021. Calculations assumes a load factor of 70% and an availability of 90%.