The joint application between Net Zero Teesside (NZT) Power and the Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP) covers a full chain carbon capture and storage project. Equinor is a partner in NZT Power, the combined cycle gas turbine electricity generating station with an abated capacity of up to 860 megawatts output with CO2 capture plant.
The application for NEP, which Equinor is also a partner in, includes a CO2 gathering network on Teesside to transport captured CO2 from industrial emitters; a CO2 gathering/booster station to receive the captured CO2 from the gathering network and NZT Power; and the onshore section of a CO2 transport pipeline for the onward transport of the captured CO2 to the Endurance store.
The granting of development consent, following several stages of consultation, comes after NZT Power was named on the Track 1 Negotiations Project List by DESNZ as part of Phase 2 of the Cluster Sequencing process for Carbon Capture Usage and Storage (CCUS). The project is now conducting negotiations for support through the relevant Business Models to enable a final investment decision in 2024.
NZT Power, a joint venture between bp and Equinor, aims to be the world’s first commercial scale gas-fired power station with carbon capture technology and will provide flexible, dispatchable low carbon electricity to complement the growing deployment of intermittent forms of renewable energy such as wind and solar. The project could generate up to 860 megawatts of low carbon power – equivalent to the electricity requirements of around 1.3 million UK households. Up to 2 million tonnes of CO2 per year will be captured at the plant, and then transported and securely stored by the NEP in subsea storage sites in the North Sea.
The NEP – a joint venture between bp, Equinor, and TotalEnergies - is the CO2 transportation and storage provider for the ECC. The Teesside onshore NEP infrastructure will serve the Teesside based carbon capture projects - Net Zero Teesside Power, H2Teesside and Teesside Hydrogen CO2 Capture – that were selected for first connection to the ECC by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) in March 2023 as part of the cluster sequencing process for CCUS. Around 4m tonnes of CO2 per annum from these projects will be transported and stored from 2027.
Grete Tveit, Senior Vice President at Equinor said “This announcement is an important step forward for the decarbonisation of industrial regions in the North of England, which is essential if the Government is to meet its net zero targets whilst future proofing industries and creating new jobs. It also demonstrates the increasing commitment of Equinor in this region, building on our long-standing energy relationship with the UK, which we hope to develop further through NZT Power, NEP and additional hydrogen and carbon capture projects in the East Coast Cluster.”
