Decarbonising industry in the Humber region: Humber Zero
Robert Gage, head of engagement at VPI Power, puts a spotlight on the game-changing Humber Zero project, which will enable industry to remain competitive and support tens of thousands of jobs in the Humber through decarbonsation.
We all face a challenge to reduce amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) being emitted into the atmosphere as a greenhouse gas. A major part of that challenge will be reshaping the industries that underpin our economy and daily lives. Humber Zero is a major investment to decarbonise the UK’s largest industrial site, based in and around the Immingham area in North Lincolnshire.
To achieve Net Zero by 2050, improved energy efficiency and reduced consumption is only part of the story. The UK government is aiming to capture and store up to 30 million tonnes of CO2 per year by 2030 as an important milestone in this effort.
As we transition from a dependence on hydrocarbons, whilst also looking to sustain energy intensive and difficult-to-decarbonise industries, carbon capture and storage offers a way to prevent large quantities of CO2 entering the atmosphere.
Being a major industrial heartland, the Humber region is also a major emitter. Humber Zero aims to decarbonise energy generation and industrial processes in the Immingham industrial area, which in turn will ensure those industries remain competitive in an increasingly decarbonised world.
Humber Zero’s partners are VPI Immingham and Phillips 66 Ltd who own and operate the Humber Refinery. In addition to this private sector investment, the early stages of the project received £12.5million support from the UK government through UKRI’s Industrial Decarbonisation challenge. The below video gives you an insight into the project.
In this initial phase, technology will be introduced to capture carbon after combustion, with the CO2 being transported and safely stored in perpetuity in geological structures (such as saline aquifers or depleted oil and gas fields) deep under the bed of the North Sea.
Carbon capture is not a new technology in itself, but Humber Zero will pioneer the ability to capture CO2 at an industrial scale, up to eight million tonnes per year from 2030.
The first phase of the project aims to capture up to 3.8 million tonnes.
Phillips 66 Ltd will be applying the carbon capture technology to its fluidized catalytic cracker. At VPI Immingham, this technology will be introduced onto two of the three existing gas-fired electricity generators.
For a future phase, and in order to fully decarbonise the Immingham site, there are also plans which will see hydrogen being produced at VPI, with the third generator being converted to run purely on hydrogen.
Historically, low carbon hydrogen production has been both complicated and expensive, but we expect its use to become more widespread as both government and industry invest in it. Just as renewable energy was expensive at its inception but became significantly cheaper as its use grew, it is likely that hydrogen will follow a similar path.
With appropriate government support, Humber Zero is achievable and will be a major step towards a transition to cleaner energy.
Humber Zero is on target to inject the first CO2 into storage by late 2026 and the initial phase will see an investment of around £1.2 billion. There is much work to do in the meantime but Humber Zero could be a game changing project for both the Humber and the UK.
Want to know more?
Humber Zero is supported under the Industrial Decarbonisation challenge, part of the UKRI Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. ISCF addresses the big societal challenges being faced by UK businesses today, backed by £2.6 billion of public money, with £3 billion in matched funding from the private sector. You can read more about what we do here.
