Norway’s state oil company Equinor will triple its UK hydrogen output, after setting out plans to build the world’s biggest hydrogen production plant with carbon capture and storage technology near Hull.

Equinor plans to produce clean-burning “blue hydrogen” to supply the Keadby gas power plant in Lincolnshire, making it the world’s first full-scale power plant to burn pure hydrogen to generate electricity.

Hydrogen is considered an important part of the UK’s plan to reduce its carbon emissions because it could replace fossil gas used in factories and power plants, and help to reduce the UK’s reliance on fossil fuels for transport and heating.

However, many environmentalists have called for policymakers to invest in enough renewable electricity to create hydrogen from water, or “green hydrogen”, rather than producing hydrogen using carbon capture and storage (CCS), which cannot completely eliminate carbon emissions and remains an expensive technology.

A new report from the Global CCS Institute thinktank has found that the world’s CCS capacity will need to grow by 100 times to meet global climate targets, at a cost of between $655bn and more than $1tn over the next 30 years.

Source: The Guardian

Photo: Ints Kalniņš/Reuters