Equinor’s H2H Saltend granted planning permission

Equinor Energy ASA’s H2H Saltend 600-Mw low carbon hydrogen production plant and CCS project has been granted planning permission by the East Riding of Yorkshire Council.

H2H Saltend is a catalyst project for the wider decarbonization of the Humber and will help link regional CO₂ pipelines from Easington in East Yorkshire across northern Lincolnshire and to Drax in North Yorkshire, according to the operator. The infrastructure will capture and transport CO₂ for subsea storage as part of the East Coast Cluster development. 

Three projects along this pipeline route—H2H Saltend, Drax BECCS, and Keadby Carbon Capture Power Station—now have planning consent.

The project is expected to be operational around the end of the decade and sited at Saltend Chemicals Park, to the east of Hull. It will help to reduce the park’s emissions by up to one third by using low-carbon hydrogen in chemical processes by both Saltend-based and other nearby companies, as well as by directly replacing natural gas in certain industrial infrastructure, reducing the carbon intensity of their products. Hydrogen from H2H Saltend also will be blended with natural gas at Equinor and SSE Thermal’s on-site Triton power station.

The amount of CO₂ captured and stored will be about 900,000 tonnes/year (tpy).

Equinor submitted the H2H Saltend planning application in July 2023 and three public consultation events have taken place in East Yorkshire and Hull since 2021 in addition to regular dialogues with local authority and parish councilors. No objections to the application were raised by any statutory body, the operator said.

H2H Saltend is preparing for a potential application into the Government’s forthcoming Cluster Sequencing Track-1 Expansion process, which is expected to launch this year and will select decarbonization projects in both the Humber and Teesside that can connect to the East Coast Cluster’s carbon capture transport and storage infrastructure by 2030, Equinor said.