Teesside, the urban region perched on the muddy banks of the River Tees in northeast England, used to be a global beacon of industry. In the mid-19th century, the port of Middlesbrough forged its reputation as “Ironopolis,” boasting nearly 100 blast furnaces that roared away round the clock. The town was also a major chemicals hub, drawing on the rock salt deposits at the mouth of the chilly North Sea to produce alkalis, fertilizers, and plastics.
The riverside plants and furnaces gradually fell silent in the middle of the 20th century, when northern England faced stiffer global competition, resulting in decades of deindustrialization in the region. This was reflected in a poignant scene from the movie Billy Elliot, set in the economic gloom of the mid-1980s, when the young hero crosses the iconic Tees Transporter Bridge to the melancholy theme of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake.
But the proud region is once again spreading its wings on the global stage. The U.K. government has just pledged nearly £22 billion ($28.5 billion) to kick-start the country’s carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) industry, with the funding set to support three planned projects that aim to produce power, hydrogen, and energy-from-waste, and two subsea storage sites and pipelines. And it’s the power project, Net Zero Teesside Power (NZT Power), located in the heart of Teesside’s industrial cluster, that’s the jewel in the crown of this fledgling CCUS industry.
The BP and Equinor-led NZT Power, which is set to begin commercial operations in 2028, aspires to be world’s first large-scale gas power and carbon capture project. Its power plant is expected to generate up to 742 megawatts of flexible and dispatchable electricity, which is roughly the equivalent electricity needed to keep the lights on in 1.3 million U.K. households while smoothing out intermittency on the country’s renewables-rich grid. The carbon capture plant, which will be fully integrated throughout the power plant, rather than being a “bolt-on” solution, will aim to trap up to 98% of the plant’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, totaling around two million metric tons per year. That’s equivalent to the annual CO2 emissions of nearly 500,000 cars in the country.
GE Vernova is one of the fulcrums of NZT Power. It will supply the full power island for the plant, which consists of a mighty 9HA.02 turbine, a STF-D650 steam turbine, a W88 generator, and a triple heat recovery steam generator (HRSG). The power plant will integrate with a state-of-the-art carbon capture plant using Technip Energies’ Canopy by T.EN solution powered by the Shell Cansolv CO2 capture technology. GE Vernova will also provide an exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) system for the plant, which allows the operator to boost the efficiency of carbon capture.
Jeremee Wetherby, GE Vernova’s carbon solutions leader, believes that the U.K.’s favorable regulation and comprehensive industrial strategy for CCUS offers the world’s policymakers a road map for carbon capture. “This announcement to support the first anchor projects gives the industry the foundations to grow,” he says.
Breaking the Deadlock
CCUS technology is set to play an essential role in the world’s mission to decarbonize. When energy providers install CCUS systems in their existing gas power plants, the systems are designed to “catch” nearly all the CO2 that would otherwise be emitted and trap the greenhouse gas safely underground or reuse it to make products like fuels, carbonated soft drinks, and various synthetic materials. But many projects have snagged on CCUS’s economic viability.
The U.K. government has acted decisively to break this deadlock, says Wetherby. Its support for the industry will be backed by a “contract for difference” (CfD) scheme, which aims to stimulate investments in lower-carbon energy projects. Wetherby explains how CfD delivers a win-win. “You want to put the cheapest power on the grid, but when you also want to make it lower-carbon, it’s going to cost more,” he says. “But if the government is going to help cover that difference for developer and consumer, then the project can still go ahead,” he adds.
The U.K. has some of the most ambitious decarbonization targets in the world, with a commitment to reach net zero by 2050. But the country’s strategy of targeting investments at industrial areas that are major sources of carbon emissions is a smart ploy, because it allows for economies of scale, says Craig Jones, GE Vernova’s vice president of energy transition for the U.K. “Rather than focusing on point-to-point power plants, they [the government] have created these clusters, which makes it cheaper to plug into a single transport and storage model,” he explains.
For example, NZT will pipe its CO2 gas into an onshore gathering system, a pipeline network that extends across Teesside’s industrial sprawl. An offshore pipeline will then pump the cluster’s CO2 about 145 kilometers (90 miles) off the coast of Teesside for safe injection into a large saline reservoir deep under the North Sea. Energy companies BP, Equinor, and TotalEnergies have created a joint venture called the Northern Endurance Partnership that will operate this medley of onshore and offshore infrastructure. “It is a really unique and impactful way to decarbonize,” says Jones.
Options, Options
Back to that EGR system we mentioned earlier. It works by feeding around 30% of the CO2-rich flue gas from the gas turbine back into the inlet of the gas turbine’s air compressor, aiming to multiply the benefits of carbon capture integration. A gas power CCUS operator can “tune” those benefits to their advantage according to the unique regulatory and financial situation at their site. Think of a slider bar with capital expense savings on one end and operational benefits at the other. If operators slide the bar to the capex side, they’ll reduce the size of their capture equipment, which should minimize their land footprint and cut costs, while maintaining up to 95% capture. Operators that harness EGR-enhanced carbon capture systems in this way can make capital expense savings of up to 10% while enjoying a performance boost over CCUS systems not equipped with EGR, says Wetherby, citing a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)-funded study on a CCUS project at the James M. Barry power plant, 25 miles north of Mobile, Alabama, which is powered in part by two 7F.04 gas turbines.
If they slide to the other end of the bar and calibrate their equipment to achieve more decarbonization, they’ll boost the total carbon capture of their EGR-enhanced project from about 95% to 98%. That’s because they’d be increasing the carbon concentration of the air at inlet entry from approximately 4% to 7%. (This is how NZT plans to harness its EGR system, says Wetherby.) “It just depends how you engineer your capture plant,” he adds.
Wetherby, who oversees GE Vernova’s strategy to decarbonize gas turbines, whether they’re brand-new units or part of the company’s global installed base of approximately 7,000 turbines, says that “to demonstrate a full-scale carbon capture plant on a gas turbine for the first time at this scale is a true testament to our ability to decarbonize this equipment. And it’s ready to be replicated.”
Forward-Looking Statements
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