Equinor and project partners have decided to progress to the execution phase on two of the UK’s first carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects in Teesside, the Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP) and Net Zero Teesside Power (NZT Power).
The project expects to commence construction from mid-2025 with start-up in 2028. It includes a CO2 gathering network and onshore compression facilities as well as a 145-kilometre offshore pipeline and subsea injection and monitoring facilities for the Endurance saline aquifer located around 1,000 metres below the seabed.
It could transport and store up to four million tonnes of captured carbon dioxide emissions per year from three Teesside projects initially, rising to an average of up to 23 million tonnes by 2035 with future expansion of the East Coast Cluster.
Equinor is also a partner in NZT Power, which is part of the East Coast Cluster. NZT Power will be a new first-of-a-kind gas-fired power plant with carbon capture, which supports the decarbonisation ambitions across the north-east of England’s industrial regions.
The plant will have the capacity to generate up to 742 megawatts of decarbonised, flexible power, complementing a growing share of intermittent renewable power.
This capacity is equivalent to the average electricity demand of around one million UK homes. It will have the capacity to capture up to two million tonnes of CO2 per year for transport and secure storage by the NEP project.
Equinor has a 45 per cent stake in NEP with the remaining 45 per cent owned by BP and 10 per cent by TotalEnergies, and a 25 per cent stake in the NZT Power project with the remaining 75 per cent owned by BP. BP provides operator services on both projects.