Statera Energy has been granted planning approval from Aberdeenshire Council in Scotland for the UK’s largest green hydrogen project. Having already won government backing via the Net Zero Hydrogen Fund, the Kintore Hydrogen project could deliver £400 million to the local economy, supporting economic growth and the energy transition in the region and in major industrial clusters such as Grangemouth.
Kintore Hydrogen will produce zero carbon green hydrogen from renewable energy, including surplus power from Scottish wind farms that would otherwise be turned off to balance the grid. The low-cost low-carbon hydrogen can be used by carbon-intensive industries to replace gas.
Kintore Hydrogen is a groundbreaking project for the UK and will be one of the largest projects of its kind in Europe. The first 500 MW of operational capacity is expected to be online by 2030, and when operating at its full 3GW capacity the plant is calculated to obviate up to 1.4 million tonnes of CO2 per year by displacing the use of natural gas.
It could also enable the development of more renewable energy sources, such as offshore wind, and will save many billions in the curtailment costs of turning off wind generation even during windy weather. The volumes of green hydrogen produced by Kintore will play a role in decarbonising the UK’s carbon-intensive sectors, such as heavy industry and flexible power generation. It may also produce a significant reduction in the price of green hydrogen. It is projected to deliver £1bn of economic benefits to the UK economy over the plant’s lifecycle.
Kintore’s strategic location, behind grid transmission bottlenecks and close to abundant wind power from the North Sea, could also help to deliver billions in cost savings to bill payers by alleviating constraints on the national power system. Its location calls for repurposing or new additions to the National Gas network to transport hydrogen at scale and serve key industrial regions across the country, such as industrial clusters at Grangemouth, Teesside and Humberside.
Today, Statera has over 1 GW of UK projects operational or in construction, and over 16 GW in development or consented.
