The recently completed environment statement for the Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP) marked the first for a carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in the UK and has cast some light on the regulatory challenges similar projects face.
Xodus Group developed the statement for the project, which is being developed by Equinor, BP and TotalEnergies.
The first environment statement for a CCS project in the UK recently won consent from with the Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment and Decommissioning (OPRED) in October.
And in December, the project received the first-ever UK carbon storage permit from the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA). NEP was also the UK’s first CCS project to reach financial close.
For the country’s CCS industry, NEP’s environment statement provides a blueprint of some of the regulatory issues other projects will have to consider.
Speaking to Energy Voice, Xodus environmental specialist Mairi Dorward, who led the creating the statement, explained that there is a division in how different parts of CCS projects are regulated.
“The regulations surrounding the offshore transportation and storage elements of CCS are under the same regime as oil and gas projects,” she said.
The NEP statement studied the project’s 90 miles (145km) of pipelines, which will connect Teesside to the offshore storage site, and the drilling of the wells and injection of CO2 into the aquifer.
“You can have a nationally significant infrastructure project either for offshore wind or an onshore development. Because the offshore elements of CCS are regulated under the oil and gas regime, then there is a split between the two consenting regimes.
“That added an additional complexity needing a whole project assessment to ensure that because there are the two regulatory regimes, then there were no potential effects that slipped between the two assessments.”
This means that there needs to be different submissions made to different regulators for both onshore and offshore.
“It’s ensuring that both regulators are satisfied that there are no gaps in the assessment because of that line in between the two consenting regimes,” Dorward added.
“Depending on the different timelines that the onshore and offshore projects are being delivered to, that can be quite a challenge in terms of the level of detail that’s available at the relevant times to do that assessment.”
Novel technology, established procedures
While it has been dubbed “mission critical” to the UK’s net-zero ambitions, CCS technology is not without its detractors.
Last year, a group of climate scientists called on the UK government to pause its investment plans for CCS over concerns that the technology is unproven.
They said the evidence around the whole-life emissions and safety of the technology still had to be properly evaluated.
However, Dorward dismissed the concerns.
“CCS is a novel activity, but in terms of the elements and building blocks that constitute the process, the UK has a great track record of delivery in the marine environment,” she said.
“Over many years, the sector has safely conducted surveys, installed pipelines, drilled wells and operated assets.”
The NEP project will provide CO2 transportation and storage for the East Coast Cluster (ECC), including NZT Power, H2Teesside and Teesside Hydrogen CO2 Capture.
NEP expects to commence construction from the middle of 2025 with start-up expected in 2028. The infrastructure will transport and permanently store up to an initial 4 million tonnes of CO2 per year.
The NEP environment statement helps signal some of the factors other projects will have to consider in the UK’s long pipeline of CCUS projects.
These include developments in the East Coast Cluster and HyNet Cluster, Scotland’s Acorn scheme in St Fergus near Peterhead, Humberside’s Viking project, the Medway Hub Camelot project being developed by Synergia Energy and Wintershall DEA, Spirit Energy’s Morecambe Net Zero (MNZ) project and Perenco’s Poseidon and Orion developments.
“One of the great takeaways was that we were able to apply our normal environmental assessment process, which we utilise for projects,” Dorward added.
“We identified potential impacts at the outset and we agreed with stakeholders how we were going to do the assessment.
“We have the legislation, we have the assessment process, we have the regulator, there is a process that we can follow that assesses potential environmental impacts and there hasn’t been any significant potential effect identified as a result of this first of a kind development.”
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