The Crown Estate has awarded an agreement for lease to Eni for the HyNet project, the first carbon capture and storage (CCS) project in the UK to repurpose existing pipeline infrastructure, reducing both cost and the environmental impact of construction.
The agreement for lease will enable Eni to access the seabed and repurpose existing pipelines and platforms to transport and store carbon dioxide (CO2) from the HyNet industrial cluster.
CO2 will be captured at large industrial emitting sites in the North West of England and North Wales. It will then be transported for safe and permanent storage in Eni’s depleted natural gas reservoirs under the seabed of the Irish Sea, preventing emissions from entering the atmosphere.
Once operational, the project will remove up to 10 million tonnes per year after 2030 of CO2 from the atmosphere, equivalent to storing emissions from about two million UK households.
This will help the UK’s decarbonization ambitions, significantly boosting progress towards the target of capturing and storing 20-30Mt of CO2 per year by 2030.
This is the second Track 1 project awarded an agreement for lease by The Crown Estate in the past year, following an agreement in October 2023 for what could become one of the world’s largest CCS projects, located in the North Sea.
Eni will leverage its decades of experience in developing natural gas fields, applying its knowledge, technical capability and skills in managing complex projects, to efficiently repurpose some of its existing assets to deliver reliable CO2 storage hubs with rapid time and at competitive cost, allowing the decarbonization of its own, as well as third parties' industrial activities.
“Carbon capture and storage will play a pivotal role in helping the UK reach net zero, and this agreement represents important progress to achieving ambitious carbon capture targets.
"The Crown Estate is proud to be involved with pioneering projects that support the UK’s transition to net zero and we welcome Eni’s innovative approach to reducing environmental impact by reusing existing transportation and storage infrastructure,” said Nicola Clay, Head of Infrastructure, Coastal & Energies at The Crown Estate.