Report urges further measures to speed UK emissions reductions

Offshore staff

ABERDEEN, UK — The UK’s Technology Leadership Board, Net Zero Technology Centre and Accenture are calling for accelerated investment in technology innovation to help meet the North Sea Transition Deal’s (NSTD) emissions targets.

In their report, "Technology Driving Green Energy Growth," the companies urge greater focus on testing and development of innovative technologies and measures to tackle the challenge of expensive and immature technologies.

By 2030, the UK government is targeting 10 GW of low-carbon hydrogen, including 5 GW of green hydrogen, and the formation of four carbon capture and storage (CCS) clusters to meet the NSTD targets.

The NSTD aims to reduce emissions by up to 60 MM metric tons per year.

The report lists opportunities in hydrogen, floating offshore wind and CCS, with three recommendations to support early roll-out of affordable net-zero technologies:

• The industry should be supported and incentivized to rapidly test and deploy technologies with improvements in efficiency, modularity and scalability, reducing levelized costs by at least 50% across offshore wind solutions, electrolyzers, carbon capture technology and emerging materials;
• Government sponsorship and support for test and demonstration centers that would de-risk, standardize and scale promising technologies; and
• An infrastructure plan concerning transportation, transmission, storage and management of hydrogen, ammonia, renewable electricity and CO₂.

According to the authors, these measures could help bring cost reductions of up to 60% in green hydrogen; up to 40% in the cost of floating wind through optimized integration; and de-risking of blue hydrogen, lowering the cost of delivery and allowing for a future import market for CO₂.

Katy Heidenreich, Offshore Energies UK supply chain and operations director, said, “With over 50 years supporting offshore operations, our UK supply chain has the skills and capability, and a track record of driving innovation, to lead the transition to a low-carbon energy future.”

09.26.2022