Utility Scottish Power and carbon-capture specialist Storegga plan to develop a green hydrogen project in Scotland’s Cromarty Firth region with the potential to scale up to 300MW.

The project, which is designed to produce 20t/d of hydrogen from 2024 and will be scaled up in a series of modular phases, will be the first to move forward under a partnership between the two UK-based companies. They aim to develop and operate “hundreds of megawatts” of capacity across Scotland before the end of the decade.

“This is a really exciting milestone in our ambitions to support the growth of green hydrogen production across the country and the decarbonisation of heavy industry,” says Barry Carruthers, hydrogen director at Scottish Power. “We can now get to work on turning plans on paper into tangible and deliverable projects that will transform industry in the Highlands—making a long and lasting difference for people, businesses and communities.”

The Cromarty Firth project will be powered by existing and new renewable generation capacity, says a Scottish Power spokesperson. The developers will explore all available funding options, but the spokesperson declined to comment on the status of FIDs.

Green Scotch

Hydrogen from the project, which the developers expect to be the UK’s largest green hydrogen plant when it starts up, will be aimed at displacing existing fossil fuel sources and use in the heating processes of distilleries, with additional potential use in the other local manufacturing, food production and industrial heating applications.

300MW – Potential capacity of Cromarty Firth project

The decision to go ahead with the project follows a successful feasibility study by Scottish Power and Storegga, undertaken with major distillers Diageo, Glenmorangie, and Whyte & Mackay, all of which have operations in the Cromarty region.

Storegga has been working with the distilling sector on the energy transition since 2014. In 2019, the Scotch Whisky Association’s Pathway to Net Zero report identified that hydrogen would play a key role in enabling net zero for the sector.

“Phase 1 of the Cromarty Hydrogen Project is expected to be the first of many as we develop a broader green hydrogen manufacturing capacity in Scotland this decade,” says Andrew Brown, head of hydrogen at Storegga.

Storegga is the lead developer of the Acorn Carbon Capture and Storage and Hydrogen project in Aberdeen, a key element of the proposed Scottish low-carbon cluster.

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Author: Stuart Penson