Economic case for Carbon Capture and Storage on the Humber

Economic case for Carbon Capture and Storage on the Humber 

The Humber is the UK’s largest industrial cluster by emissions. Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is central to reducing those emissions to work towards the UK’s 2050 net zero target.

The Humber Carbon Capture Pipeline is a crucial part of that effort. It is an onshore, underground pipeline designed to transport CO₂ emissions from carbon capture projects in the Humber region to secure storage under the North Sea. This infrastructure would enable a connection to CCS projects in the Humber selected by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero through the East Coast Cluster expansion process. 

The pipeline is being developed by the Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP), an independent business focused on delivering large-scale carbon storage solutions. NEP is backed by the collective expertise of its shareholders, bp, Equinor, and TotalEnergies. 

NEP commissioned research from the Northern Powerhouse Partnership and Durham University to assess the economic impact of Carbon capture and storage on the Humber. This research evaluates the impact in terms of gross value added and jobs, both directly and throughout the wider supply chain. 

The pipeline and the three projects that would connect to it would:

1. Support around £3 billion of GVA across the UK during construction, and around £240m per year once operational – about £4 billion in present-value terms over a 25-year operating life, including the continued operation of existing generation that depends on the project.
2. Support around 44,000 job-years of employment across the UK over the construction programme which represents a total over the build, not a headcount at any one time.
3. Of that, around 22,000 job-years sit in the supply chain rather than with the firms contracted directly.
4. Sustain around 1,800 FTE per year on an ongoing basis once the infrastructure is operating, of which approximately 1,300 are in the supply chain. This figure likewise includes the existing generation that depends on the project.
5. Place an estimated £1.2bn of contracts with UK suppliers from the pipeline alone, before any emitter-site spend is counted.

Figure 1: FTE supported per year by NEP pipeline construction, UK-wide, Type I. Pipeline only – there is no phasing for any emitter. Execute phase only: Feasibility, Pre-FEED and FEED spend of GBP503m (real 2024) is not modelled. That is £462m in 2025-2028, before this chart starts, and £41m of FEED in 2029-2030. Each work package keeps its own mix of categories in every year; supply-chain jobs are placed in the year of spend. Columns sum to 19,343 FTE-years.

Year	Capex, £m (real 2024)	UK spend, £m	FTE, direct	FTE, Supply chain	FTE, total
2029	439.4	197.0	1,386	1,047	2,432
2030	815.3	366.5	2,587	1,936	4,523
2031	1,309.9	589.0	4,157	3,111	7,268
2032	660.4	298.9	2,125	1,559	3,683
2033	229.3	103.9	739	541	1,280
2034	27.6	12.7	92	64	156
Total	3,482.0	1,567.9	11,086	8,257	19,343

Basis of the Operating Figures

The operating figures count the full operating cost of every connected site, including the existing power station whose continued operation depends on the capture project: without CCS those units are assumed to close, so their running cost is counted as sustained by the project rather than as cost that would occur anyway. On a narrower basis that counts only cost the capture project itself causes, operating GVA is around £110m a year (£1.8bn present value) and operating employment around 1,000 FTE.

Information regarding Figure 1

Figures are UK-wide, not Humber-specific. Construction covers the pipeline’s Execute phase (2029-2034) and the three connected projects; earlier design and development spend, and two sites with no data returns, are excluded, so coverage is a minimum. Pipeline figures are at 17mtpa capacity while the emitter figures cover only the 6mtpa of currently confirmed emitters. Spend is scaled to UK content using the low end of every range; at the mid and high ends the operating figures rise to around £270m and £300m a year. Operating employment is estimated from operating cost using national industry averages; no CO2-transport industry exists in the ONS tables, so pipeline operation is matched to land transport, which is more labour-intensive and probably overstates it.

Read the full technical note below: