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 £3.2 billion of GVA across the UK during construction, and around £110m per year once operational – about £1.8 billion in present-value terms over a 25-year operating life.
2. Support around 46,000 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 23,000 job-years sit in the supply chain rather than with the firms contracted directly.
4. Sustain around 1,000 FTE per year on an ongoing basis once the infrastructure is operating, of which approximately 600 are in the supply chain.
5. Place an estimated £1.4bn of contracts with UK suppliers from the pipeline alone, excluding owner’s costs, before any emitter-site spend is counted.

Figure 1: Projected pipeline construction employment, 2029-2034

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 £503m (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 21,192 FTE-years. The UK spend column includes owner’s costs, which is why its total (£1.8bn) differs from the £1.4bn in statement 5.

Year	Capex, £m (real 2024)	UK spend, £m	FTE, direct	FTE, Supply chain	FTE, total
2029	463.4	216.2	1,463	1,128	2,591
2030	873.2	412.9	2,773	2,133	4,906
2031	1,403.8	664.1	4,459	3,430	7,889
2032	732.3	356.4	2,356	1,803	4,159
2033	255.3	124.6	823	629	1,452
2034	33.6	17.5	112	84	196
Total	3,761.7	1,791.6	11,985	9,207	21,192

Basis of the Figures

Figures use the lower end of the UK content ranges. At the mid and high ends, construction GVA rises to around £3.9bn and £4.7bn, construction employment to around 57,000 and 67,000 job-years, operating GVA to around £120m and £140m a year, and operating employment to around 1,200 and 1,300 FTE. The operating figures count only costs caused by the capture projects themselves: where a project retrofits an existing facility, that facility’s existing running costs are excluded. They assume all connected assets operate at the same time and exclude sites for which no operating cost data was available.

Applies to every figure above

Figures are UK-wide, not Humber-specific. Construction covers the pipeline’s Execute phase (2029-2034) and the connected projects; earlier design and development spend, and sites with no cost data, 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. 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: