Posted on 11 Mar 2025
LIBERTY Steel has begun producing pipelines to transport captured CO2 from a future gas-fired power station in Teesside, UK.
Liberty plans to produce 105 km of offshore steel pipelines at its factory in Hartlepool. The steel producer was awarded a contract to build pipelines in December 2024 by Net Zero Teesside Power (NZT), a joint venture between oil giants bp and Equinor, as part of a £4bn (US$5.2bn) round of contracts awarded for carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects.
The planned gas-fired power station is expected to open in 2028 with capacity to generate 742 MW. The emissions will be stored at the Endurance carbon capture storage facility 1,000 m below the seabed in the North Sea, which will be operated by the Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP), a joint venture between bp, Equinor, and TotalEnergies.
NZT is the main body responsible for CCS projects in Teesside, which has been earmarked as a “CCS cluster” and was included in the UK government’s £22bn (US$28.5bn) CCS investment last October.
Jeff Kabel, chief transformation officer at Liberty Steel, said: “Following months of meticulous planning, mill preparation, recruitment, and training, Liberty Pipes Hartlepool is proud to announce the start of manufacturing for the NEP and NZT power projects.”
Liberty expects to continue building the pipelines until the third quarter of 2025.
Chris McDonald, Labour MP for Stockton North and a Fellow of IChemE, previously described Teesside’s growing CCS industry as a “project of national and international importance”.
While some coal-fired power stations are now operating with integrated CCS in China, the US, and Canada, there are currently no gas-fired power stations with integrated CCS operating anywhere in the world.
The role of CCS in the energy transition has divided opinion, with some arguing that it is a crucial technology to achieve net zero, while others claim its ability to abate carbon intensive industries has not been sufficiently demonstrated.
Liberty’s steel pipeline production will also come with its own carbon cost. According to the company’s latest sustainability report, Liberty’s steel production in Europe released emissions of 7,170 ktCO2e.
Liberty aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, partly through increased steel production in electric arc furnaces (EAFs) which are far more environmentally friendly than traditional blast furnace production. In 2022, around 9% of Liberty’s European steel was produced in EAFs. The company says that a third of all steel produced in Australia, the UK, the US, and Poland is now manufactured in EAFs.
Source:The Chemical Engineer
