SLB Capturi Wins HyNet Power Station CCS Licence as UK Cluster Gains Second Anchor
The July 31 technology licensor pick advances HyNet's first phase as a second anchor project enters pre-operational commissioning at the Protos facility.
Uniper appointed SLB Capturi as the carbon capture and storage technology licensor for its Connah's Quay Low Carbon Power project on July 31 (2026-07-31), giving HyNet a second anchor project with a confirmed technology pathway and pushing the northwest England CCS cluster a step closer to commercial construction.5
Connah's Quay is structurally important to HyNet's financing case. The gas-fired station in north Wales is one of the anchor emitters whose contracted volumes underpin the economics of the shared £21.7 billion track-1 pipeline and offshore storage system. Without anchor emitters locked in, the infrastructure financing rationale for the entire cluster weakens. SLB Capturi's appointment means front-end engineering and design can now progress alongside the project's wider permitting and financing workstreams.5,3
HyNet's storage ambition is substantial. The scheme is designed to capture up to 4.5 million metric tonnes of CO2 per annum and inject it into depleted hydrocarbon reservoirs beneath the Irish Sea, making it the most ambitious industrial decarbonisation infrastructure project yet attempted in Britain.1
The cluster's second active anchor project had already moved. On May 28 (2026-05-28), Encyclis confirmed that foundational construction had started at its Protos energy-from-waste facility in Cheshire, on schedule and within budget. The Protos capture plant is targeting 370,000 tonnes of CO2 per annum, with volumes piped to Liverpool Bay for permanent subsea storage once operational. By the same date the facility had entered hot commissioning, one step before live operation, tightening the schedule for first CO2 deliveries into the HyNet pipeline.3
For Connah's Quay, the economics of equipping a gas-fired power station with CCS turn on the spread between capture cost and avoided allowance cost. UK Carbon Allowances traded at £57.62 per tonne as of August 13 (2026-08-13) — every tonne a CCS-equipped station avoids surrendering is a direct operating saving, and SLB Capturi's engineering task is delivering a capture cost that stays comfortably below that price across the project's lifetime.5
Gas input costs add a second dimension of risk. ICE Endex TTF front-month settled at €61.03 per megawatt-hour on August 12 (2026-08-12), up 4.01 percent in that session. Gas-fired generation with CCS carries both the fuel cost and the capital service cost of the capture plant; sustained high gas prices compress the margin available to service capture infrastructure debt, shifting the investment case more squarely onto carbon price certainty.5
The broader European regulatory environment has generally been supportive of hard-to-abate industrial decarbonisation. Seven EU member states — among them Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden — filed a position paper in June (2026-06-08) opposing efforts to weaken automotive emission targets, according to a document obtained by POLITICO, citing the energy crisis as grounds for maintaining the existing trajectory. The filing reflects a northern European political posture that keeps carbon pricing frameworks intact and, by extension, the abatement incentives that underpin projects like HyNet.4
Germany added specific financial weight to the CCS investment case. Berlin launched a €5 billion Carbon Contracts for Difference scheme, split into a €3 billion base allocation with sector caps and a €2 billion flexible top-up fund accessible across industries — a mechanism that directly reduces merchant carbon risk and could pull further European CCS capital off the sidelines.2
Private financing has already moved toward UK offshore storage. Rigzone reported that the Eni and BlackRock Global Infrastructure Partners CCUS joint venture secured more than €500 million ($581.59 million) from 13 international lenders, supporting ongoing and additional projects. Eni separately expects to unlock around 300 million metric tonnes of CO2 storage capacity at the depleted Hewett gas field in the North Sea, a signal that continental shelf geology is being treated as operational infrastructure with an active commercial future rather than a legacy liability.1
The timing gap between HyNet's two anchor projects is now the operative risk for its track-1 economics. Protos entered hot commissioning on May 28 (2026-05-28); Connah's Quay has just cleared technology selection. If Protos reaches commercial CO2 injection before the shared pipeline and storage system is certified to receive volumes from a second emitter, HyNet's developers will face pressure to accelerate Connah's Quay's design phase or absorb a period of pipeline underutilisation against fixed track-1 financing costs.3,5