A low carbon maritime fuel terminal is being planned for Southampton, UK, connected to the “Solent Cluster,” a planned carbon capture and storage cluster in the region.
The terminal would be able to provide low carbon methanol, or a fuel based on blue or green ammonia or hydrogen.
Southampton is the UK’s second largest port, handling 1.5m TEU a year, 1.7m cruise ship passengers and 820,000 cars. The Fawley Marine Terminal adjacent to Southampton handles 2,000 shipping movements each year.
Together with neighbouring Portsmouth, a major Navy port, the region sees 200,000 large vessel movements a year.
The Fawley petrochemical complex is the largest integrated refinery and chemical complex in the UK. It produces over 10 per cent of the UK’s consumption of jet fuel, and diesel and petrol which fuels 1 in 5 vehicles on UK roads. The refinery also generates 3.5m m3 a day of gas, as a by-product of the refining process.
The refinery has pipeline connections to the airports Heathrow, Gatwick and Birmingham, for supplying aviation fuel.
The Solent cluster includes plans for a blue hydrogen plant, with an estimated capacity of 1.4 GW. It could be in operation in 2030. A secondary expansion phase could increase capacity to 2.8 GW, and come online in 2035.
There are also plans two green hydrogen plants with a combined capacity of 400 MW, and an Energy from Waste plant connecting to the carbon capture.
There are plans to manufacture Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) at the site. Further details have not been made public, but the SAF could be made from either the blue or green hydrogen.
Low carbon methanol would be produced as an intermediate stage of making SAF. This could either be all converted to aviation fuel, or sold to shipping. The maritime industry could also be supplied with the blue /green hydrogen, or ammonia made from that.
ExxonMobil, operator of the Fawley petrochemical complex, is a driving force in the Solent Cluster. Over 100 organisations are involved.
CO2 would be stored offshore, in aquifer sites in the English Channel. It could store 10m tonnes CO2 per year by 2035. The site has safety advantages over oil and gas reservoir storage, in that it is “relatively unperforated” with wells, said Paul Greenwood, UK chairman of Esso (ExxonMobil).
It would be possible to build a CO2 import terminal connected to the cluster.
The project would need government funding or other suitable policy support to go ahead. While ExxonMobil has committed to invest enormous sums to low emission energy sources over the next five years (including $3bn committed over 2021 to 2025), the money will only be invested in projects which it is able to make profitable, said Paul Greenwood, chair of Esso (ExxonMobil) UK Ltd.
Project participants are working with UK government to find a policy structure which could make the project financially viable. The socio-economic report stated that infrastructure under consideration for the initial projects would represent around £11.9bn investment by 2035.
