The petrochemicals producer and Scotland’s biggest polluter Ineos Grangemouth commits more than £1 billion ($1.37 billion) to reduce its emissions by 2045, including investing in carbon capture and hydrogen technologies. The timeline also corresponds with the year the Scottish Government has set for the whole country to become net zero.
The company’s boss, Jim Ratcliffe, had made an appearance in front of the Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs) to investigate how to transform the company on a carbon neutral path and also presented its own plans and funding towards the transition. Ineos has already committed more than £500 million on projects currently being rolled out to drive down pollution, adding additional carbon capture investments to expand on ambitions.
The company’s climate change strategy includes a new move to produce and use hydrogen by all businesses at the Grangemouth site. Ineos will also utilize carbon capture and storage to eliminate at least 1 million tons of CO2 per year by 2030. It will extract CO2 from existing hydrogen production and construct a new hydrogen production plant with carbon capture installed.
One of the ideas brought forward is also to use the Acorn carbon capture and storage project infrastructure to clean up Ineos’s businesses operations. The Acorn project plans to transport carbon from Grangemouth along the existing Feeder 10 pipeline and ship it via Peterhead Port.
“Our challenge is to deliver a road map which ensures a just transition to net zero. This can only be achieved if we remain globally competitive and we stay ahead of evolving regulations and legislation,” said Stuart Collings, CEO of Ineos O&P UK.
He also added that hydrogen will also play a very important role in the decarbonization of the manufacturing plants of the company. He sees building the infrastructure of large-scale utilization of hydrogen as a foundation to achieving net zero by 2045. Expanding hydrogen production would also enable other operators in Grangemouth to make use of the fuel for carbon dioxide removal goals.
The climate change goal of the company is to see operations at Grangemouth cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than 60% by 2030 via innovative engineering, partnerships, and investments.
