Savills helps to secure planning permission for the UK’s largest green hydrogen plant
On behalf of Statera Energy, Savills helped to secure planning permission for Kintore Hydrogen near Aberdeen, the UK’s largest proposed utility-scale green hydrogen plant.
Kintore Hydrogen is a project of national significance and marks a significant step forward for the UK’s hydrogen economy.
At 3GW capacity, Kintore Hydrogen will meet 60% of the Scottish Government’s national hydrogen target, using abundant Scottish wind to:
- Save billpayers £ billions in avoided wind curtailment costs and balance the energy system’s transmission constraints south from Scotland
- Avoid up to 1.4 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions each year by replacing natural gas for industrial and heating use
- Safeguard energy-intense UK industries and provide several thousand jobs, aiding Aberdeenshire and the wider region’s transition from oil & gas to the green economy
Savills Environment & Infrastructure team led the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), supported application project management, and co-ordinated the internal and external expert assessor team. In addition, Savills provided the climate change, acoustics, population & health, socio-economic and air quality assessments.
Will Summerlin, Senior Development Director at Statera Energy, commented:
Savills provided peerless support and great collaboration through the EIA to achieve this important project milestone.
“Kintore Hydrogen will be part of a cleaner, more resilient future for the UK by maximizing renewable energy assets. It also benefits the local area, providing thousands of new jobs.”
Tom Dearing, Director in the Environment & Infrastructure team, commented:
We are really proud of the outcome, as this success comes after a few years of hard work and it is a project of national significance.
As a team focusing on major infrastructure and helping drive the UK’s net zero transition, we were able to clearly articulate the climate change benefits that motivate this project. We also carefully considered the plant design to minimise impacts, community concerns about health and hydrogen safety, and how best to realise the socio-economic benefits.
“Hydrogen production via electrolysis at this scale is new to the UK so we placed a lot of emphasis on early, collaborative working with the project engineers, understanding the technical challenges, and defining a set of design parameters to achieve a flexible planning consent while committing to robust environmental controls and mitigation.This project demonstrates the strength of our joint team efforts and will make great steps forward for the UK’s transition to net zero.”
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Savills helps to secure planning permission for the UK’s largest green hydrogen plant, source
