In April 2022, the Port of Southampton celebrated a major milestone with the successful commissioning and use of its shore power facility for cruise ships.
This is particularly significant as around 88% of new cruise ships are built shore-power ready. The total shore power project cost was £9m, supported by a grant from the Solent Local Growth Deal, arranged through the Solent Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP).
In 2022, Gwynt Glas Offshore Wind Farm signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with ABP and the Port of Milford Haven, to ready the ports for the future needs of floating offshore wind in the Celtic Sea. Gwynt Glas is a joint venture partnership between EDF Renewables UK and DP Energy. The proposed floating offshore wind farm would generate 1GW of low carbon green energy in the Celtic Sea.
Under the MoU, information and industry knowledge will be shared to investigate the potential opportunities for manufacture, assembly, load-out and servicing for the Gwynt Glas project from the key South Wales Ports of Port Talbot and Milford Haven. Gwynt Glas will provide power for approximately 927,400 homes and make a significant contribution to The Crown Estate’s ambitions for 4GW of capacity in the Celtic Sea.
ABP’s vision for LEEF is to provide a facility that is suitable for Operations & Maintenance (O&M) activities and construction support for the offshore energy industry, helping to transform the town of Lowestoft into East of England’s premier offshore energy hub. Having recently won ‘Best Project’ in the regional Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) Awards for Planning Excellence 2022, LEEF has the potential to attract many supply chain companies to Lowestoft, bringing new jobs and prosperity to the area.
LEEF forms part of the Port Gateway project which is 1 of 5 projects that will benefit from Lowestoft’s £24.9M towns deal awarded in 2020 by the Department for Levelling Up Housing and Communities as a result of a successful Investment Plan submitted by East Suffolk Council.
In September 2022, ABP celebrated the renewal of its long-term contract with the sustainable TimberLINK service at its Ports of Ayr and Troon. Operated by ABP on behalf of Scottish Forestry since 2000, the timber service plays a vital role in supporting port-centric manufacturing in the area, by reducing logistical supply chain costs for local businesses and strengthening Ayrshire’s timber industry cluster.
As part of the service, over 100,000 tonnes of timber and forest products are transported from the ports at Ardrishaig, Cambeltown and Sandbank, to the Ports of Ayr and Troon, where they are dispatched to local wood processing plants. This saves an estimated one million lorry miles per year, relieving road network congestion on the West Coast of Scotland, which helps reduce carbon emissions and support the local tourism industry.
Green Port Hull, at the heart of the ‘UK’s Energy Estuary’, was opened at the port in 2017. It represents a £500 million joint venture between ABP and Siemens, creating a renewable energy hub with world-class offshore wind turbine blade manufacturing, assembly, and servicing facilities as its centrepiece.
By taking advantage of the Port’s prime location close to the offshore wind opportunities in the North Sea, Hull is perfectly placed to capitalise on the UK’s offshore wind industry and is playing a key role in achieving the Governments targets of net zero emissions by 2050, building on our strong foundations in clean growth.
In October 2022, Harbour Energy and ABP announced an exclusive commercial relationship to develop a CO2 import terminal at the Port of Immingham, the UK’s largest port by tonnage. This will link to Harbour Energy’s Viking CCS (formerly V Net Zero), the CO2 transport and storage network.
The terminal will provide a large-scale facility to connect CO2 emissions from industrial businesses around the UK to Viking CCS’s high-capacity CO2 storage sites in the Southern North Sea. ABP has joined West Burton Energy, Phillips 66 and VPI as partners to the Viking CCS network, which is targeting first CO2 capture as early as 2027 and a reduction of 10 million tonnes of UK emissions per annum by 2030.
In 2022, ABP and Air Products announced their intention to partner in bringing the first large-scale, green hydrogen production facility to the UK. The facility, which will be located at the Port of Immingham, will import green ammonia, which will be used to produce green hydrogen to help decarbonise hard-to-abate sectors such as transport and industry. ABP will invest in new infrastructure with a new jetty to service the import and export handling of liquid bulk products.
In addition to handling green ammonia, the jetty is being designed so that it can accommodate other cargoes connected to the energy transition, including the import of liquified CO2 from carbon, capture and storage projects for sequestration in the North Sea – thereby playing a significant role in the UK’s energy transition.
