UK cable manufacturer Tratos will join the team behind a ground-breaking environmental project to remove CO2 from the earth and bury it under the seabed 18 miles off the coast in Liverpool Bay.
ENI UK Ltd, the body behind the Liverpool Bay Project, approached Merseyside-based Tratos to support the Government-backed clean growth carbon emissions scheme. The global cable business, which has its factory in Knowsley, has a strong track record of green innovation. Indeed, Tratos has signed up to help deliver the UN’s 17 Sustainability Goals and last year launched its Sustainability Strategy. The company is working with Spanish standards agency AENOR to develop technology to allow business owners to measure – and so manage – individual companies’ carbon footprints.
ENI’s Liverpool Bay Project has been conceived as a clean growth opportunity for the UK.
In October 2020 the Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) awarded ENI a six-year appraisal licence which earmarks ENI’s Liverpool Bay offshore fields for a permanent store for CO2. The development is part of HyNet North West, a low carbon cluster project to help UK decarbonisation. ENI is expected to be chosen for the HyNet Project if NW England wins the assigned £500m grant from the British Government.
Exhausted hydrocarbon fields – specifically the Hamilton, North Hamilton and Lennox fields – will see the conversion of existing infrastructure to permanently store CO₂ captured in the North-West of England and North Wales.
“There is nothing more important on the planet than its future. This is both a long-term commitment and a long overdue showcase of innovation at its most powerful. This project has to work for the region and for the UK. But its successes will have wider-reaching benefits as the ENI ‘way’ is communicated and copied to advance the recovery of the world environment.”
– Tratos CEO, Dr Maurizio Bragagni, OBE
In March 2021 the project received confirmation of £33 million from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), through its Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge (IDC) fund. The funding covers around 50% of the investment to finalise ongoing planning studies, with the aim of the site becoming operational by 2025.
The fully developed project will turn one of the most energy-intensive industrial districts in the UK into the world’s first low carbon industrial cluster.
Benefits include reducing CO₂ emissions by up to 10 million tonnes every year and delivering 80% of the Government’s UK-wide target of 5GW of low carbon hydrogen.
In addition to helping decarbonize the North-West of England and North Wales, it will work with industrial companies to capture and transport CO₂ from existing plants and future hydrogen production sites. Hydrogen will be used as a transition fuel for heating, electricity and transport, as part of the UK’s zero-emissions target for 2050.
The project will help boost local communities, creating new job opportunities and supporting the region’s economic development. It will also trail-blaze a practical path to decarbonizing the economy.
Tratos is a project partner. The Queen’s Award for Enterprise: Innovation-winning advanced technology cable manufacturer will work alongside other project stakeholders to enable the development of decarbonized industrial clusters through carbon capture and offshore storage.
Tratos will collaborate on technical operational elements of further decarbonisation activities
Alongside ENI, the HyNet North West project is being led by a consortium of regionally-located industrial companies. The site is intended to capture, transport and store carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from existing industries and future production sites to convert to blue hydrogen, an alternative fuel for heating, electricity generation and transport.
The project will be the first carbon capture and storage (CCS) infrastructure in the UK. Together CO2 capture, use and storage, particularly for “hard to abate” industrial emissions, are a practical step toward meeting Paris Agreement and Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development targets, and is considered crucial by the United Nations.
Discover more about Tratos’ sustainability commitment below
TRATOS Sustainability Strategy
Our values, experience and history tell us that we must work in a way that delivers real, lasting benefits for the owners of our company as well as the wider communities in which we operate.
Ecovadis Sustainability Award
Sustainability innovator and independent cable manufacturer Tratos has been awarded a Silver Medal, placing it among the 25% of highest-placed companies scrutinised by the eco-ratings platform. Ecovadis is the world’s largest provider of business sustainability ratings, with a global network of more than 75,000 rated companies.
Environmental Pillar
We care about our planet. The third pillar is about protecting our shared future: pioneering human progress through sustainability, including the materials we produce and the innovations we bring to market, aligned with the priorities of the coming low-carbon economy.
Environmental policy
Environment plays an important role in the healthy living of human beings. Tratos remains committed to protecting the environment, the planet and our common shared future. Tratos’ environmental protection activities are designed to maintain or restore the quality of the environment by preventing the emission of pollutants or reducing the presence of polluting substances.
Towards Net Zero Emissions
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the main greenhouse gas, accounting for 81% of total UK greenhouse gas emissions in 2019, while 87% of all human-produced carbon dioxide emissions come from the burning of fossil fuels like coal, natural gas and oil. Tratos has in place standards and policies to reduce the CO2 emissions as well as to calculate the CO2 emissions and to mitigate their impact by planting trees, as well as using clean energy sources.
