Uniper and GE to collaborate on climate-friendly natural gas assets

Uniper and General Electric have signed an agreement aiming at a long-term collaboration on the decarbonisation of Uniper's gas-fired power plants and natural gas storage facilities.

GE’s Gas Power business and Uniper will explore, assess, and develop technology options for decarbonisation — GE’s first fleet-wide decarbonisation programme signed with a major power producer.

This agreement — signed in June 2020 — aims at producing a detailed decarbonisation roadmap by a joint working group composed of both GE and Uniper representatives by early 2021. This roadmap is to develop an assessment of potential upgrades and R&D programmes needed to drive decarbonisation, including increasing the use of emissions-friendly hydrogen in GE gas turbines and compressors in Uniper's power plants and gas storage facilities across Europe.

Through this agreement, Uniper has taken another important step towards the decarbonisation of its natural gas assets. At the beginning of the year, Uniper set itself the strategic goal of climate-neutrality in its European generation business by 2035. Uniper already produces around 24 terawatt hours of CO2-free electricity with its hydroelectric and nuclear power plants in Germany and Sweden.

Andreas Schierenbeck, CEO of Uniper: "This agreement with the US manufacturer GE is another proof of our commitment to move ahead with the decarbonisation of our power generation and storage facilities. In a few years, Uniper’s European fleet will consist mainly of climate-friendly gas-fired power plants and CO2-free hydropower. From now on, our investments will focus primarily on the further decarbonisation of the gas assets which could include post combustion carbon capture, utilization and sequestration (CCUS) as well as blue or green hydrogen. And here, clean hydrogen will - as far as it is possible and sensible - replace the fossil components of the gas plants.”

Scott Strazik, CEO of GE Gas Power said: “GE is committed to working with all our customers to ensure their gas assets continue to play a role in a cleaner energy future. We are honoured to work with Uniper to deliver reliable, affordable, and sustainable decarbonisation technologies for their entire GE gas asset base, and provide lower-carbon electricity for Uniper’s customers across Europe. GE has a long history of innovation, and we look forward to utilising our 80+ years of gas turbine development experience—including six million operating hours with low-BTU fuels—to make Uniper’s decarbonisation vision a reality.”