Building a renewable future

While we continue to produce oil & gas, we’re also making major investments in electricity from renewable sources to meet the UK’s growing energy needs.

This two-pillar strategy is the energy transition in action, and we’ve been transforming our business to become a multi-energy company since the beginning of the decade.
 

Offshore wind

Continued investment in wind is vital to meeting carbon emissions targets in the coming decades. 
We have invested in several offshore wind developments in the UK which will have the capacity to deliver over 5GW of renewable power.

• Seagreen is located 27km off the coast of Angus. It’s Scotland’s largest offshore wind farm (1.1 GW) and the world’s deepest fixed bottom wind farm. Built in partnership with SSE Renewables, it can deliver enough renewable energy to power more than 1.6 million UK homes and became fully operational in October 2023
• Outer Dowsing is a 1.5 GW fixed-bottom wind farm in development off the coast of Lincolnshire. The project, being developed in conjunction with partners Corio Generation and Gulf Energy, is expected to displace the equivalent of nearly 2 million tonnes of CO2 emissions per year of operation
• West of Orkney wind farm, off the north coast of Scotland, is a 2GW fixed-bottom project being developed alongside Corio Generation and RIDG. The lease was secured as part of ScotWind in 2022 and the project was the first from that cohort to receive onshore planning consent in June 2024

Solar

We’re developing several solar projects across the UK amounting to 980MW of power. 

The Staveley Solar Farm is a 40 MW project based in Rutland, England. It will supply enough energy to power Anglian Water’s Wing Water Treatment Works and its wider estate and is part of their plan to decarbonise operations. The solar farm is expected to be fully operational by the end of 2027.

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)

Carbon capture and storage offers a way to help reduce CO2 emissions from industries and industrial clusters that are difficult to decarbonise.   

We’re a partner in the Northern Endurance Project, a CCS project with the potential to store 450 million tonnes of CO2 from emitters in the Teesside and Humber areas of Northeast England. Nearly half of carbon emissions from UK industrial clusters come from this region.

Flexible energy generation

To combat the issues of intermittency - when the sun doesn’t shine, and the wind doesn’t blow - we require flexible sources of energy generation that are quick to respond to energy demand. 

In 2024, we acquired the West Burton B gas fired power plant in Nottinghamshire. The 1.3 GW plant includes a 49 MW battery storage system and can power 1.8 million homes. 

Combined-cycle gas turbine plants such as this one can be mobilised to generate energy within one hour and are essential in supporting the UK’s transition to a low carbon economy.