Green alliance

BP and GE today announced their intention to jointly develop and deploy hydrogen power projects that reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from electricity generation.

Vivienne Cox, BP's Chief Executive of Gas, Power and Renewables, and David L. Calhoun, Vice Chairman of GE and president and CEO of GE Infrastructure, signed the agreement today in London.

The world will continue to make extensive use of fossil fuels, such as natural gas and coal, for power generation for the foreseeable future, but technology now allows this to be done more cleanly by creating hydrogen from fossil fuels while capturing and sequestering the carbon as carbon dioxide in deep geological formations. To facilitate this advancement, BP and GE will collaborate on power, carbon capture and sequestration technologies.

BP has already announced plans for two such hydrogen power projects with carbon capture and sequestration in Scotland and California, both of which will use GE technology. Subject to conditions such as appropriate regulatory and fiscal regimes being in place, the companies have an ambition to progress 10 to 15 further projects over the next decade, including the plants in Scotland and California.