Our transformation
The world wants and needs a better and more balanced energy system – one that delivers energy that is secure, affordable and lower carbon.
And, not or
Our strategy helps us to do both – investing in the transition to lower carbon energy and keeping oil and gas flowing where it’s needed today.
While today we’re mostly in oil and gas, we increased the proportion of our global annual investment that went into our lower carbon and other transition businesses from around 3% in 2019 to around 23% in 2023.
At bp we have five transition growth businesses, that we call growth ‘engines’; bioenergy, EV charging, convenience, hydrogen and renewables & power. We plan to continue to invest in these transition growth engines as well as in oil and gas.
The level – and proportion – of the overall investment going into our lower carbon and other transition businesses may vary year on year as we pursue our target and aim to increase the proportion of investment we make into our non-oil and gas businesses.
In 2023 transition growth investment was $3.8 billion, representing around 23% of our total capital expenditure for the year, which compares to around 3% in 2019 and around 30% in 2022. Of that amount, our low carbon activity investment was over $2.5 billion in 2023. This is lower than the $4 billion we invested in 2022, reflecting the impact of large low carbon acquisitions made that year. (Most of our 2023 low carbon activity investment was in biogas, offshore wind, solar and EV charging.)
Our annual net zero ambition progress updates provide more details of our progress. Read the latest report here.
Click below to find out how our “and, not or” approach is in progress across the UK.
The North Sea has been an important part of our business for 60 years. Today, we continue to provide energy through a portfolio focused around five key production hubs in the central North Sea and west of Shetland.
Our plans in the North Sea will see us continue to invest around our existing production facilities to produce oil and gas safely, reliably, and competitively. We will do this while looking for new ways to lower emissions associated with our operations.
Since 2015, we’ve introduced measures across our North Sea operations to prevent 525,000 tonnes of CO2 equivalent from entering the atmosphere.
With other operators in the central North Sea and west of Shetland, we are exploring opportunities to electrify our facilities, replacing gas turbines – the main source of power generation offshore – with cleaner forms of energy.
bp also has in place a robust carbon performance management plan for the North Sea and our annual environmental statement sets out the progress we are making.
We intend to invest up to £18bn in the UK’s energy system by the end of 2030 (from 2022), including in electric vehicle charging in the UK.
As part of this, we recently opened the UK’s largest public electric vehicle (EV) charging hub1 on the NEC Campus near Birmingham, which has 30 ultra-fast 150kW and 150 7kW2 charge points enabling up to 180 EVs to charge at once.
In 2023, bp pulse more than doubled the number of ultra-fast3 charge points on its public network compared to the same time in 2022 and now operates over 3,000 rapid and ultra-fast charge points in the UK. We opened nine new ultra-fast UK charging hubs and are working with M&S to bring hundreds of charge points to their sites across the UK. We’re also working with the likes of Uber and Royal Mail to help them transition to EV and meet their electrification goals.
We're rolling out charge points to consumers and commercial fleets at places where they need them – destination, depot and on-the-go – including across bp branded retail sites. Today, our bp pulse network is available at over 160 bp retail sites – that’s about a tenth of our UK forecourt network. And that number is constantly changing as we plan to add more charge points this year and next. See our full UK network at: Find your nearest charge point.
Our EV charging and convenience transition growth engines can work together, with customers able to get coffee and range of Wild Bean Cafe offers, M&S Food, and other branded food and products at many of our locations.
1 As of February 2024
2 Max. power this charger can deliver. The rate of charge will depend on various factors including your vehicle model; the state, age and condition of your battery; both the ambient and battery temperature; and the number of vehicles charging at this site. For more information, visit www.bppulse.co.uk
3 bp pulse defines ultra-fast chargers as 150kW and over
The Teesside industrial cluster, with its rich industrial history, is in a tightly packed area with a radius of seven square kilometres, making it well-suited for decarbonisation.
We're backing hydrogen, power and carbon capture and storage projects in the area to help Teesside and the UK decarbonize power, hydrogen and industry.
Net Zero Teesside Power (NZT Power) is set to be one of the world’s first commercial scale gas-fired power stations with carbon capture. The proposed combined cycle gas turbine plant will have a planned electrical output of up to 860 megawatts (MW), enough to power around 1.3 million homes per year. Carbon capture and storage is a process that removes CO2 emissions at source, then compresses the CO2 so that it can be safely transported to secure underground storage sites.
H2Teesside aims to be one of the UK’s largest blue hydrogen production facilities, targeting 1.2GW of hydrogen production by 2030, over 10% of the UK government’s hydrogen target for 2030. Blue hydrogen is produced from natural gas with carbon capture and storage (CCS).
NZT Power and H2Teesside were selected in March 2023 among Track-1 Capture Projects to proceed to negotiations for government funding support with The Department for Energy Security & Net Zero (DESNZ).
In September 2023, H2 Teesside started a consultation programme, where the public can provide input on project plans, as part of the DCO (Development Consent Order) process. H2Teesside aims to submit the DCO application in the first half of this year.
The PEIR report (Preliminary Environmental Information Report for the proposed scheme), produced to support the DCO consultation, outlines that the project could support around 1,300 jobs (both direct and indirect) during the construction phase, and up to 130 jobs during the operational phase, as well as approximately 600 broader supply chain roles.
bp is also the lead partner in the Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP), which will enable the East Coast Cluster (ECC) by providing the common infrastructure needed to transport CO2 from emitters in the Humber & Teesside to secure offshore storage below the southern North Sea. Two years ago, the ECC was selected by the UK government as one of the UK’s Track-1 carbon capture and storage clusters. Once operational, the cluster has the potential to transport and securely store nearly 50% of all UK industrial cluster CO2 emissions – around 23 million tonnes of CO2 emissions a year - by the mid 2030s.
NZT Power and H2 Teesside are both part of the East Coast Cluster.
HyGreen Teesside aims to be one of the biggest green hydrogen facilities in the UK, targeting an initial planned phase of 80 megawatt electrical (Mwe) of green hydrogen capacity. It could deliver up to 5% of the UK Government’s hydrogen target of 10GW by 2030. Green hydrogen is made from renewable energy. The project could help fuel the development of Teesside into the UK’s first major hydrogen transport hub, leading the way for large-scale decarbonization of heavy transport, airports, ports and rail in the UK.
HyGreen could create around 660 construction jobs and 100 operational jobs annually. It will also help enable other UK low carbon key building blocks, for example, hydrogen trucks, Sustainable Aviation Fuel, lithium processing.
The project recently submitted an expression of interest into the Government’s second Hydrogen Allocation Round (HAR2).
For more information on UK guidance on low carbon hydrogen, please visit UK Low Carbon Hydrogen Standard: emissions reporting and sustainability criteria - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Our planned blue and green hydrogen developments in Teesside have attracted potential international participation. ADNOC - the UAE’s largest energy company - has a 25% stake in the design stage of H2Teesside and, in May 2022, Masdar - the Abu Dhabi renewable energy company - signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to acquire a stake in HyGreen Teesside,.
Last year bp announced that it would join ADNOC to evaluate a new blue hydrogen project in Abu Dhabi, conducting a joint feasibility study for a world-scale, low-carbon hydrogen project in the country. In addition, ADNOC, bp and Masdar have joined with Abu Dhabi Waste Management Centre (Tadweer) and Etihad Airways to explore production of sustainable aviation fuels, from hydrogen and municipal waste gasification, in the UAE.
Teesside has the potential to become a world-class, low carbon energy hub and we’re proud to have teamed up with Redcar and Cleveland College to help create a bespoke programme - the Clean Energy Technician Scholarship Programme - to help ensure students’ knowledge and skills meet the needs of developments in hydrogen, carbon capture and green industries. In September 2023, the college welcomed the first cohort of students to start the course.
Redcar and Cleveland College has also joined forces with bp and nine secondary and primary schools, to find innovative ways to bring STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) into the classroom. The two-year bp Enthuse Teesside partnership will give those taking part, their schools and students, access to STEM enrichment opportunities, along with continual professional development training in delivering STEM subjects from the Science Learning Partnership and Computing Hub.
We aim to be a global leader in safely developing, building, operating and owning offshore wind farms. We’re making waves towards this, developing offshore wind farms in the Irish and North Sea that will be capable of contributing to the UK’s 50-gigawatt wind power target by 2030.
In March 2023, we were successful in our INTOG bid to develop our innovation demonstrator floating offshore wind project off the coast of Aberdeenshire. As we look to significantly build our offshore wind footprint around the world, we expect this to increasingly include floating options, and this is one exciting first step.
With our partner EnBW, the wind farms in the Irish and North Sea which we are developing together could generate enough energy to power the equivalent of around six million UK homes every year.
In 2023 we signed Agreements for Lease with The Crown Estate for the Morgan and Mona offshore wind projects, completed community consultations, and secondees from X-Academy, a capability accelerator providing on-the-job project experience and formal learning, joined us to work on the Morven project.
Our plans go much further than just the turbines offshore. For example, through our Morven project we are investing in the Port of Leith helping it transform into Scotland’s largest offshore wind hub where our giant offshore wind turbine towers and blades will be assembled and deployed. The area has been secured as a marshalling port for our Morven offshore wind project by bp and our partner EnBW.
We also opened our dedicated Morven joint venture team office in Edinburgh, which provides another hub for bp and EnBW, strengthening the partnership and we continued our biggest-ever offshore integrated site survey involving specialist vessels and crews. Whilst there are more steps to come, we are on our way to delivering our offshore wind plans in the UK.
Around 6 million homes per year:
- With our partner EnBW, we’re developing up to 5.9GW gross of electricity generation capacity from offshore wind from 3 offshore wind projects in the North Sea and Irish Sea.
- We estimate they’ll have the potential to provide enough electricity for around 6 million UK homes.
- This figure is based on the most recently available average domestic household electricity consumption and load factor figures. Load factor refers to the actual output of a turbine benchmarked against its theoretical maximum yearly output.
- Average domestic household electricity consumption in the UK – 3462kWh (As at 2022 figure from BEIS ECUK numbers published Sept 2023).
- Application of a load or net capacity factor of 47.57 %. This factor is the median of the RUK recommendation of BEIS "all wind": (onshore + offshore) of 31.84% and the DESNZ load factor for new build offshore wind of 63.3% for delivery years 2028/2029 and 2029/2030 as set out in the Contracts for Difference Scheme for renewable electricity generation Allocation Round 5: Allocation Framework, 2023.