Aberdeen has a long-established role as a world leader in the energy sector. The Aberdeen City region is one of the most prosperous regions in the UK and is Scotland’s third largest City Region.

Universally known as the Granite City, Aberdeen is a vibrant, entrepreneurial city in the North East of Scotland, home to a unique mix of business opportunities and specialist skills across various sectors.

Aberdeen has long been known globally as a global energy hub due to the city’s world-class oil and gas sector, and supply chain skills. Aberdeen is a world leader in energy technologies, providing a major economic stream locally and nationally while embracing the global energy transition.

Aberdeen is one of the most exciting and attractive locations in Europe to develop and accelerate low-carbon projects and activities. Aberdeen’s clean energy sector has grown significantly in recent years, boosted by the considerable talent pool of energy engineers and scientists in the area, as well as the abundant wind and tidal energy resources just off the coast.

Aberdeen has tangible energy transition plans that leverage the city’s unique cluster of assets and resources including supply chain capabilities, making it a natural choice for Aberdeen to become a leading climate-positive city that leads the world on the shift to a net-zero future.

In addition to the city’s climate-positive ambitions, Aberdeen’s Net Zero Vision plan sets out the path that Aberdeen needs to follow as a world leader in utilising the energy sector as an economic driver for the city, the region, and beyond. Moreover, Aberdeen’s Strategic Infrastructure Plan outlines the infrastructure projects which will contribute to the city’s energy transition from a fossil-based to a net-zero carbon city, and ultimately a climate-positive city, over the coming decades.

Hydrogen Economy

Aberdeen continues to build on its reputation as a centre of excellence for hydrogen and fuel cell technologies with the largest fleet of hydrogen buses in Europe. Aberdeen is the UK’s leading hydrogen city with one of the largest and most varied fleets of hydrogen vehicles in Europe. This includes double-decker buses and waste trucks, with hydrogen cargo bikes due to be in operation in 2022.

The Aberdeen Hydrogen Strategy outlines key actions required over a 10-year period to utilise the city’s significant potential for early deployment of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, as well as becoming the hub for hydrogen technologies in Scotland. Currently, the city boasts Europe’s largest fuel cell bus fleet and Scotland’s first facility for hydrogen production via water electrolysis.

H2 Aberdeen is an initiative working to bring about a hydrogen economy in the Aberdeen City Region. It will help reinforce the area’s position as a pioneering hydrogen city. Over the lifetime of H2 Aberdeen, the city has hosted 85 Hydrogen Vehicles, including the world’s first hydrogen double-decker bus, and hosts two publicly accessible hydrogen refueling stations that can refuel buses, cars, HGVs, and vans.

Aberdeen also leads the multinational partnership HyTrEc2, a project involving partners from the UK, Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway to support the use of hydrogen in the transport and energy sectors in the North Sea Region.

Moreover, Aberdeen City Council is leading plans to make the city a world-class hydrogen hub. Named Aberdeen Hydrogen Hub, the project aims to commercially produce affordable green hydrogen from renewables to support the city’s transport as well as heating, industry, and export projects.

Offshore Wind

Aberdeen has a huge capacity for the generation of renewable energy. Over 25% of Europe’s wind energy crosses the Scottish landmass allowing the potential wind generation capacity to be more than three times the requirement.

Located in the Aberdeen City Region, Equinor’s £200 million Hywind Pilot Park is made up of six 5MW wind turbines on floating structures at Buchan Deep. It has been operational since 2018 and generates enough energy to power 20,000 homes.

Adding to Aberdeen’s offshore wind success is the development of the 50MW Kincardine Offshore Wind Farm (KOWL) in Aberdeen Bay, which is one of the world’s biggest floating offshore wind farms. KOWL is expected to generate up to 218GWh of clean electricity a year, which will be enough to power approximately 55,000 Scottish households.

Furthermore, Vattenfall’s European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre, located in Aberdeen Bay, is Scotland’s largest offshore wind test and demonstration facility. The £300 million project is comprised of eleven turbines with a capacity of 92.4MW and will be in operation for 20 years.

In January 2022, Crown Estate Scotland confirmed ScotWind leasing winners. ScotWind is the first round of Offshore Wind Leasing in Scottish waters for a decade, with a pipeline of projects totalling 28GW. With the majority of the licenses being within 100 nautical miles of Aberdeen, ScotWind will bring vast opportunities to the city over the next decade.

P&J Live

In 2019, a £333 million Conference and Event Complex (P&J Live) was opened in Aberdeen – the largest single investment in conference, exhibition and concert venues in the history of the UK.

P&J Live is home to the largest fuel cell installation in the UK, on par with the largest in Europe, with a dedicated on-site energy centre to provide power, heat and cooling to the conference and event area- providing a total electrical output of 1.4MW- reinforcing Aberdeen’s status as a Global Energy Hub.

Useful Links:

• Aberdeen’s Hydrogen Economy
• Aberdeen Net Zero Vision
• Strategic Infrastructure Plan
• Energy Transition Zone (ETZ) Ltd
• Net Zero Technology Centre
• Aberdeen City Region Deal
• Visit Aberdeenshire
• University of Aberdeen
• Robert Gordon University
• Aberdeen City Hydrogen Energy Storage station (ACHES)