Black & Veatch Completes FEED Study for UK Hydrogen Project

Infrastructure developer Black & Veatch announced the company has completed execution of a front-end engineering design (FEED) study for the Whitelee Green Hydrogen Project near Glasgow, Scotland. Whitelee is a proposed development by owner ScottishPower Energy Retail Limited. The contract was awarded to Black & Veatch in October 2024.

The first phase of the project, which is sited about 15 miles south of Glasgow, was awarded via UK government funding support as part of the government’s Hydrogen Allocation Round 1, or HAR1, process. The project will produce green hydrogen via a power supply connection to the Whitelee Windfarm, the UK’s largest onshore windfarm. Officials touted that the project will use renewable fuel with zero-carbon emissions.

Green hydrogen is produced using electricity from renewable sources, such as wind, and converting it using an electrolyser, which uses electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis.

The UK government is shortlisting new green hydrogen projects for funding as part of its HAR program. Black & Veatch has recently completed more than 200 front-end loading, or FEL studies, globally with 245 MW of green hydrogen projects completed or under construction.

“ScottishPower develops green hydrogen responsibly and we selected Black & Veatch because of their decades of experience in hydrogen and strong commitment to safety,” said Mark Bradley, Hydrogen Director, ScottishPower Green Hydrogen Limited. “We take a holistic development approach, consulting with local stakeholders to ensure we are able to successfully develop low carbon sources of energy for our customers.”

Black & Veatch said its multi-disciplinary engineering team “delivered a design with safety at the forefront and leveraged the internal experience of constructing and commissioning hydrogen production facilities in other regions,” noting that “the FEED study includes the incorporation of the OEM’s electrolyser package design, as well as the design of all balance of plant scope including hydrogen compression and a tube-trailer dispensing station.” The company said the first phase of this project covers 10 MW of proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolysis, and the conceptual design from Black & Veatch includes a second phase that incorporates an additional 10 MW in electrolysis capacity. The second phase has been shortlisted for the U.K. government’s HAR2 process.

Black & Veatch is also the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) provider for Advanced Clean Energy Storage I (ACES I), a green hydrogen hub in Utah in the U.S.

“Our clients entrust us to help engineer and deploy innovative, bankable green hydrogen energy infrastructure to transition them to lower carbon solutions,” said Youssef Merjaneh, senior vice president and managing director, Europe Middle East and Africa, Black & Veatch. “This innovative project will produce green hydrogen from adjacent onshore wind as part of the U.K. government’s HAR funding program, and we look forward to continued collaboration with the ScottishPower team.”

—Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER.