Delivering reliable power today, whilst investing in tomorrow’s energy needs
Connah's Quay power station. Credit Uniper
Introducing Uniper and our flagship Connah’s Quay Low Carbon Power project, a proposal to build a new gas fired power station, with carbon capture technology, in North Wales.
One of the key challenges for Uniper is to keep an eye on the future, whilst ensuring efficient and reliable operations today.
Uniper is a European energy company, with about 7,000 employees, and it plays a key role in ensuring a secure energy supply in its core markets of Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the Netherlands. In the UK, Uniper owns and operates a flexible generation portfolio of, currently, six power stations, a fast-cycle gas storage facility, two high pressure gas pipelines, and regasification capacity at the Grain LNG terminal in Kent. And we’re progressing carbon capture and hydrogen projects, and building our onshore wind and solar portfolio, to further support energy security in the UK.
Our aim is to ensure we continue to provide reliable power generation when needed, whilst also looking to the future and the decarbonisation of our operations, safeguarding jobs and expertise.
When it comes to decarbonisation, Uniper is helped in the UK by the government support to enable the country’s transition to cleaner energy sources. We have a considerable advantage in the UK thanks to the consistency of policy across successive governments, underpinned by both legislation and a track record of awarding investable contracts, such as capacity market agreements and Contracts for Difference.
This has allowed the UK to deliver on its decarbonisation policies to further drive the overall transformation. Similar to the legislative framework that originally helped offshore wind and solar power to become a cost-effective means of generating electricity, the UK’s business models for power Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) and hydrogen are critical to moving forward.
Weather dependent renewables cannot guarantee continuity of supply on their own. To help fill the gap, we are planning to invest in carbon capture technology in the UK, recognising that natural gas will still have a role to play for some time to come.
Our Connah’s Quay Low Carbon Power (CQLCP) project is a proposal to develop a new combined-cycle gas turbine power station on land at our existing Connah’s Quay site in North Wales. The new power station would be fitted with carbon capture technology to capture CO₂ emissions. The captured CO₂ would then be safely transported to permanent offshore storage facilities in repurposed depleted gas fields and would connect into nearby CO₂ transport and storage infrastructure as part of the HyNet industrial cluster.
As well as its role in supporting energy security and helping to decarbonise the power sector, the CQLCP project has the potential to contribute to job and economic growth, both nationally and regionally in North Wales and North West England. Throughout the construction and operation phases, the proposed investment would support local supply chains and provide a significant boost to jobs and skills.
Development of the CQLCP project began in 2021, and in 2024 Uniper submitted the project into the government’s CCS cluster sequencing process. We were delighted to welcome the then-Minister for Industry, Sarah Jones, to Connah’s Quay on 5th August 2025 to announce that the project was being taken forward to negotiations as a priority project for the HyNet cluster. Over the next decade, with power generation provided increasingly from renewable sources, complementary technologies like carbon capture will be essential and Uniper will be ready to continue to help provide supply security.
