Businesses turning to hydrogen and carbon capture projects to help them cut emissions are among those to receive backing as part of a £51.9 million package from the government as part of its “Plan for Change”.
The 25 winners, which have been allocated funding through the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (IETF), will pay for around two-thirds of the project costs. It is expected that not only will these projects help businesses of all sizes to expand and innovate, they will also support new jobs – through construction and operations – and boost local growth, as well as obviously helping businesses to cut their bills and emissions.
A number of businesses are looking into the potential of switching to hydrogen, with KP Snacks exploring turning its heating equipment over to hydrogen in a bid to target decarbonisation in the food sector, and Knauf also looking to carry out a feasibility study into using hydrogen as a substitute for natural gas in its work manufacturing gypsum-based building materials.
Encirc is another looking into the feasibility of a hydrogen switch, with a £2.4 million project exploring hydrogen-hybrid furnace upgrades for its glass container manufacturing facility at Elton, where it produces more than 500,000 tonnes of glass per year. Encirc is also set to deploy a hydrogen fuel system for glass furnaces at a cost of £4.4 million, making the most of its advantageous location within the HyNet North West development cluster.
Essar Oil, meanwhile, is set to get to work on a £1.7 million project, converting all fired heaters across its Stanlow refinery to low carbon hydrogen that will be produced in the Vertex Hydrogen production plant. This is set to save around 27% of the site’s total CO2 emissions.
Elsewhere, Hanson is eyeing a £15.6 million project involving a carbon capture facility, enabling it to extract CO2 emissions from the cement manufacturing process before safely storing them. This could see 800,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions captured per year, with 54 full-time highly skilled roles created, as well as 350 jobs during construction.
Aggregate Industries is another looking to install carbon capture technology at its Cauldon Cement Plant, with it set to carry out a study exploring introducing it by 2030, potentially cutting carbon by more than 600,000 tonnes each year, while Essar Oil is to carry out a FEED study into a potential fluid catalytic cracking (FCC) carbon dioxide capture unit. This could capture at least 95% of CO2 currently emitted from its existing FCC stack.
