Five UK projects set to explore whether hydrogen can be used to cut emissions have been allocated almost £30mn in government funding.
On 18 February, as part of a £90mn drive to reduce carbon emissions in heavy industry and homes through innovation, the government announced that five hydrogen production schemes are to receive a combined £28mn in support. ITM Power’s Gigastack project, which will aim to show that hydrogen can be generated from offshore wind, has received £7.5mn in funding, while the HyNet scheme, led by Progressive Energy in collaboration with others, has been assigned £7.48mn as it looks to build a large scale, low carbon hydrogen production plant on the banks of the Mersey. Project Pale Blue Dot Energy is also targeting a low carbon hydrogen production plant, taking a similar approach to HyNet by using natural gas with carbon capture and storage in Aberdeen, and has received £2.7mn.
Elsewhere, Cranfield University’s HyPER project has been earmarked for £7.44mn to support the creation of a 1.5MWth pilot plant to test an innovative hydrogen production technology that substantially cuts greenhouse gas emissions, while ERM has been handed £3.12mn for its Dolphyn project, which will deploy floating offshore wind turbines that convert seawater to green hydrogen.
BEIS Minister, Kwasi Kwarteng, said: “Cleaning up emissions from industry and housing is a big challenge but today’s £90 million investment will set us on the right path as we develop clean technologies like hydrogen. This is an important part of our world-leading efforts in eliminating our contribution to climate change by 2050 while also growing our economy, creating up to 2 million green collar jobs across the country by 2030.”
