The government has unveiled a £31mn funding package to support industry in reducing its reliance on fossil fuels and cut carbon emissions.
On 31 May, BEIS announced that this includes £5.5mn to develop technologies that support industry to reduce use of high carbon fuels and switch to cleaner power sources, including hydrogen, electrification or fuel from biomass and waste products. It also includes over £6.6mn to shift industry away from using red diesel, ensuring the development of alternatives such as e-fuels and green hydrogen, and £12mn to advance next-generation carbon capture usage and storage (CCUS) technology to deploy at-scale by 2030.
Through the Industrial Fuel Switching Programme, a total of 21 projects were awarded funding, including £299,790 for the British Ceramic Confederation to assess and evaluate the switching of the ceramics sector from natural gas to hydrogen; £279,694 for Sustainable Pipeline Systems to undertake feasibility studies of new real time data gathering to develop new, intelligent integrity management systems for gas/hydrogen pipelines; and £299,424 for Progressive Energy to determine the feasibility of switching baking ovens, oil heaters and steam boilers used in food and drink production over from natural gas to hydrogen.
Under the first phase of the Red Diesel Replacement competition, 17 projects received backing, including a £460,000 grant for Bramble Energy to develop, test and trial a ruggedised, portable hydrogen fuel cell generator; £437,700 for CATAGEN to develop an alternative approach that overcomes issues with current methods of delivering high pressure hydrogen for storage, transportation and dispensing at fuelling stations with a new system and process; and £425,071 for MAHLE Powertrain to demonstrate methods of decarbonising heavy duty engines, using ammonia, hydrogen or a combination of both.
It also highlighted that winners from the first stage of the CCUS Innovation 2.0 competition will receive a share of over £12mn, including Baker Hughes (£2.1mn) which is leading an experimental research and development project to technically qualify an electrified subsea system with simplified structures and flexible pipe to enable largescale offshore CO2 storage in CCUS projects.
It further highlighted how the second call of the CCUS competition is now open to applications, with up to £7.3mn made available.
