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The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has awarded more than £28 million to five projects for phase two of its low-carbon hydrogen supply competition announced in May 2018.
It includes funding to develop the technology to enable floating wind turbines to produce hydrogen offshore.
Two of the projects concern the process of electrolysis, whereby electricity is passed through water to separate it into hydrogen and oxygen.
Environmental Resources Management will receive £3.12 million to design a prototype of an integrated water treatment and electrolyser system that would be fitted to floating wind turbines. It would allow hydrogen to be produced offshore using seawater before being piped back to land.
ITM Power has been granted £7.5 million to develop designs for an electrolyser system that would feed an oil refinery in the Humber region and would be powered by Orsted’s Hornsea Two offshore wind farm. The funding for the Gigastack project will also enable the company to further develop its plans for the large-scale manufacture of electrolysers.
The other three projects concern the extraction of hydrogen from natural gas – a process known as reformation. To make the fuel low-carbon, the resulting carbon emissions are captured and stored. Hydrogen produced in this manner is sometimes referred to as “blue hydrogen” as opposed to the “green hydrogen” produced using electrolysis.
A consortium led by Progressive Energy has been awarded £7.48 million to produce the design for a “shovel-ready” hydrogen production facility at Ellesmore Port in Cheshire. The facility would form part of the HyNet project that aims to create a net-zero industrial cluster in the North West.
Cadent, which is a key partner in the HyNet project, has announced plans to create the UK’s first hydrogen network in the area at a cost of £900 million.
The Acorn project led by Pale Blue Dot Energy has been awarded £2.7 million to develop and assess a new reformation process, with a view to building a production facility at the St Fergus gas terminal in Aberdeenshire, whilst Cranfield University has been granted £7.44 million for its HyPER project to design and build a pilot plant for another new reformation process.
The grants are part of a £90 million package of funding for efforts to cut carbon emissions from homes and industry announced earlier today (18 February) by the government.
“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,” said business, energy and clean growth minister Kwasi Kwarteng.
“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.”
BEIS has also doled out £18.5 million to four projects for phase three of its industrial fuel-switching competition, including £5.27 million to the aforementioned HyNet project.
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), meanwhile, has awarded £22 million to ten smart local energy system demonstration projects.
Among the beneficiaries is the GreenSCIES (Green Smart Community Integrated Energy System) project being undertaken in by London South Bank University (LSBU), Islington Council and Transport for London. The project will involve using heat pumps and waste heat extracted from data centres and underground rail lines to supply a heat network in the borough of Islington.
Graeme Maidment, the director of the project consortium and professor of heating and cooling at LSBU, said: “GreenSCIES provides a brilliant opportunity to deliver low carbon energy in urban areas. This fantastic consortium will develop new systems and business models to provide fairer access to low cost and low carbon energy supply for local residents in inner cities – many of whom are fuel poor.
“We will also investigate policy models and strategies to optimise their adoption at local, national and international levels.”
UKRI additionally granted £3 million for demonstrations of key components of smart local energy systems and £22 million for research examining heating, transport and global fuel markets.
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