Government awards £166.5m to develop green technologies

EDF’s planned Sizewell C nuclear plant, Drax and a project linked to the Cadent-backed HyNet scheme are amongst the winners from a £166.5m funding package for green technologies announced by the government on Monday (24 May).

The biggest chunk (£60 million) will go towards the development of low-carbon hydrogen, in particular, scaling up the production of green hydrogen using electrolysis.

A total of £20 million will also support the development of carbon capture, usage and storage technologies so they can be deployed at scale by 2030.

And another £37.5 million has been earmarked to fund what the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) claims is the “largest” government programme for greenhouse gas removal methods.

Out of this pot, 24 projects across England and Wales have been awarded up to £250,000 each to develop new ways of removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and storing them safely as part of the first phase of a BEIS competition.

The winners include a consortium led by EDF’s Sizewell C project, which has been granted £250,000 to develop a new type of heat-powered direct air capture (DAC) technology to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.

A DAC plant integrated with Sizewell C could use up to 400 MW of thermal energy from the power station to capture 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 per year without hindering its ability to generate electricity.

Its backers claim this process is more efficient than existing DAC technology because it will require little to no electricity and will be able to use heat at a wide range of temperatures.

They also say the use of cheap heat from nuclear power stations could “significantly” drive down the cost of this new technology, while also ensuring that Sizewell C itself has negative emissions.

Drax has also been awarded funding to develop biomass gasification as a future negative emissions technology.

The process involves breaking down biomass into a gaseous mixture, which that can be processed and purified to produce energy in the form of electricity, biofuels or hydrogen. The residual CO2 emissions can then be captured and stored.

A further five projects will receive up to £4.5 million each to investigate the viability of adopting greenhouse gas removal methods at scale.

Essar Oil’s proposals to design a hydrogen-fuelled furnace for its Stanlow refinery as part of Cadent’s wider HyNet project in the North West have also been awarded almost £7.3 million of funding for the first phase of the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund competition.

Commenting on the support for Sizewell C, the project’s finance director, Julia Pyke, said: “Finding a way to bring down the cost of direct air capture is important to our transition to net zero, and powering DAC with heat from Sizewell C has the potential to make the power station carbon negative. This has exciting potential for our fight against climate change and shows how nuclear can bring even more value to our energy system.”

Matt Hindle, head of gas at Energy Networks Association, said: “Today’s announcement will kick-start decarbonised hydrogen production here in the UK, creating good quality, long-term jobs across the country. That’s good for action on climate change, good for building a world-leading hydrogen economy and good for ensuring jobs are created here at home.”