‘If UK doesn’t back green hubs, investors will look elsewhere’

A Conservative regional leader has rejected Keith Anderson’s call for the government to focus its power decarbonisation efforts on electricity because technologies like hydrogen and carbon, capture and storage (CCS) are not ready.

In an interview with The Times, the Scottish Power chief executive urged ministers not to be “distracted” by such technologies because they are not ready while wind and solar power can deliver solutions today.

However, Ben Houchen, elected mayor of the Tees Valley combined authority, told an onilne event yesterday (23 June) that this was not true and that hydrogen was already proven technology.

Pointing out that Teesside’s petro-chemical industry has a long-term track record of producing hydrogen, he said: “Hydrogen as a byproduct and feedstock has been used for decades: it’s not a new technology.”

Houchen told the event on economic recovery, which was organised by the Energy and Climate Information Unit, that a planning application has already been submitted for the Net Zero Teesside CCS plant on the former Redcar steelworks site.

“It’s an already proven technology, they’re just scaling it up,” he said, adding that the project should be up and running by 2025.

Houchen, whose election as Tees Valley mayor in 2017 was a harbinger of the Conservatives’ victories across Labour’s former red wall constituencies in the north of England at last year’s general election, also said all local trains across Teesside will be running on hydrogen by 2023.

With its traditional strengths in the petro-chemical industry, Teeside is one of the UK’s prime candidates to become a centre for CCS and hydrogen technologies.

However, Houchen warned that the UK government must adopt a more hands-on approach to regional industrial policy if it wants to develop these kinds of economic clusters.

He said that to retain jobs in industries like offshore wind and hydrogen in the UK, the government must be prepared to back regional clusters otherwise investment risks being lost to other countries.

“We need a change of mindset for government departments to actively promote regions

“Unless we row in behind an option, they will go abroad because some of these investors would rather stay in Germany or Holland.

If the government can change its approach to industrial policy, it will be pushing at an “open goal” with investors, he added.

But the Tees Valley politician said these concerns reflected a wider malaise.

“Nobody talking seriously about decarbonising industry in Whitehall,” he said, adding that “inertia in government policy-making makes it really difficult.”

And he warned that the transition to decarbonisation could be derailed unless the economic consequences are managed carefully.

“The transition is going to be crucial in taking the public with us because massive job losses in the transition to green economy will massively set us back.”