UK’s £60m competition winners show strength of H2 innovation pipeline
Innovation in the UK’s hydrogen industry is alive and well.
Last week saw the UK government award £60 million to 28 hydrogen projects across the country as part of a competition aimed at fostering innovation in the production and storage of hydrogen.
The Department for Business, Energy and Environmental Strategy awarded about £6 million to 23 projects to conduct feasibility studies on innovative hydrogen supply solutions and a further £38 million to 5 projects to support physical demonstration of emerging supply technology. The remaining £16 million will be awarded to a selection of the 23 feasibility studies to take them through to the demonstration phase.
Among the winners were some well-known names, such as Vattenfall and ITM Power, and some lesser-known players, including solid hydrogen cleantech company H2GO Power and resource recovery specialist Tetronics.
The UK government is awarding £60 million to 28 hydrogen projects across the country as part of a competition aimed at fostering innovation in the production and storage of hydrogen.
The biggest bucks went to Vattenfall and ITM Power, each of which received grants of £9.3 million. ITM will spend its funds bringing its fourth-generation electrolyser to market and building a new factory in Sheffield.
Electrolysers are used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen with renewable electricity, creating so-called green hydrogen with zero emissions released during production. Hydrogen produces only water when it is burned, making the green variety the cleanest fuel on the planet.
ITM’s new 5 MW electrolyser will be capable of producing 2.5 times more green hydrogen than its predecessor and will be cheaper and more compact, making it a world leader.
Its factory in Sheffield will host new, advanced manufacturing techniques and equipment, allowing for the semi-automated mass-production of electrolyser stacks and increase its overall manufacturing capacity to 1 GW a year by 2023.
Vattenfall Hydrogen Turbine 1 (HT1) project will be the world’s first full-scale demonstration of hydrogen produced offshore with electrolysers that are integrated into wind turbines. The hydrogen it produces will be sent ashore in Aberdeen via a pipeline with operation set begin in early 2025.
ERM Dolphyn received £8.l6 million to advance its offshore floating wind-to-hydrogen technology. Environmental Resource Management plans to begin offshore demonstration trials during 2023 that will produce electrolytic hydrogen from seawater and to have developed a commercial scale demonstrator by 2025 which aims to produce hydrogen at a commercial price.
ITM’s factory in Sheffield will host new, advanced manufacturing techniques and equipment, allowing for the semi-automated mass-production of electrolyser stacks and increase its overall manufacturing capacity to 1 GW a year by 2023.
H2GO Power was awarded £4.3 million to develop its solid hydrogen storage technology, which it claims can achieve densities of 50-100 grams per litre, more than liquid or gaseous hydrogen storage. Safer than super-cooled liquid hydrogen and therefore potentially relieving users of a significant regulatory burden and costs, H2GO’s solution will be integrated into a shipping container for this pilot project.
The final project awarded a grant under Stream 2 is led by a consortium of professional services provider Gemserv, low carbon energy solutions company EQUANS, mobile hydrogen producer H2Site, Tyseley Energy Park, University of Birmingham and fertiliser company Yara. They will spend their £6.7 million award on the development of what they say will be the world’s largest and most efficient ammonia to hydrogen integrated membrane reactor capable of delivering 200kg/day of transport-grade hydrogen.
Winners of the smaller Stream 1, Phase 1 grants of about £300,000 each included H2Upgrade led by University of Cambridge, which is developing a new technology that produced hydrogen from thermochemical water splitting and utilisation of waste streams, such as gases, solvents and biostreams that it predicts will slash the cost of production by about 75%.
Tetronics will spend its grant on testing Tectronics Hydrogen Plasmolysis (THP), a novel process combining elements of electrolysis and thermolysis, which aims to deliver a new, more efficient and lower cost hydrogen production technology.
A further 21 early-stage projects will also receive similar-sized awards for technologies including microwave-driven pyrolysis, small modular nuclear reactors, printed circuit board electrolysers, and metal organic framework hydrogen storage.
By becoming leaders in the technology that produces, transports and stores hydrogen, the UK can further enhance its energy security and produce high quality, sustainable jobs while improving our balance of trade and stimulating the economy.
Not all the Stream 1 projects will make it through to Phase 2, but the breadth of technologies being developed by companies and universities in the UK is outstanding and bodes well for the sector’s future in this country.
One of clean hydrogen’s key promises is that it can improve energy security by providing a way of producing fuel domestically without relying on imports of fossil fuels from nations that don’t share our values or, like Russia, have become a danger to the world.
By becoming leaders in the technology that produces, transports and stores hydrogen, the UK can further enhance its energy security and produce high quality, sustainable jobs while improving our balance of trade and stimulating the economy.
Most of all, it can accelerate the world’s net zero goals and greatly improve our chances of avoiding the catastrophic warming of the planet that threatens all our livelihoods.
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