A GO-AHEAD has been given to first stage deployment project to assess and scope of deploying green hydrogen in Humberside to help to clean up the area’s emissions.
ITM Power, an energy storage and clean fuel company, has won, with partner Element Energy, a first stage deployment project in the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund competition ‘Decarbonisation of Industrial Clusters’.
Graham Cooley, CEO, commented on the news: “This is the first of what we believe will be many projects to set out a roadmap to achieving the UK’s ambitious Net Zero by 2050 target.
“Humberside has both renewable energy and heavy industry, making it an ideal test bed for industrial scale green hydrogen production and distribution.”
‘Green Hydrogen for Humberside’ will lead to the production of renewable hydrogen at the Gigawatt (GW) scale distributed to a mix of industrial energy users in Immingham, Humberside.
Decarbonisation of this cluster is critical in reaching the UK’s legally binding 2050 net zero emission targets.
Humberside, the UK’s largest cluster by industrial emissions, (12.4Mt of CO2 per year), contributes £18bn to the national economy each year and has access to a large renewable resource from offshore wind in the North Sea.
The project will work with customers in the region to establish the feasibility of switching to renewable hydrogen and justify a number of 100MW deployments of electrolysers.
The project will cost the supply of hydrogen to these end users.
This includes the electricity supply to the electrolyser, the hydrogen production facility, hydrogen distribution across the Humber and conversion of existing processes to use renewable hydrogen.
‘Green Hydrogen for Humberside’ will be an important part of the decarbonisation vision for the region by enabling both an early bulk scale supply of zero carbon fuel and the subsequent expansion of supply via a progression in electrolyser capacity out to 2040.
Ben Madden, MD Element Energy, added: “We aim to demonstrate to the UK Government, our industrial partners and the rest of the world the potential benefits of green hydrogen to the reduction of carbon emissions.
“This project will help to create a blueprint for cleaner industry that can be rolled out elsewhere.”
The region is divided into a Northern and Southern cluster.
Immingham, the Southern cluster, is the most carbon intensive and has access to renewable electricity from GW scale offshore windfarms which comes ashore in the region.
Long-term, there is an opportunity to build several tens of GWs of wind power solely to generate green hydrogen offshore.
This makes Immingham an attractive location for the production of low-cost renewable hydrogen for industrial decarbonisation as part of the wider Zero Carbon Humber roadmap.
Since there are no emissions associated with the production of renewable hydrogen, the emission-saving potential for industrial processes converting to hydrogen is 100%.
The skills gained from creating the first renewable hydrogen cluster will be leveraged in other UK clusters and internationally, making the UK an international centre for renewable hydrogen excellence.
This will also help support a UK supply chain in the manufacture and deployment of electrolyser products through ITM Power’s manufacturing plant in South Yorkshire.
