The government has invested £390 million in hydrogen and other low carbon fuel switching technology to help industry cut emissions, including a glass manufacturing project in Merseyside.
The funding includes a £40 million Hydrogen and Fuel Switching Innovation Fund, a £100 million competition to enable greater supply of low carbon hydrogen across the economy and a £250 million Clean Steel Fund to support the iron and steel industry.
Unlike natural gas, hydrogen burns cleanly at point of use, producing just heat and water. The North West is emerging as a leading region for the roll-out of hydrogen, which can be used as a fuel for industrial processes, heating and clean transport.
Green glass
Among the projects selected for funding is Glass Future, a £40 million project in St Helens which is developing innovative ways of reducing the environmental footprint of glass manufacturing.
Up to 50 jobs are set to be created at a new £40 million research centre in Merseyside to develop innovative ways of reducing the environmental footprint of glass manufacturing.
The project has received £300,000 to explore the feasibility of using alternative fuels in the production of glass.
Elsewhere, EDF Energy received more than £400,000 to test the feasibility of using electricity generated at Lancashire’s Heysham Power Stations to produce bulk supplies of hydrogen gas.
Other notable projects include an environmentally-friendly gin distillery in Orkney, which aims to switch from using liquid petroleum gas (LPG) to hydrogen to power production.
Climate change minister Lord Duncan said: “Developing hydrogen technology has the potential to not only reduce emissions from industry, but could also help us seize the opportunities of the global shift to cleaner economies – with the prize of up 2 million jobs and £170 billion of annual exports by 2030.”
Capturing carbon
The news comes shortly after the government invested £26 million into nine ‘carbon capture’ schemes to reduce industrial emissions, including a project to capture 22,000 cars-worth of emissions a year from a chemicals manufacturing facility in Cheshire.
