UK government awards seed funds for six decarbonisaiton schemes

The UK government has awarded six groups seed funding for planned decarbonisation projects in Scotland, England and Wales that aim to help the UK meet its net zero target by 2050.

In addition, the government has granted seed funds to another six groups to pull together road maps on how decarbonisaton can be achieved.

Two of the decarbonising projects receiving financial support from the Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge Fund are in Scotland, which has a separate goal of achieving net zero by 2045.

The Net Zero Infrastructure project, led by Pale Blue Dot Energy, will use the funds to develop its plans to deploy CO2 gathering and shipping infrastructure to decarbonise the industrial cluster in Scotland’s central belt.

The Welsh scheme - called the South Wales Industrial Cluster - will identify process options to reduce carbon emissions, options for carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) and for an infrastructure backbone to enable large scale emissions reduction across the principality and beyond.

Another winner is Net Zero Teesside, a CCUS scheme in northeast England that aims to decarbonise an industrial cluster by as soon as 2030 and capture up to 6 million tonnes of emissions.

In eastern England, there are two Humber-based proposals.

The first - the Humber Industrial Decarbonisation Deployment initiative - plans to identify and develop potential anchor projects to eventually develop an CO2 transport and storage system.

The second - Green Hydrogen for Humberside - aims to producte renewable hydrogen at gigawatt scale using a process called polymer electrolyte membrane electrolysis.

This hydrogen will be distributed to a mix of industrial energy users in Immingham.

Humberside is the UK's largest cluster by industrial emissions and has access to a large renewable resource from offshore wind in the North Sea.

In northwest England, the goal of the HyNet CCUS project is to provide infrastructure to transport and store CO2 produced as a by-product of hydrogen production.

Roadmap funds, meanwhile, were secured by projects in the Tees Valley, Humberside, Scotland, north west England/north east Wales, South Wales and the Midlands.

This seed funding allows all the groups to progress to the next round of the UK government’s Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.

This means they are eligible to compete for further funding, of which £131 million ($164 million) is available for the deployment element of the UK’s industrial decarbonisation strategy, and £8 million for roadmap work.

Bryony Livesey, challenge director for industrial decarbonisation at UK Research and Innovation, which awarded the funds , said: “As the UK goes through trying times we nonetheless must plan for the future. These (decarbonisation) projects are the first stride towards the government’s plans to develop cost-effective decarbonisation in industrial hubs that tackle the emissions challenge that UK industry faces.”