Cabinet ministers Kwasi Kwarteng and Greig Hands met with industry yesterday to accelerate private investment in hydrogen as a clean energy source and a super-fuel of the future.
Jane Toogood, Chief Executive of Catalyst Technologies at Johnson Matthey, was also named as Britain's new 'Hydrogen Champion', as the UK Government played host to a Hydrogen Investment Summit to unlock £9 billion investment into the UK.
A new round of funding was announced at the summit to give investors the confidence they need to help deliver 1GW of electrolytic hydrogen in operation or construction by the end of 2025 – which could produce enough hydrogen to fuel up to 45,000 buses per year.
Business and Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said: "The UK’s hydrogen sector is open for business. With the right investment, we can unlock the enormous potential of hydrogen by reindustrialising our economy and ending our dependency on expensive fossil fuels.
"The new funding represents an important step forward in realising this potential, and I look forward to working with Jane Toogood as our new Hydrogen Champion, ensuring industry and government are aligned to accelerate hydrogen production as a clean, home grown energy source - boosting our energy security and creating jobs."
New Hydrogen Champion Jane Toogood will help drive industry investment and deployment at this critical stage in the early development of the UK hydrogen economy. She will identify current barriers to building a strong UK hydrogen economy and develop creative solutions for how these can be addressed to accelerate the project pipeline and deliver on the UK government commitments.
She said: "The government has ambitious plans for the UK to ramp up hydrogen technology. Hydrogen deployment as a clean energy source is one of the key solutions to help the UK reach its net zero targets and I strongly believe there is an opportunity to accelerate this, working collaboratively across industry and government to land projects and infrastructure on a timeline that serves stakeholder and customers’ needs."
From today, new low carbon electrolytic (known as ‘green’) hydrogen projects can apply for government funding through:
- the Hydrogen Business Model (HBM) – a contractual business model for hydrogen producers to incentivise the production and use of low carbon hydrogen through the provision of ongoing revenue support.
- the Net Zero Hydrogen Fund (NZHF) – up to £240 million of grant funding to support the upfront costs of developing and building low carbon hydrogen production projects.
Projects can apply for both capital funding via the Fund, and revenue support through the HBM. Details on the budget for this first allocation round will be confirmed when the project shortlist is published, due in early 2023.
Read the full announcement.