Hydrogen at the heart of region’s decarbonisation efforts

In the latest edition of Marketing Derby’s Innovate Magazine, we look at how Derbyshire and the East Midlands are forging ahead with plans to put hydrogen at the heart of the region’s decarbonisation efforts.

Hydrogen is viewed as an important tool in helping achieve the holy grail of net zero.

And, as Innovate discovers, there has been three key announcements over the past few months, which signal local ambition to play a leading role in developing utilisation of the energy source.

Potential industrial hydrogen users in the East Midlands have come together to form a new partnership called East Midlands Hydrogen, while Rolls-Royce has given its backing to a new hydrogen in aviation alliance and Toyota Manufacturing UK has unveiled its first prototype Hilux truck powered by the gas.

The partnership behind East Midlands Hydrogen, which includes Toyota, Cadent, Uniper, D2N2 LEP and East Midlands Freeport, brings together an intensive cluster of hydrogen demand forecasts from around 70 industrial sites across Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and north Leicestershire.

These are asking for more than 10TWh of hydrogen by 2040 to enable site decarbonisation.

It is claimed that for these sites alone, access to low carbon hydrogen would enable carbon savings of 1.9 million tonnes per year, the equivalent of gas-related carbon emissions from 860,000 homes.

Will Morlidge, chief executive of D2N2 LEP, told Innovate: “We have the ambition, drive, energy and the partnerships to do this at scale as we drive towards our net zero future.

“I can’t emphasise enough the scale and immediacy of opportunities across our region and I’m looking forward to working with our partners to make this happen at pace.”

Becoming the UK’s largest inland hydrogen cluster would deliver significant economic benefits, with a report by PwC estimating that development of a full hydrogen supply chain in the East Midlands  would contribute £10 billion GVA and create or retain 110,000 jobs by 2050.

Sally Brewis, head of regional development at Cadent, said: “The sheer scale of demand for hydrogen in this region coupled with gigawatt production potential, creates an urgent imperative for a 100 per cent hydrogen pipeline to connect supply and demand.

“Bricks, building materials, food and drink and flexible power generation companies have all told us they need hydrogen to decarbonise.

“Design work is underway for a dedicated sub-section of Cadent’s East Coast hydrogen pipeline network; the low carbon hydrogen delivered by our pipeline would allow industry to decarbonise their operations and protect manufacturing jobs in the region.”

To read the full feature visit https://heyzine.com/flip-book/e95ffdaf1d.html#page/38 .