Winners of £60 million government competition to develop hydrogen as the superfuel of the future unveiled

• £60 million competition will support innovation in the supply of hydrogen, making new superfuel more viable
• Funding will help position UK as world leader in this emerging industry, boosting long term growth and helping produce more clean, affordable, homegrown energy
• 28 projects in all four nations of the UK to receive share of funding – powering forward an industry expected to create around 12,000 jobs

Companies at the cutting edge of hydrogen innovation will benefit from up to £60 million of government funding,  backing UK development of hydrogen as an affordable, clean, homegrown energy source.

The funding has been awarded to 28 projects across the UK, including Scotland, Wales and the north of England and working across a range of different sectors and technologies through the Low Carbon Hydrogen Supply 2 (HySupply 2) competition.

This will support research and innovation in producing and transporting hydrogen, making it a more viable and affordable fuel for powering industry, including energy-intensive sectors which rely on expensive fossil fuels.

It will also drive the UK hydrogen industry forward, reducing costs, bringing new solutions to the market, and ensuring that the UK continues to develop world-leading hydrogen technologies here at home.

Among the 28 winning HySupply 2 projects are:

• ITM Power based in Yorkshire, which has been awarded more than £9.2 million to build a next generation 5MW electrolyser stack, an industrial tool which separates hydrogen from oxygen in a vat of water using electricity. Building on their findings from the first Hydrogen Supply programme, ITM are seeking to bring the lowest-cost green hydrogen solution to the market.
• Cadent Gas Limited in the West Midlands, which will receive £296,174 for feasibility work focusing on how to purify hydrogen that has been through the gas grid to make it suitable for use in vehicles like lorries.
• The National Nuclear Laboratory in Cumbria, which will receive £242,619 to review and model processes that can use the heat from nuclear reactors to produce hydrogen.

In the British Energy Security Strategy published in April, the government committed to boosting UK hydrogen capacity up to 10 GW by 2030. This could create around 12,000 jobs across the UK as well as increasing domestic energy supply, making the UK less dependent on importing expensive fossil fuels in the future.

Business and Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said:

“The British Energy Security Strategy made clear that we are backing hydrogen not just as a viable source of clean, affordable homegrown energy but as an emerging industry of the future in which the UK can lead the world.

“This funding will accelerate the development of this exciting new industry, helping position us as a hydrogen superpower on the global stage.”

This competition is part of the Net Zero Innovation Portfolio, a fund to accelerate the commercialisation of low-carbon technologies, systems and business models.

A study commissioned by BEIS in 2018 demonstrated that innovation in the hydrogen production process could reduce the cost of producing hydrogen considerably. Funding from HySupply 2 will help industry players to realise this goal.

This funding has been awarded after a competitive bidding process to companies that demonstrated their potential to develop feasible and innovative low-carbon hydrogen supply solutions.

Hydrogen is a clean energy source produced by separating it from other elements in water or fossil fuels to create a gas or liquid that can be used as a fuel. It has immense potential for industry, heating homes and various forms of transport.

Notes to editors

• Funding for HySupply 2 comes from the Net Zero Innovation Portfolio.
• Funding for Stream 1 winning companies will be awarded in two phases.
• Stream 1 Phase 1 will support the development of feasibility studies to test how ready technologies are, with companies receiving up to £300,000 per project. Stream 1 Phase 2 will later select projects from the Phase 1 group and support demonstrations of the new technology at up to £6 million per project.
• Funding for Stream 2 has all been awarded through this initial allocation.
• The competition will support 28 projects. Stream 1 Phase 1 and Stream 2 respectively will support 23 projects (with 21 unique lead organisations) and 5 projects (5 lead organisations) bringing their ideas closer to the marketplace.
• Stream 1 feasibility support funding will go to 21 lead organisations across the UK, including innovators based in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and in several English regions.  
• A virtual Stakeholder Engagement Day was held on 8 June 2021 to provide an opportunity to understand more about the competition and to ask questions.
• The competition webpages can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/low-carbon-hydrogen-supply-2-competition

Stream 2 demonstration projects

Project name	Summary of activity	Lead Organisation	Location of lead organisation (and trial location if it is elsewhere)
Gigatest	ITM Power will build its first 4th generation 5MW electrolyser stack	ITM Power Trading Ltd	Yorkshire and the Humber
SHyLO: Solid Hydrogen at Low pressures	Design and build a modular hydrogen storage solution with the H2GO Power reactor	H2GO Power	Greater London (Scotland)
Hydrogen Turbine 1	Electrolysis physically and computationally integrated with offshore wind turbine	Vattenfall Wind Power Ltd	Greater London (Scotland)
ERM Dolphyn ­ Commercial Scale Demonstration	Electrolysis at a floating offshore wind turbine	Environmental Resources Management Ltd.	North West (Wales)
Tyseley Ammonia to Green Hydrogen	Ammonia to hydrogen conversion	Gemserv Limited	West Midlands

 

Stream 1 feasibility projects

 

Project name	Summary of activity	Lead organisation	Location of lead
Category 1: Low Carbon Hydrogen Production
RECYCLE: REthinking low Carbon hYdrogen production by Chemical Looping rEforming	Auto-thermal reforming with Carbon Capture	University of Manchester	North West
H2Upgrade – Distributed and flexible H2 production with waste streams	Chemical looping to convert waste streams to hydrogen	University of Cambridge	East of England
Microwave Energy System for Distributed Hydrogen Production from Natural Gas with Very Low CO2 Emissions	Microwave powered hydrocarbon to hydrogen and solid carbon	Suiso Limited	Scotland
Small-scale hydrogen production utilising a waste company's SRF feedstock to power its own commercial fleet.	Gasification of solid recovered fuel	Compact Syngas Solutions Limited	Wales
Production of low carbon hydrogen from high carbon heavy fuel oil via gasification with carbon capture and storage	Gasification of fossil fuel products with carbon capture	Essar Oil UK Ltd	North West
Category 2: Zero Carbon Hydrogen Production
Optimising Green Ammonia Production powered by intermittent renewable energy sources	Green ammonia from intermittent power	Science and Technology Facilities Council (part of UKRI Research and Innovation)	South East
Printed Circuit Board Electrolyser	Anion exchange membrane electrolyser	Bramble Energy	South East
GreeNH3	Power to ammonia	Supercritical Solutions Ltd	Greater London
Low Cost Production of Green Hydrogen Gas using Enhanced Recirculating Gas Reactor Technology	Sulphur iodine cycle using thermo-cyclic H2 generator	CATAGEN Limited	Northern Ireland
Tetronics Hydrogen Plasmolysis	Combining electrolysis and thermolysis to perform plasmolysis	Tetronics Technologies Limited	South West
Nuclear Hydrogen Co-Generation Feasibility Study	Nuclear powered high temperature electrolysis and thermochemical water splitting	Frazer-Nash Consultancy	Scotland
Category 3: Hydrogen Storage and Transport
Monolithic MOFs for enhanced cryo-adsorbed hydrogen storage	Metal organic frameworks for hydrogen storage	Immaterial Ltd	East of England
High-Store	Metal hydrides for hydrogen storage	TWI Ltd	Yorkshire and the Humber
Bulk Scale Storage and Transportation of Hydrogen using LOHC	Liquid organic hydrogen carriers	Environmental Resources Management Limited	Greater London
Optimised Hydrogen Liquefaction	Reducing the power demand for liquifying hydrogen	Gasconsult Limited	Greater London
Safe and distributed underground storage of Green Hydrogen in conjunction with storage of power and interseasonal heat	Underground hydrogen store	Gravitricity Ltd	Scotland
Low Cost Production of Liquid Hydrogen Fuel Carrier Using Enhanced Recirculating Gas Reactor Technology	Re-circulating gas reactor to produce syngas from green hydrogen and CO2 from air, and convert to E-fuel (e.g. hydrocarbon)	CATAGEN Limited	Northern Ireland
Category 4: Net Zero Hydrogen Supply Solutions
ERM HyProducer: Use of LOHC for Bunkering Hydrogen at Scale	Marine vessels tankage system for liquid organic hydrogen carriers	Environmental Resources Management Limited	Greater London
HyTN - Hydrogen from Thermochemical and Nuclear	Review and modelling nuclear thermochemical processes for hydrogen	National Nuclear Laboratory	North West
Dragonfly Valve: Zero-Emission Flow Control for the Hydrogen Supply Chain.	Valves for hydrogen transport pipes	Actuation Lab	South West
Hy4Transport	Repurposing the gas grid	Cadent Gas Limited	West Midlands
100MW Green Hydrogen Hub Design	AI and systems design to make electrolysers grid-matching	Emerald Green Power Ltd	South West
System design and integration for the offshore production of Green Hydrogen (H2) using Floating Wind Farms (FWFs)	Developing an integrated system for hydrogen production at floating wind farms	BPP Technical Services Limited	Greater London