Business leaders welcome £800k green energy boost

Richard Carter

The North West Business Leadership Team (NWBLT) has welcomed an £800,000 Government investment in the region’s flagship hydrogen project, HyNet.

HyNet, a ground-breaking hydrogen energy and carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) project, is a central component of the North West’s bid to become the UK’s first low carbon industrial cluster by 2030.

Rising to the Government’s Industrial Clusters Mission challenge, the North West came together earlier this year in an historic collaboration led by the NWBLT.

The North West Energy and Hydrogen Cluster could deliver 33,000 jobs, more than £4bn investment and save 10 million tonnes of carbon per year.

Richard Carter, chairman of NWBLT and managing director UK & Ireland of BASF, said: “The North West came together with the ambition to be the UK’s first low carbon industrial cluster by 2030. The Government is looking for a cluster that can deliver, setting the standard for the rest of the nation.

“HyNet is the country’s leading hydrogen and carbon capture project and this backing from Government takes us a step closer to meeting that challenge.”

He added: “We are at the forefront of UK manufacturing and home to a concentration of energy-intensive users. With the current uncertainty around Brexit it’s even more important for us to find ways to decarbonise industry and secure and grow the thousands of jobs that our region depends on, supporting the Local Industrial Strategies being developed across the North West.”

A total of £500,000 has been awarded under the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) Hydrogen Supply Programme to a consortium led by Progressive Energy and involving Johnson Matthey and SNC-Lavalin, to develop a hydrogen production facility at Essar’s oil refinery at Stanlow, Cheshire.

The plant could displace around two per cent of the UK’s industrial demand for natural gas, saving 600,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.

A further £300,000 has been awarded under BEIS’ Industrial Fuel Switching programme to a consortium comprising Progressive Energy and several major industrial gas users in the North West, including St Helens glass maker Pilkington.

The feasibility project could see several major industrial plants converted to hydrogen which would be supplied by pipelines from the production plant at Stanlow.

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