Major cash injection for green technology and development

The green technology required to help the UK meet its climate targets has been given a £166.5m cash injection, six months on from the publication of the Prime Minister’s 10 Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution.

The investment, awarded to innovators, businesses, academics and heavy industry across the UK – including recipients in Yorkshire – will accelerate the delivery of critical technologies needed to further drive Britain’s climate change ambitions, while creating over 60,000 jobs across the UK.

The funding package will develop technologies in carbon capture, greenhouse gas removal and hydrogen, while also helping find solutions to decarbonise polluting sectors including manufacturing, steel, energy and waste.

£86m of the total funding package announced today comes from the Government’s £1bn Net Zero Innovation Portfolio, which provides funding for low-carbon technologies and systems, helping the UK end its contribution to climate change.

Projects receiving funding include:

• Professor Christopher Evans, UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology is being backed with almost £4.5m to manage and restore peatlands to maximise their greenhouse gas removal potential at farmland near Doncaster, and at upland sites in the South Pennines and in Pwllpeiran, West Wales. Peatlands store more carbon than any other ecosystem on land, but as a result of human disturbance they are rapidly losing this carbon to the atmosphere. This project will re-create, and where possible enhance, the environmental conditions that lead to peat formation, to re-establish a secure long-term carbon store in the landscape.
• Saint-Gobain Glass, Eggborough, North Yorkshire, will receive over £1.4m to deliver a new flat glass production furnace to improve the efficiency of its UK plant while reducing energy consumption, emissions and on-going maintenance costs. The company has designed a new furnace and production line component replacements that utilise the latest technological advances.
• Phillips 66 Limited, Humberside, will receive over £500,000 explore switching fuel in its gas refinery’s industrial fired heaters with renewable and low carbon hydrogen. Doing so will help to decarbonise these heaters and significantly reduce emissions, while demonstrating the importance of hydrogen for industrial fuel.
• William Cook Holdings Limited, Sheffield, will benefit from over £38,000 to improve energy efficiency and reduce its environmental footprint by recovering waste heat from its furnaces to produce electricity, among other uses.

Energy Minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan said: “We are determined to tackle climate change and make it win-win for both our planet and our economy.

“Today’s major cash boost – targeted at our most polluting industries – will encourage the rapid development of the technologies we need to reign in our emissions and transition to a green economy, one that reduces costs for business, boosts investment and create jobs.

“Just six months ago, the Prime Minister set out a clear 10 Point Plan for creating and supporting up to 250,000 British jobs as we level up and build back greener from the pandemic.

“Today we’re boosting our armoury for the fight against climate change and backing innovators and businesses to create green jobs right across the United Kingdom.”