Government pumps £7m into green hydrogen projects
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Projects to drive innovation in the production, storage and distribution of renewable hydrogen are to receive £7 million of Scottish Government funding.
First Minister Humza Yousaf announced the Hydrogen Innovation Scheme funding while addressing delegates at the All-Energy conference in Glasgow yesterday.
The investment will support 32 projects, including:
- a study into treating water from the River Clyde to produce hydrogen cheaply
- the establishment of a green hydrogen production learning, test and research hub in Stornoway
- a scheme to use waste heat generated from wind turbines on the Isle of Lewis to create hydrogen
- a Hydrogen Innovation Hub at Glasgow Airport for storage and distribution
- a study examining the use of tidal energy around Yell in the Shetland Islands to produce hydrogen
The First Minister said: “We have committed £100m, over this parliamentary session, to supporting the green hydrogen sector.
“Part of that funding has been allocated to the Hydrogen Innovation Scheme, which supports feasibility studies, technical demonstrations and testing facilities for new ideas about how to produce, store and distribute hydrogen.
“I am pleased to be able to confirm today that through this scheme, grants worth a total of £7m have been allocated to 32 different projects.
“The projects cover a wide range of different areas - such as how to produce and store hydrogen on floating windfarms, and how to decarbonise agriculture and forestry work in rural areas. Together, they show the range of possible ways in which hydrogen can be produced, used and stored. They highlight the expertise and innovation that is already such an important part of the sector. And, of course, they demonstrate the scale of the opportunities that hydrogen can create.”
Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, University of The Highlands (UHI) and Islands Outer Hebrides and PlusZero have been awarded £1,129,000 for a green hydrogen production learning, test and research hub at Creed Park, Stornoway.
Comhairle nan Eilean Siar head of municipal services David Macleod said: “Project partners Comhairle nan Eilean Siar, UHI Outer Hebrides and PlusZero Ltd are delighted that the Creed Hydrogen Skills and Innovation Centre has been selected to receive funding.
“This ground-breaking public, private and university collaboration will help deliver the skilled workforce and robust hydrogen technology needed to support the Outer Hebrides ambitions to be Scotland’s leading green hydrogen production hub and play a key role in achieving the Scottish Government’s ambition for delivering 5 gigawatts of renewable and low-carbon hydrogen production by 2030.”
The investment comes as a suite of new reports published by Scottish Enterprise revealed increasing potential demand for hydrogen as an alternative to fossil fuel in Scotland.
Meanwhile, earlier this month Heriot-Watt University teamed up with hydrogen technologies experts Logan Energy and PlusZero to launch a new centre for green hydrogen innovation and product development.
The 32 projects awarded funding are below:
| Project | Lead organisation | Description | Funding awarded |
| H2GEN | Cygnas Solutions | Feasibility study of H2GEN hydrogen storage system. | £147,610 |
| HyBrine | sHYp BV Ltd | Feasibility study for project HyBrine, which aims to achieve low cost, efficient, and sustainable H2 production by using seawater as the water source and through technology advancements that avoid the need for desalination systems and enable more durable and reliable electrolysis. | £150,000 |
| HyFloat | Wood Group | Feasibility study for HyFloat, a floating wind platform that houses renewable hydrogen production equipment and stores the hydrogen within the buoyant structure. | £150,000 |
| Combining grid constrained wind and solar with quarry water supply for green hydrogen production | Chartmount Holdings Ltd | Study which will examine the feasibility of utilising multiple renewable electricity sources to power an electrolyser that would use water in a co-located quarry to produce green hydrogen. | £63,165 |
| Isle of Lewis Hydrogen Supply Project | Fortescue Future Industries | Study focusing on onshore wind projects on the Isle of Lewis for green hydrogen production. | £150,000 |
| Green Hydrogen and Oxygen Supply from Tidal energy (GHOST) | Nova Innovation Ltd | Study examining the feasibility of using tidal energy around the Shetland Island of Yell for the production of hydrogen and oxygen production for local use, including as rocket fuel for the Saxavord Space Centre. | £131,017 |
| Mobile hydrogen unit to utilise grid curtailed generation | Temporis Capital Ltd | Study that will investigate the feasibility of utilising a portable green hydrogen electrolyser to produce hydrogen using power from renewable generators in Scotland during grid curtailment. | £110,420 |
| HyDesal | Waterwhelm Ltd | Study to explore routes to improve the membrane design of Waterwhelm’s desalination technology and the feasibility of implementing this improved technology with commercially-available renewable hydrogen production units using waste heat. | £149,759 |
| GHigha: Green Hydrogen for the Isle of Gigha | BPP Technical Services Ltd | Concept design for a Green Hydrogen Production System with the Isle of Gigha as the case study. | £150,000 |
| Next-generation optical solution for the detection of hydrogen contaminants | Chromacity Ltd | Study to develop improved process controls for the hydrogen supply chain through the detection of contaminants/pollution. | £150,000 |
| Hybrid Hydrogen Storage and Distribution | Glacier Energy Services Holdings Ltd | Feasibility study into the optimum design of low-cost, lightweight hydrogen storage and distribution vessels. | £149,995 |
| Glasgow Airport Hydrogen Innovation Hub | Glasgow Airport Ltd | Study to test the feasibility of a hydrogen production, storage and distribution hub at Glasgow Airport. | £150,000 |
| Feasibility of Explainable AI to support decision making as applied to hydrogen generation | Intelligent Plant Ltd | Study to develop a decision support system and use explainable artificial intelligence to support logistics solutions for hydrogen production. | £148,879 |
| Tank Testing of Hydrogen Offshore Transfer System (TestHOTS) | Jebb Smith Ltd | Feasibility study to refine the design and functionality of a land-sea interface for hydrogen transport and distribution. | £149,289 |
| Optimisation of Proton Conducting Ceramic Tubular Cells for Efficient Hydrogen Production | ZEM Fuel Systems Limited | Feasibility study to explore the creation of efficient hydrogen production from steam to hydrogen to provide a low cost, efficient, durable, and zero carbon production mechanism. | £148,028 |
| Advanced Decoupled Electrolysis Demonstrator Project | Clyde Hydrogen Systems Ltd | Project to demonstrate novel technology for the innovative low-cost, efficient and sustainable production of renewable hydrogen. | £744,189 |
| Discontinuum Modelling for a Lined Rock Hydrogen Storage Shaft | Gravitricity Ltd | Study to examine the feasibility of storing hydrogen in a purpose sunk shaft within a rock shaft with mixed geology. | £149,464 |
| Orkney sea water electrolysis project | Locogen Ltd | Study to investigate the feasibility of using seawater as the feedwater to an electrolyser system. | £112,838 |
| H2Shore - Hydrogen coastal storage and distribution | Port of Aberdeen | Study to investigate the feasibility of establishing underwater hydrogen storage at the South Harbour at Port of Aberdeen. | £150,000 |
| StorageUpscale | Scottish Gas Network | Feasibility study into how Scotland’s geology can integrate with innovative engineered storage solutions to provide capacity for intermediate scale (>1TWh) storage to bridge the existing hydrogen storage capacity gap. | £149,000 |
| Large Scale Floating Hydrogen Production Offshore Scotland | Subsea7 | A concept study programme that will focus on offshore production of green hydrogen on a Floating Hydrogen Production Unit (FHPU) located close to offshore windfarms. | £150,000 |
| Green Hydrogen Integration at Sullom Voe | EnQuest Heather Ltd | A study to assess the feasibility of producing hydrogen from treated water from the Sullom Voe terminal water treatment plant (site rainwater runoff and process waste water) via electrolysis, then storage/distribution via existing obsolete O&G infrastructure. | £149,633 |
| DESOW (Decoupled Electrolyser, Storage and Offshore Wind) | Invinity Energy (UK) Ltd | Updated 3/5/23 - Feasibility study to establish the applicability of using offshore wind to power a novel decoupled electrolyser to support hydrogen production, energy storage, and on demand electricity generation via vanadium redox flow batteries. | £131,243 |
| River Clyde for Hydrogen Production and Reoxygenation Project | Marubeni Europower Limited | Study to establish a process of river water treatment for supplying to electrolysers, which should overcome issues of water availability (and cost) to produce renewable hydrogen. | £150,000 |
| Off-grid Green Hydrogen Production Demonstration | ORE Catapult Development Services Limited | Study to assess the feasibility of an off-grid green hydrogen production demonstration project. | £147,529.00 |
| HySKUA | EMEC | A study that will focus on offshore production of green hydrogen on a floating hydrogen production hub (HySKUA) co-located with Scottish offshore windfarms. | £150,000 |
| H2 Auxinvest | Green Cat Hydrogen Ltd | Development of an open-source software tool that will improve the uptake of low TRL equipment through plugging a gap in available information about low TRL components from small manufacturers. | £25,049.20 |
| Remote Rural Hydrogen Production | SRUC | Study that aims to support an innovative solution to the decarbonisation of agricultural and forestry operations. | £129,972 |
| Accessible Green Hydrogen Test and Demonstration Facility for Scotland | University of Glasgow | Creation of demonstration and testing facilities for low-to-mid and mid-to-late Technology Readiness Level (TRL) hydrogen technologies, enabling such technologies to be developed and commercialised in Scotland. | £280,550 |
| Creed Hydrogen Skills and Innovation Centre | Comhairle Nan Eilean Siar | Establishment of a green hydrogen production learning, test and research hub at Creed Park, Stornoway which aims to accelerate the development of a hydrogen ecosystem in the Outer Hebrides. | £1,129,000 |
| Construction Hydrogen Hub | Balfour Beatty | Conversion of an existing Operation and Maintenance depot into a Construction Hydrogen Hub to demonstrate the use of and catalyse demand for hydrogen in the construction industry. | £243,000 |
| Comprehensive one stop hydrogen storage testing (Hy-One) | National Subsea Centre, Robert Gordon University (RGU) | Hy-One will provide a testing facility to support the development, demonstration, and implementation of small- to large-scale compressed hydrogen storage vessels and their accessories. | £1,198,000 |
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