AS I SEE IT
The UK could be a world leader in hydrogen if it acts now, says LORD OATES
The Prime Minister has pledged the UK will “invest massively in hydrogen”. The time for him to deliver on these words is now.
The global hydrogen economy is set to be worth $2.5trn and create 30 million jobs by 2050. It is little wonder why governments in Germany, France, Portugal, Japen, South Korea, Australia are investing billions into their domestic hydrogen economies. The world-wide hydrogen race is on. The UK was slow out of the blocks on batteries and wind. We can’t afford to be slow on hydrogen, too.
Global success is within our grasp. The UK has best-in-class academic skills, world-first hydrogen boilers and buses, and we are building the first ever hydrogen giga factory in Sheffield. We are also blessed with plenty of wind and water, the key ingredients to produce clean, green hydrogen.
The private sector is ready to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Government. Business wants to invest £1.5bn in ‘shovel-ready’ hydrogen projects, but ministers need to make some big and bold statements, underpinned by a UK-wide hydrogen strategy, to provide confidence and unlock rapid progress forward.
The time for tests and trials of hydrogen vehicles and for heating is over; to steal on march on our international competitors we must now move to mass use, commercialisation and drive costs quickly to maximise export potential.
The buzzphrase in Westminster at the minute is ‘moonshot’, so let’s take the ambition, boldness and confidence to invest public funds of the moonshot concept and apply it to hydrogen. Let’s aim for the UK to create the world’s first trillion-dollar hydrogen business.
There are many credible, achievable moonshot options to explore. Japan and South Korea are building hydrogen cities, let’s convert an entire region, such as the Tees Valley, to hydrogen covering all cars, trains, taxis, vans, emergency vehicles, bin lorries and heating by 2030. These could all be powered by ‘Made in the UK’ green hydrogen energy.
The Government is looking at hydrogen for aviation fuel, why not seek to convert an entire airport to hydrogen power, not just its planes?
‘MPs and Peers of all parties and parts of the country believe that this is the right move for the UK, and now is the right time to act’
As we take back control of our fishing waters, we could set a world-first ambition of a zero emission, green fleet of boats, cargo ships and even the Thames Clipper that goes back and forth outside Parliament throughout the day. Clean boats for clean seas.
Only two types of zero emission bus exist – hydrogen and battery. We have three bus manufacturers in the UK, all make a hydrogen bus. China makes 99% of the world’s battery electric buses. Let’s put Government investment into a technology where we can win, rather than play catch up.
Over recent months, the level of parliamentary support for hydrogen has soared. MPs and Peers of all parties and parts of the country believe that this is the right move for the UK, and now is the right time to act. Hydrogen ticks all the boxes the Prime Minister is looking for – jobs, ‘Red Wall’ economic rejuvenation, Net Zero, energy security and global trade opportunities.
It is reported that the Prime Minister will soon make a speech on routes to Net Zero. He should put hydrogen front and centre of this and unlock a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the UK to lead a multi-trillion dollar industry and excite the crowds with some remarkable clean, green, UK-made hydrogen moonshot projects.
Lord Oates is Liberal Democrat spokesman on energy and climate change
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Lord Oates’ enthusiasm for building hydrogen business leadership is commendable – at one level. It is indeed probable that hydrogen will play a major role in the energy systems of a decarbonising world and it is indeed true that UK science and industry is at the cutting edge in this arena. That is enough to justify some serious consideration for major investment. Moreover, most agree that substantial investment will be especially justified when covid-19 has been tamed and the focus should be on clean growth.
The phrases ”trillion-dollar hydrogen business” and “moonshot” are worrying, however. They suggest that hubris will displace quantitative assessment in judgements concerning how to spend large quantities of money that we have not yet earned. Whether an investment is good or bad depends fundamentally on how else that same resource might have been invested. Let us not sink all that we can borrow into one trench before there has been at least some quantitative, and open, assessment of what the alternatives might be.
In particular, producing hydrogen from electrolysis and burning it in boilers is technically feasible but probably very far from sensible in the vast majority of contexts. Despite this, the concept is gaining political momentum. Please will the noble Lord afford me one hour of his time to cover the second law of thermodynamics and some rudiments of thermo-mechanical energy storage.
Iceland memorably committed to the hydrogen vision in 2001 and, like the UK, Iceland has plenty of water and renewable energy resources including wind. Its economy collapsed less than a decade later. If we are going to have any business with a trillion-dollar turnover, please let us make sure that it is not a loss-maker.
Doomsayer. Get on board, or get out of the way.
Extremely relevant accurate article, well said Lord Oates. This is an opportunity to gain a large share of the hydrogen production market (for export) to replace North Sea oil. Think of the jobs for northern and eastern UK to support the wind farms needed!
It is as plain as the nose on your face, let’s just get on with it, it’s a no brainer. Life is not risk free and in the case of Hydrogen what have we got to loose ? As has been said so many times before, drastic times call for drastic measures; in this case I can only see a winning situation. Let’s be bold and fight our way back into the lead!
Perhaps we could also get Johnson’s Tories to invest in a bridge from Scotland to Northern Ireland…
Sorry to say the only thing Johnson is investing in is trouble . Lord Oates has written an excellent article , and with companies like PHE and others the UK could be up there with the world leaders , but with this government wrecking the economy it’s not going to happen . Another missed opportunity .
Last night I worked out a solution for a recently closed down regional airport. Cover the runway in solar panels, and use the electricity to create ammonia. A steady repeatable £1.5m per year, and only 3 year for full return on investment. Should be a no brainer.
Hydrogen is the protagonist and rightly dominates the stage. But it isn’t the whole cast and it certainly isn’t the plot.
It would be a pity if hydrogen, the most powerful means of growing beyond carbon, were confused with the end: to make extraction the last, not the first, recourse as industry feedstock;
https://www.aumanufacturing.com.au/hydrogen-futures-and-moving-from-extraction-to-synthesis-by-stan-thompson
Unfortunately the UK is behind the curve in the introduction of hydrogen power compared with many other countries, in particular Germany, the Netherlands and Austria, who all have hydrogen powered passenger trains in service, based on the Alstom iLint that have a range of 1,000 kms on a single hydrogen fill, and Germany has 82 hydrogen filling stations around their road network with the target of 100 by 2021. Here in the UK we have less than 10; no wonder hydrogen powered cars are a rarity in the UK. To put this in perspective, Hyundai sells more than 3,000 hydrogen powered cars a month worldwide and Toyota sell more than 2,000 of their Mirai a month and China has a factory producing 1,000 hydrogen powered busses a year..
Our Porterbrook Leasing has developed a hydrogen retrofit of a diesel-electric train called the Hydroflex with Birmingham University, which I had a ride in a year ago, and Alstom has a similar retrofit called the Breeze. Neither is in service, just waiting for Network Rail to make it happen, while they continue to install expensive overhead electric catenaries on non electrified lines which costs a fortune in capital costs, partly because many of the bridges are too low and have to be rebuilt, and they have a high maintenance cost and are vulnerable to extreme climate and flying objects and trees. These retrofitted diesel trains are ready to go and do not require expensive infrastructure and maintenance.
We do have a long experience in building small modular nuclear reactors which would be ideal to retrofit our gas fired power stations, as they can be mass produced in a factory and taken to site with heavy road transport, and would be a big export opportunity, but again, no action by the Government to start doing this work, just relying on renewables to supply green electricity when they only supplied 7% of the UK energy demand in 2018 (BEIS data). We have less than 30 years to achieve the legal target of net zero carbon emissions and no plan of how the UK can do it. Time for the UK to put great words into action.