In 2022, West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) won a project to bring 124 new hydrogen buses to Birmingham. Now that has been cancelled but the full reasoning has not yet been released. Instead, it looks like Transport for West Midlands (TfWM) will revert to battery electric buses that have short range and long recharging times. National Express is the bus company that cooperated on the hydrogen bus project, but has now changed its mind on the move towards hydrogen transport. They ran the 20 hydrogen buses that emerged from the EU/Birmingham City Council project in 2021. Maybe the price of green hydrogen at the Tyseley hydrogen station (£23/kg) was too much. Whoever decided on such a ridiculous price is guilty. Names should be named for getting this so wrong. Germany has £11/kg and China is even less, and such numbers can compete with diesel and with electric charging. That explains why China now has thousands of hydrogen-electric buses. The conclusion again is that Grid electricity used at Tyseley is far too expensive to make competitive hydrogen. Also grid electricity is not green.

Ben Houchen has been re-elected as metro-Mayor of Teesside partly because of his enthusiasm for green hydrogen with industry backing, many jobs in prospect, plus great possibilities for engineering, chemical industry and much cheaper energy prices. Also he saved Tees Airport from oblivion. Citizens recognise their airport as a big local asset as aircraft go more electric, more hydrogen and more convenient. Remember when Houchen started a small 2021 hydrogen bus-project in Stockton linking to the airport, injecting £1M into experiments and demonstrations near the airport. This has since expanded into a larger project which could have major influence on UK hydrogen buses and trucks that should spread across Britain saving energy, emissions and Climate change. No other politician has gone so far. We need more visionaries like him.

Ed Millibandin London on 1st May said that the four key grid problems were: 1. Grid delays in connecting to renewables are a pain for hundreds of projects 2. Planning delays take years to solve at present, especially for onshore wind 3. Supply chain problems are a nuisance 4. Skills gap means we have poor training for solar, wind and hydrogen technicians Creating a Great British Energy company could allow the grid to go green by 2030, as it is already in Scotland. I am sending a message to Ed today to encourage him to go further in Onshore Wind/Solar farms plus Hydrogen. He is urging floating wind turbines offshore but the key priority is DISTRIBUTED POWER which needs onshore facilities. Grid electricity is the most expensive in the world and has to stop ripping off consumers.developm

Last week the Innovation Report on UK Hydrogen was published and is well worth reading, though the government departments of Transprt, Business, and DESNZ are still not getting together in a rational way. Agriculture should be moving from diesel to hydrogen but not much is happening in that ministry. A further paper on Case for Action is expected in 3 months. The ambition is for Britain to gain 10% of global hydrogen in 2050, which should amount to around £1 trillion. As before it is more talk than reality. www.hydrogeninnovation.co.uk/reports/uk-capabilities/ The results would be astonishing, with 2050 revenues around £70bn and more than 400,000 H-technology jobs. Production of hydrogen is the first objective, processing it into ammonia and other green products. Second are propulsion systems for transport, which is not being promoted by UK goverrnment at present, illustrated by the only 4 hydrogen stations operating in UK, contrasting with 400 in China. Third, industry needs hydrogen and that is the current DESNZ approach. Fourth, we need end to end hydrogen storage, whatever that means. Missing from the report is the dearth of renewable electricity in England, the ridiculous prices charged by National Grid and the big 6, the very small amount of green hydrogen we are making this year, and the absence of any CCS which has been boosted for 20 years now, without any output. Innovation is the key, not pure research which seems to be soaking up all money at the moment in Universities like Birmingham and Imperial College. We must apply the funding to making profits ASAP.

Next week, the successful bids for the EU Green Hydrogen manufacturing cash support should be announced. The money available, 800 million euros, dwarfs the £20M spent by the UK DESNZ HAR in Britain recently. That large EU sum results from the support of the EUROPEAN HYDROGEN BANK which has considered 132 offers to produce green hydrogen by 17 EU countries. We will find out how the 8.5GW of electrolyser proposals have been judged, This power level is about one tenth of the EU target for green hydrogen by 2030, Later in 2024 a second round of bids should be defined with 2.2billion euros in play.

Scottish ministers have had to accept that the 75% cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 cannot be achieved. Mairi McAllan confirmed on 18 April that this key target is impossible, so must be replaced by a definition of emissions every five years. But the 2045 target of net zero is still OK. One uplifting report from the Scottish borders is the news about the largest UK locally owned green generation system.

The Midlands Green Hydrogen Event on 10th April went well with 20 speakers and 60 attendees. Starting from the fact that West Midlands has only one GW of renewable power generation, almost as bad as London at the bottom of the league table of England-green-energy regions, the event showed that UK needs new Wind/Solar, driving electrolysers to make local hydrogen on sites from 1000 to 30,000 people, feeding both vehicles and buildings locally. The Grid is far too small and uneconomic to do this by 2050, while also wasting green energy when wind/solar is high, and refusing to connect solar farms, so local efforts are required immediately to set up novel generation systems. Vehicles and buildings form 79% of the UK carbon problem.

The recent Grid paper on spending £58bn to install 20000 more pylons is worth reading more closely. Hydrogen is mentioned in 19 places and National Grid has a Hydrogen Department, but the fact is that it is impossible to make economic Green Hydrogen from Grid Electricity. The tax alone would kill it. Also such Grid hydrogen is not Green because renewable energy on the Grid is only around 40% of the power. Grid Hydrogen is 60% climate crisis. The paper focusses on Energy Storage, possible in salt caverns, while speculating about green hydrogen reaching 22GW in 2035 which is when the Grid target is 100% green. Will it get there? We really need 100GW of green power by 2035 just for replacing petroleum in transport. Rambling on without any evidence it states “On our journey towards whole-systems network planning, and for the first time in this publication, we are considering the role of large-scale energy demand users (such as factories and hydrogen electrolysers), and regions of strategic importance where new large-scale demand could be located, as a potential alternative to additional network infrastructure.” At least they recognise that the Grid is inadequate right now, with 20% of renewables being wasted because the Grid cannot handle big renewable power, while installers of solar/wind wait in their hundreds to agree a Grid connection. The truth is that the Grid cannot even provide sufficient infrastructure to charge existing battery electric cars.

George Heynes wrote an article on 23 March 2024 reporting that the National Grid wishes to expand its network by a large factor, spending £58bn and upsetting many UK citizens as pylons get bigger and more numerous. We have 22000 onshore pylons already and it looks like this might double. Hydrogen is mentioned but only slightly. Why not generate hydrogen on or near the wind farms and pipe this underground throughout the country? Surely this will be more economic, more efficient and pleasing to the inhabitants. Vehicles and buildings are our main CO2 generators at 79% compared to 21% Grid. We must focus on the big issues and put the National Grid back in its cage. Hydrogen could then be used in the gas grid to fill hydrogen-electric cars and to provide combined heat and power in buildings. ESO has got this wrong. No more pylons please!.

The new Government REMA consultation defines numerous barriers to making green hydrogen. The problem is that the Government does not fully recognise all the issues of green hydrogen production. Nowhere does the Government say that Grid electricity will always be too expensive to make economic hydrogen. UK grid electricity is top of the international league for price. Therefore we need local 10MW renewable electricity supplies if we are to succeed. HEA, Energy UK and Renewable UK have pointed to several barriers, for example, planning, storage and expansion of renewable electricity locally.

The Green Industries Growth Accelerator (GIGA) has attracted an extra £120M funding to add to the original input of last Autumn's statement by the Chancellor in 2023 which includes hydrogen as well as the usual nuclear, grid and CCS wastage. There is now a call from DESNZ for the hydrogen and CCS supply chain funding plan evidence. The money should then be spent from summer 2024. The result is that £390M are available for hydrogen and CCS out of the £1.08bn total. Will any get brought to bear on hydrogen applied in transport and buildings? I very much doubt it.

Last week a press release from DESNZ announced 7 new UK projects worth £21M to produce UK green hydrogen, suggesting that this could result in 1GW of new production. It is refreshing to see that investments are going into green hydrogen which at present has very low production in UK. An example is hydrogen refuelling stations for buses, trucks and other vehicles. Only one green hydrogen station exists in UK and it provides much less than a megawatt. It could fill about 5 hydrogen buses. Maybe DESNZ got a decimal point in the wrong place. £21M investment at best will produce 10MW of green hydrogen at present. This is only 0.1% of the necessary 10GW planned by 2020. Perhaps we can see through the propaganda to the real investment needed ASAP. DESNZ has £1billion but it is not being spent here.

WThis week, DESNZ produced a ‘Draft Strategy and Policy Statement for Energy Policy in Great Britain’ setting out the present government’s priorities for the UK energy system in future. Since nothing much has happened since 2019. it seems unlikely that targets of 10GW new hydrogen by 2030 will be reached, especially since DESNZ does not do much on hydrogen vehicles and buildings which represent 80% of UK climate change carbon release. Most of the blurb is chat about the future role of the National Energy System Operator (formerly the Future System Operator) which has little chance of increasing grid power by the necessary factor 5 in the short time available.

Bloomberg has recently published information about the rapid investment in US green energy, including hydrogen, electric vehicles, renewable energy installationsvetc. These investments have hit record numbers in 2024 around $1.8 trillion which is roughly equal to UK GDP. The key is getting private investors and companies involved using the $7billion subsidies and moving to larger scales. Putting a few solar panels on roofs is not going to cut it and UK needs to move using 10 to 50 MW private wire installations now.

The problem of Labour promising to spend £28bn on clean energy in UK has been discussed widely but without much logic appearing. In fact, there is still money in the kitty for manufacture of green hydrogen. Also, the concept that government and industry can combine to get the rational economic solution (ie local private clean renewable electricity) is alive and well. Rachel Reeves is evidently committed to 'Green Hydrogen UK' while avoiding the previous commitment to borrow money when UK is in recession. 2025 should be a breakthrough as new hydrogen buses start to stimulate the idea that hydrogen transport can beat battery vehicles.

Solar Energy UK has just published an article describing Grid delays that are “descending into a farce” as projects with accelerated connections cannot supply electricity for many years after grid agreements. Bringing the issue to the attention of the Commons’ Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) yesterday, the trade association noted that despite changes implemented by both National Grid ESO and Distribution Network Operators (DNOs), allowing renewable electricity assets to connect before large-scale transmission grid reinforcement, it could still be years until the renewable wind/solar can supply electricity. This is a major issue for green hydrogen, because the grid is not green and a four times more expensive than on-site wind/solar.

Last week another £6M was awarded by the Government to LIDP (Local Industrial Decarbopnisation Plan) after many bids were ranked. North East Wales Industrial Decarbonisation (NEW-ID) was one winner, as was West of England LIDP and Solent Cluster LIDP among 12 sharing the prize money. A new scheme starts today offering £185M which does look more attractive because many industries, about 50%, are not in the centres and hubs. Yet, once you realise that £100bn is needed to change our basic grid electric system using local green hydrogen, these projects are puny and not the main stream, eg transport and buildings and steel and cement and ceramics. DESNZ is fiddling with minor industries and this is not good enough.

Last week £7m of government funding was revealed for Tees Valley expansion of its original 2021 £2m investment in Element 2 and ULEMCO demonstrating hydrogen buses, trucks and cars. A £2m hydrogen station will be built ar Tees airport by Exolum while £5m will be spent on more than 20 hydrogen buses, creating a hydrogen transport hub, which should knit together with the CCS plans for blue hydrogen planned by the large chenical companies.

The Joe Biden Inflation Reduction Act is starting to have a supporting effect on green hydrogen costs. A $3-per-kg tax credit has now been applied to hydrogen made from new-build solar/wind projects. This is a large subsidy that could make green hydrogen compete with diesel and gasoline at the filling stations. UK needs to do something similar because the hydrogen price in Birmingham, at £23/kg is not competing right now. The target retail price is £10/kg. A US snag is that the new solar/wind installations must be connected to the same grid as the hydrogen site.

IEA has just published its report on renewable energy including hydrogen. The good news is that renewable energy capacity has doubled over the last year. Bad news is that the amount dedicated to hydrogen production is only 45GW by 2028 which is a puny 7% of the total renewables applications. USA, China and Saudi are leading on green hydrogen, with UK lagging badly. Only 12GW worldwide of hydrogen projects to 2030 has been committed so targets have been downgraded. Can Britain get its 10GW working by 2030? Only 1% seems to be in train at the moment according to DESNZ.