Last Friday was extraordinary as the new Labour Government announced their £21.7 billion subsidy over 25 years to support CCS and hydrogen in Teesside and Merseyside. Not everyone will be happy with this sop to the big Fossil Oil and Gas companies that are making huge profits and could easily do the job by themselves if they really wanted it. Talk has been big for the past 20 years but action has been zero in UK. Jobs were the main incentive for the Government, with 4000 soon and 40000 long term. Private Investment was claimed to being attracted but there was no solid base for that prediction. A disappointing figure was the 350MW of blue hydrogen predicted from this new project. Surely, the Government is committed to 5GW of blue hydrogen, a factor more than ten above this project aim. The crazy paradox is that such huge support from the Government could install 1000 renewable local energy sites running on 10MWp of wind and solar making hydrogen by electrolysis at the 5GW level averaged. Also big profits could be made because the price of this green electricity at the 5GW size would be 5 times lower than current Grid rip-off.
top of page
bottom of page