Energy Minister Kwasi Kwarteng has announced that households and businesses will benefit from £90 million to cut carbon emissions, of which £70 million will include funding for two of Europe’s ‘first-ever large-scale low-carbon hydrogen production plants’ — the first on the banks of the Mersey, the second near Aberdeen.
A third project will develop technology to harness offshore wind near the Grimsby coast to power electrolysis and produce hydrogen.
Hydrogen is regarded as a low- or zero-emission alternative to fossil fuels that could power future industry and transport.
The investment will also fund projects to trial cutting-edge technologies for switching industrial production from fossil fuels to renewables in industries such as cement and glass production.
The remaining £20 million will be used to fund projects aimed at cutting household emissions through nine UK-wide local ‘smart energy’ projects, the aim being that over 250,000 people could have their homes powered by local renewable-energy sources by 2030, slashing energy bills by as much as 50%.
A project in Rugeley, for example, will see a coal-fired power station demolished and turned into a sustainable village of 2,300 homes.
Residents will benefit from thermal storage units instead of traditional gas boilers, enabling them to heat their homes with (and store) geothermal energy drawn from local canals and disused mine shafts.
The news of this funding came two weeks after the Prime Minister announced plans to bring the phase-out of coal forward — to 2024.