Uniper Welcomes Creation of UK Hydrogen Council

Germany's Uniper welcomes the UK government's creation of a hydrogen advisory council, it said on July 22, saying the move would support "the acceleration of technologies to get us to net-zero."

"Hydrogen is essential for the decarbonisation of industry, transport, and heat as well as power," Uniper UK's country chair Mike Lockett said. "As a pioneer in the field of hydrogen, Uniper looks forward to engaging with the council to help identify solutions to effectively integrate hydrogen into the UK energy system."

Uniper hopes that the council's formation will pave the way for the development of a national hydrogen strategy, "setting out a clear commitment from government to invest in hydrogen infrastructure and enable collaboration between businesses, government, academia and other institutions."

"This is the necessary first step in creating an enabling framework that will encourage investment in new innovative hydrogen technologies and will start to make the hydrogen economy a reality in the UK," Lockett said.

The council will be co-chaired by the UK's minister of state for business, energy and clean growth, Kwasi Kwarteng, and Sinead Lynch, the UK country chair of Shell. Its creation comes after the European Commission unveiled its strategy for the largescale deployment of hydrogen energy earlier this month. Several other European countries, including Germany and Norway, have also published national hydrogen strategies this year.

Shell is investing in the Acorn project, a UK blue hydrogen scheme that will, when built, separate carbon dioxide from natural gas at the St Fergus terminal and inject it into the depleted Goldeneye gas field. The hydrogen may then be injected into the gas grid.

Uniper has a seat on Germany’s newly constituted hydrogen council which is chaired by an E.ON executive and the utility has been supportive of the country's hydrogen strategy. Others in the German gas industry are less enthusiastic. The strategy only provides incentives for green hydrogen, produced from water using renewable energy, and not blue hydrogen, derived from natural gas.