UK Hydrogen Policy (August 2020)
Executive Summary
Whilst this essay demonstrates the UK has both a consistent commitment to and success in achieving renewable energy transitions, the “elephant in the room” of Scottish Independence and Scottish renewable potential highlights many things. The energy sector is not only a political and economic consideration within embedded paradigms, it is also a great disruptor of those paradigms across culture, identity, growth, economic success, and political transformation, even revolution. Intersecting considerations, competing interests, the chaos of Covid and Brexit all combine to make the UK renewable energy sector a “proving ground” of not only an imminent “Scottish Renaissance”, but also (as an Englishman), something that, via loss and mourning, has the cultural capital to galvanise England, much later, beyond its traditional self-inflicted arrogance, becoming a beacon for a new concept of nation. One, ultimately, that can humbly guide 21st and 22nd Century humanity into a global ethic beyond nationhood. The entire UK renewable energy sector, with green and blue hydrogen the focus of this essay, is as disruptive in its revolutionary potential as the invention of paper, the printing press, gunpowder, or the steam engine. England appears currently afraid of the creative potential of destruction. Brexit, for example, appears at most levels to be a rose-tinted wish for a past that never really existed, a fear of “the other, the migrant, the integration beyond narrow boundaries”. A desire to be globally important from an insular, small island mentality. A contradiction and inconsistency that worked from 1600-1900, but has been inoperable since. Scotland welcomes a European and global stage however. This schizoid bipolarity within the two main UK nations is particularly situated within Scotland’s energy past (oil), and energy future (wind, wave, tidal, hydrogen).
Introduction
England, and by extension the UK, was the first nation to modernise industrially. Such modernisation relied heavily on coal extraction from abundant resources. However, the political might of the National Union of Miners, at direct loggerheads with the neoliberal Thatcherite revolution and abundance of North Sea (Scottish, mostly) oil, meant a clash of will was inevitable. Without planning it, the Thatcher hatred of unions, yet the Scottish dislike of Conservatism (elections in Scotland have not favoured Conservatism for decades), destroyed the power of the coal lobby (terrible socially, good environmentally), whilst leaving oil and gas a heavy and hot political potato in the Scotland v Westminster narrative, around 1,000 years in age. Scotland is also, according to Alex Salmond, “The Saudi Arabia of renewables”. The switch from coal to oil and gas, the reality of GHGs and Global Warming recognised by successive UK governments from the 1990s onwards, and the development of economically viable renewable energy sources now mean that the UK, whilst still reliant on fossil fuels, can boast a significant reduction in GHGs, whilst the geopolitical concerns favour Scotland as the driving force to maximise wind, wave, tidal, and hydrogen (both blue and green). Hydrogen, for example, is not only viable for hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, but is also readily usable instead of natural gas for heating and cooking needs.
20% of UK electricity is currently supplied via renewables, with Scotland over-achieving by providing double its domestic needs from indigenous production in 2019. Although nuclear is included in renewables, again Scotland has something of an anti-nuclear (fission) stance. The gap is in heating, with most from gas rather than electricity, hence hydrogen has an important future as its delivery can utilise existing gas infrastructure, and there are indeed pilot projects for this (see below). Whilst the UK, even post-Brexit and Covid, still appears to be a major player in desiring a carbon-free/low-carbon future, the polar tensions in renewable resources (Scotland is almost staggeringly “drenched” in them), “Blue Tory England” and “SNP/Labour Scotland”, and more historical tensions than this essay can detail, show that the UK’s energy sector is a major, if not the major, catalyst in political change within the UK itself.
The short version is, England seems to desire a status quo and gradual shift to renewables, whereas Scotland is a caged animal with renewable resources that not only modernise its own infrastructure, but provide export potential, employment potential, and new industries potential. Scotland is “sniffing” at a cultural renaissance of immense potential. Renewables, with hydrogen key for heating/cooking/transport, are the tsunami of trapped potential that can thrust Scotland onto the global stage.
Policy Mix Illustration
It is, however, very true to say that blue and green hydrogen are currently in “strategy” phase, rather than “policy” phase. Rogge and Reichardt (2016) detail the ambiguities between policy, strategy, and policy mix. I differ with their desire for “clear” taxonomies, in that I take the Wittgensteinian view that taxonomies are fragile, incomplete, or deceptive from the outset. What is more interesting is that a strategy is part of a cultural moment, in turn fed by information and the general consensus towards becoming policy. At this point, a top-down approach becomes set by the bottom-up pressures of cultural innovation, dialogue, confusion and paradox. The top, then, responds (albeit inefficiently in traditional governance models) to the pressures of the populace. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t get the votes it needs to become “the top”. There are many strategies for hydrogen (detailed below), including the strategies of research at both the technological, infrastructural, and policy research level that are, in effect, the embryo of “the next big thing”. This I believe is consistent with the Neo-Schumpterian view of creative destruction in innovation, culture, politics and economics. As an example, only two months ago the UK Committee on Climate Change (Parnell, 2020) called for a post-Covid kickstart to the UK economy placing renewables at the core of economic policy, with hydrogen (green and blue) a key component. The report by Aurora Energy Research (Parnell, 2020) foresees at least 45% of UK final energy demand by 2050 able to be met by hydrogen. Blue hydrogen comes from combinations of using “dirty” fossil fuels in ways that make them less dirty. Green hydrogen is hydrogen electrolysed from water via excess electricity from wind/wave power. Renewable input, renewable output. England has access to blue hydrogen more than green, Scotland is quite literally awash in wave power (Scotland has more territorial sea than England, as well as greater tidal inlet flows, greater harvestable wind energy etc). So, again, we see that Scotland has the story. Wind, wave, tidal, hydrogen, in complete abundance either for its own 5.4 million population, or the wider 67 million UK population.
The UK policies and strategies for energy are housed within the BEIS (Department for Business, Energy, and Industrial Strategy) and defer in large part to the legislation of the UK Climate Change Act 2008, guaranteeing a UK commitment to an 80% lowering of GHGs from 1990 levels by 2050 (as of 2019, the commitment is to zero carbon by 2050). Hydrogen strategy has the following format. In spite of the potential of hydrogen in the UK being so enormous, and the realistic possibility that the EU will beat the UK to the market in the development of the technologies/education/infrastructure (again, playing into Scotland’s pro-EU desires, more below), currently hydrogen potential has been developed via the BEIS’s “Hydrogen Supply Competition” (Gov.UK, 2020). The winners are Dolphyn (green hydrogen, North Sea floating facility, £3.12 million contract value); HyNet (blue hydrogen, using CCS technologies, £7.48 million); Gigastack (green hydrogen, electrolytic membrane technology, £7.5 million); Acorn Hydrogen Project (blue hydrogen, CCS, £2.7 million); and finally Cranfield University’s “Bulk Hydrogen Production by Sorbent Enhanced Steam Reforming” (blue hydrogen, steam reformation process, £7.44 million).
These total then an investment of less than £29 million, of which just over one third is green hydrogen. To put this figure in perspective, Sussex University’s income in 2017-18 was £297.3 million (Sussex, 2020). Or ten times higher than the total UK investment in hydrogen. As wonderful as Sussex is, it doesn’t have the potential to supply more than 45% of the UK’s energy needs and reduce GHGs to sustainable/zero levels. There is clearly a gap between the potential of hydrogen and the investment in realising that potential, and Scotland feels that frustration keenly.
There are three other UK projects of note, defined by local policies rather than UK Government policies. These are, in the North of England, the H21 Programme (H21, 2020), a test programme for distribution of hydrogen (blue and green mix) via modifications of existing gas infrastructure; the H100 project in Fife, Scotland (Barrett, 2020), to deliver green hydrogen to 300 homes; and the Surf’n’Turf project in Eday, Orkneys, Scotland, using excess electricity from wind and tidal power to electrolyse green hydrogen from water, transporting the gas to a nearby fuel cell for on-demand use. H21 is the biggest project, but Scotland’s abundant wind, wave, and water favour the “through-the-line” renewable input-renewable output for fullest possible decarbonisation. Budgets, again, are in the low millions.
Scotland can therefore take heart, and the UK (England) take warning from the EU Hydrogen Strategy published in July, 2020 (EU, 2020). Not only does this white paper provide details for policy creation, the European Clean Hydrogen Alliance is its first policy actor, with a budget claim from now to 2030 of at least €24 billion for electrolyser development and diffusion, €220 billion for connection to wind and solar infrastructure, and €65 billion for transport, storage, and distribution. The EU is therefore committing several hundred billion Euros to hydrogen development and diffusion, predominantly green with the expediency of blue when modifications of existing infrastructure require it, from now to 2030. Over a trillion Euros have been earmarked for investment by 2050. The UK’s ambition (or lack thereof) currently runs at around one ten thousandth of the EU’s in terms of financial investment.
Scotland, with 10% of Europe’s wave power, 25% of Europe’s offshore wind power, as well as abundant maritime territory of over 460,000 square kilometres (Marine.Gov.Scot, 2014) to provide the water for electrolysis into green hydrogen, is kicking itself not to be part of an ambitious EU, tied instead to a lethargic “John Bull” rhetoric from Westminster. The rest of the UK (including Wales and NI) accounts for just over 300,000 square kilometres of maritime territory. Westminster would need wave/tidal/water from its overseas territories to exceed Scotland’s resource, and in the process would face problems of manufacture and distribution, as well as territorial/colonial arguments a shrinking UK is not best placed to argue in international courts of law. An England bereft of Scotland, logically Northern Ireland shortly thereafter should Scotland become independent, disadvantaged via less trade benefits with the EU than it experienced as part of the EU, at sea diplomatically, is unlikely to be a strong voice internationally once Argentina, for example, recognises the enormous renewables potential around the Malvinas/Falklands and South Georgia, and presses territorial/anticolonial claim through the courts, rather than through a stupid invasion.
Critical Reflection
It seems impossible to me to simply show where UK policy is in relation to hydrogen, because the current cultural and economic climate are constantly changing what the UK actually is, and what policies can, will, or should be implemented. A purely “top-down” approach then misses too much of what is actually happening, changing every minute of every day in a volatile political environment. To map a top-down approach requires a commitment, a belief system, a superstitious hope, that there is enough stability and stable taxonomic basis from which to do so. Neither are in evidence in the current UK, as who we are (or aren’t) and what we do (or fail to do) haven’t been in such flux since, probably, England and Scotland united in 1707. That union cemented the internal stability of the island of Great Britain, from which the hideous kinky, ugly yet amazing British Empire could emerge. Energy – whether it be “Scottish” oil, or “Scottish” renewables, is the iceberg lurking to sink the Titanic. Scotland has everything to win, and England has much to lose. This is more than just energy. It is the identity of the peoples of Great Britain, and Northern Ireland, in a state of extreme flux with the energy resources of Scotland a material, firm, real factor having profound influence on the more nebulous and less understood realm of identity politics.
However, critical analysis can be drawn. Academics and professionals are calling for a post-Covid green stimulus. The opportunity to rebuild via the green sector is an easier argument to make from crisis (Covid) than from the status quo, because crisis forces change. Westminster has three choices. Either to do nothing (which plays into Scotland’s hands – a smart activist will show how much wasted resource Westminster is ignoring, which wouldn’t be wasted in an independent/EU Scotland); to do something, but not much (again, the activist will point out that Westminster is holding Scotland back, so much resource is going unexploited, so much employment and wealth creation is being ignored); or to embark on a massive programme (either UK-wide or more Scotland-specific), in which case the activist will demonstrate again how big that resource is, and how that resource should be used for the people of Scotland (as Norway used its oil to generate a trillion dollar sovereign wealth fund, in comparison to zero in the UK). Westminster is caught between a rock and a hard place. There are enough small-scale hydrogen initiatives, detailed above, to show this “emerging” field is quite enormous in potential. I doubt hydrogen will become the dominant energy source, because new technologies are constantly emerging as the world focuses more on renewables. But green hydrogen and Scotland are a marriage made in heaven – everything needed for abundant green hydrogen, Scotland is drenched in. If Westminster fails to invest, the EU is waiting in the wings for Scotland to re-join. The Section 30 requirement for another Scottish Independence Referendum can be disputed through challenging the original 1707 Acts of Union themselves (there are many holes that can be exploited, including Scotland’s right to self-determination, which can only be “voided” if both England and Scotland cease to exist as nations. I can’t imagine the current Westminster leadership having a desire to sell to the English nationalists the idea that yes, Scotland cannot leave the Union, but “I’m sorry Mr Robinson England has to cease to exist for that to be legally applicable”). Unilateral Declarations of Independence are recognised under International Law as bona fide, particularly when the nation declaring independence (Scotland) is older, legally, than the country it is declaring independence from (England). Which is the case by some 80 years or so. The flux at Westminster/Holyrood with the impending 2021 Holyrood elections is likely to set the tone for the next major push. All the time, in the background, is the recognition that both the EU, Holyrood, and Westminster know that Scotland is an enormous asset for hydrogen/renewables, and most people believe that sovereignty in the EU is “more sovereign” than sovereignty in the UK (from the Scottish perspective).
This really is a fascinating period, the next two years in particular with Brexit finally having its effect, Covid being profound in its consequences, and the 2021 Holyrood elections. In my Executive Summary I outlined how this provides a renaissance for England. Spielrein, Jung, and Freud argued, in differing ways, that a loss of ego occurs via a death instinct, often felt during the loss of oneself during sex. I believe there are similarities with Schumpeter’s “Creative Destruction”. England’s rush to reclaim a non-existent past is an act of deluded arrogance, self-harm, egotism run wild, almost as a consequence of recognising impending decay. England’s death - the loss of Scotland, then Northern Ireland, Gibraltar, the Malvinas/Falklands etc, kills the “old” English ego over the next 20 or 30 years. It won’t go without a fight. Things will get ugly. But I cannot see any outcome except the death of what remains of “Empire England”. At that point, the generations held back since the 07/08 Financial Crash, the endurers of Austerity, Brexit, Covid, the most educated generations we have ever produced, informed on ecological and sustainable realities, are not only of the age to fully assume the reins of power, but can do so from a position of rational interpretation of their parents’ and grandparents’ errors. They will be far from perfect, but this death of old England is the fertile ashes from which the phoenix, new England – global, humble, connected, communal, educated – can, and will, arise.
It seems to me that the simplest atom we know in our Universe – hydrogen – is exercising enormous tensions over complex political issues. If that seems bizarre to consider, 2020 is the year that shows us that another of the simplest agents – a virus – turns all perceived and argued notions for stability entirely upside down.
There’s poetry in there somewhere.
References
Barrett, T. (2020). ‘World’s first’ green hydrogen housing project mooted for Scotland. [Blog] EnvironmentJournalOnline. Available at: https://environmentjournal.online/articles/worlds-first-green-hydrogen-housing-project-mooted-for-scotland/ [Accessed 27th August 2020].
EC.Europa.EU, (2020). A hydrogen strategy for a climate-neutral Europe. [online] Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/ener/files/hydrogen_strategy.pdf [Accessed 27th August 2020].
Gov.UK, (2020). Hydrogen Supply Competition Phase 2 successful projects. [online] Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hydrogen-supply-competition/hydrogen-supply-programme-successful-projects-phase-2 [Accessed 27th August 2020].
H21.Green, (2019). H21 Projects. [online] Available at: https://www.h21.green/projects/ [Accessed 27th August 2020].
Marine.Gov.Scot, (2019). Facts and figures about Scotland's sea area (coastline length, sea area in sq kms). [online] Available at: http://marine.gov.scot/data/facts-and-figures-about-scotlands-sea-area-coastline-length-sea-area-sq-kms [Accessed 27th August 2020].
Parnell, J. (2020). UK Government’s Advisers Urge It To Back Hydrogen Economy In Stimulus Plans. [Blog] GreenTechMedia. Available at: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/uk-governments-advisors-urge-it-to-back-hydrogen-economy-in-stimulus-plans [Accessed 27th August 2020].
Rogge, K. S. and Reichardt, K. (2016). 'Policy mixes for sustainability transitions: An extended concept and framework for analysis'. Research Policy, 45(8), pp. 1620-1635 [Accessed 27th August 2020].
Sussex.ac.uk, (2019). The University’s income and expenditure: a guide for students. [online] Available at: https://www.sussex.ac.uk/about/strategy-and-funding/finance-information-for-students [Accessed 27th August 2020].