Industry & Market News

Hydrogen is a major part of the government’s net zero strategy, appearing as second billing in the Prime Minister’s recently-released Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution.

According to Boris Johnson, in his foreword to the plan, we could soon be cooking our breakfast on hydrogen while breathing in cleaner air, thanks to trucks, trains, ships and planes running on hydrogen rather than fossil fuels.

Hydrogen is also being hailed as the answer to decarbonising the UK’s heating.

But, of course, this is all hypothetical. Because as yet, there is no mainstream, affordable or low-carbon-manufactured source of hydrogen commercially available.

There’s so much talk about net zero and the need for businesses to plan their route to lower-emission operations.

But for many organisations, making sense of all the recent government announcements – and what these actually mean to them – is still very unclear.

That’s perhaps why hundreds joined our net zero webinar, hosted by The Energyst, on Thursday 10 December, where our panel cut through the confusion to set out what we do know, what we are waiting for – and what action businesses can take now.

James Diggle, Head of Energy and Climate Change at the CBI, and CSR expert Olly Craughan from DPD joined npower Business Solution’s Head of Flexibility Services Ben Spry to look at the detail that matters.

After months of anticipation, the government has today (Monday 14 December) finally published its long-awaited Energy White Paper.

“The UK has set a world–leading net zero target, the first major economy to do so, but simply setting the target is not enough – we need to achieve it,” says Alok Sharma, Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in his foreword. But does the White Paper deliver this detail?

Ben Young is an Operational Manager in the NGESO Control Centre in Wokingham. He currently splits his time between operational shift work in the control room and project work within a day team. Ben has been heavily involved in the NGESO’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, leading their engagement with Distribution Network Operators (DNOs) and the wider electricity industry, as well as responding to the short-term operability challenges posed by low demand for electricity during the lockdown.

For the first time since the Industrial Revolution, the UK has recorded two full months without any coal-fired power contributing to our energy mix (as of 10th June).