As part of the Innovate UK funded Hydrogen Innovation Initiative (HII) Seed project, the Energy Systems Catapult and the University of Birmingham undertook a series of interviews and analysis towards the end of Q1 2023 to identify and collate barriers to using hydrogen in the UK energy system for Net Zero. The interviews took place with 12 organisations representing academia, industry, government, network operators and regulators. This had a particular focus on the use of hydrogen to provide energy system flexibility.

The key barriers:

1. Clear government direction and ambition: A lack of clear government direction on the role of hydrogen in the transition to Net Zero was felt to be a major barrier to early investment.
2. Culture of decision and policy making: An industry culture of needs driven investment, relatively low risk appetite, risk adverse decision making and failing to convert early innovation to business as usual was identified as a barrier to hydrogen development.
3. Market and regulatory innovation for hydrogen storage and flexibility: A lack of meaningful market signals to value flexibility provided by the gas sector was felt to be a barrier.
4. Education: The skills needed to scale up the deployment of hydrogen from the planning system, through to manufacture, installation, and end users were felt to be barriers.
5. Coordination in planning across whole energy systems: Whole systems planning, and co-ordinated delivery was not felt to be happening in any meaningful way. Government and regulation is needed to make this happen.
6. Standards and standardisation: A lack of standards can be a barrier to the hydrogen transition, and increasing standardisation can help to drive down costs.
7. The planning sector: The capacity within the planning sector to cope with increased levels of applications was felt to be a barrier.

Stakeholder views on the development of the UK Hydrogen sector – 2024 update

As part of the Innovate UK funded Hydrogen Innovation Initiative (HII) Seed project, Energy Systems Catapult and the University of Birmingham undertook a series of hour-long exploratory, semi-structured interviews over Q2 in 2024 to explore a snapshot of perspectives of the development of the UK’s hydrogen sector.

As a summary: skills development, public perception and education and supply chain development continue to be important areas of focus; coordinated planning of energy system development were becoming increasingly important; hydrogen blending (and potentially deblending) was felt to be increasingly useful in electricity constrained parts of Britain; pipeline transport and storage needed to be further progressed; decommissioning or repurposing parts of natural gas networks required a greater evidence base; there should be a continued focus on standards; data and digitalisation would have an increasing benefit to energy system development.