Innovation in hydrogen – current barriers and opportunities

Hydrogen will play a key role in achieving net zero, and we are steadfast in our commitment to accelerating its deployment across Scotland. The technology can address issues in some of the hardest to decarbonise industries.

Hydrogen can help to accelerate industrial decarbonisation, but progress in the sector is slow and barriers to deployment still exist. We tuned in to Innovate UK’s hydrogen webinar recently, and were pleased to see key innovators across the sector discuss how they navigated potential challenges. 

Barriers to innovation

One of SHINe’s key objectives is to foster collaboration across the Scottish hydrogen landscape. Innovate UK’s webinar provided a key example of how bringing innovators together can produce new ideas, overcome deployment challenges, and better understand the sector.

Our industry colleagues highlighted some of the challenges they faced when navigating the hydrogen investment landscape.

These barriers included:

• A need for more support and understanding of hydrogen and its importance within the energy transition
• A need for more suitable infrastructure and equipment
• High capital and running costs for deployment
• Inadequate storage and transportation solutions
• Inefficient compression methods
• Reduced confidence in the direction of the UK hydrogen industry

Solutions

Bringing collaborators, innovators and potential stakeholders together provided an opportunity to discuss how to overcome potential barriers to innovation and deployment.

Those at the forefront of hydrogen innovation said that hydrogen use can be accelerated by:

• Actively encouraging information, collaboration, and knowledge sharing opportunities from the industry
• Understanding and analysing what the market is saying and what will add value to the sector
• Engaging in knowledge building and awareness campaigns to improve the perception of hydrogen
• Increasing funding avenues for the hydrogen industry to provide innovators with greater confidence to invest in new technologies and solutions 

Successful industry examples

In the 'Understanding net zero' webinar series, Chris Yendell of Gravitricity outlined how hydrogen innovation can both reduce the cost of the energy transition while accelerating its progress. Chris said that collaboration with existing players in the market can help innovators to better understand the barriers to hydrogen deployment, and what is needed to overcome these.

Gravitricity used this approach to understand the need for mid-to-large scale storage solutions for hydrogen. The company used its understanding of the existing market to develop underground energy storage solutions that could store large quantities of hydrogen at much lower prices.

FLEXERGY produces hydrogen compression technology, and CEO Paul Codd outlined how the company began by analysing the existing market for hydrogen compression technology. It found that the technology is inefficient, energy intensive and required large, expensive equipment. 

Reflecting Gravitricity’s approach, FLEXERGY is collaborating with pilots and collaborators to help the company to develop its solution, building up interest and a global pipeline of opportunities. Engagement within the sector allowed them to create a compression solution that can revolutionise compression processes. 

How SHINe can help

Scotland is at the heart of the UK’s GB Energy initiative and has the potential to be a global hub for hydrogen production. SHINe is here to support new and existing businesses eager to produce innovative new products and solutions across Scotland.
 
As we have heard, the opportunities to innovate in the hydrogen sector are limitless. Our goal is to help innovators overcome barriers preventing growth in the hydrogen sector.

Visit our capability directory to begin collaborating with existing innovators across Scotland and get your new and innovative products integrated into the Scottish hydrogen industry.