The UK must learn from early mistakes in offshore wind and ensure it commands the supply chain to serve industrial decarbonisation, the Humber has heard.
Henri Murison, chief executive of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, told how one blade factory was not enough to show for the investment in a sector the country leads the world in, and urged all involved to make sure pioneering positions in carbon capture and hydrogen production are not lost.
A £200 billion prize was highlighted but challenges of skills, volume of labour and manufacturing capacity were all underlined by those on the front line.
Read more: Humber vision 'has the world's attention' as investors and government pour over £15b pipeline
“An extremely good example of offshore wind success is here with operations and maintenance today, but we didn’t capture enough of the supply chain,,” Mr Murison said in a Future of Energy session at The Waterline Summit.
“If we haven’t captured the supply chain we are not making the most of the huge opportunity. We can’t make these mistakes again. One blade factory is a very good start, but with all the things we want for hydrogen and carbon capture, the UK has to capture the market, to get more of the value chain of these opportunities.
“Far too often the UK government’s policy has incentivised us to the quickest win to meet artificial political targets rather than grow industry to be world leaders. I’m not here to just shout ‘we should be first to Net Zero’; while we do that we need to generate jobs and opportunities for young people and those that need to retrain out of carbon intensive industries right now. If we don’t do that we won’t keep the public consensus for the agenda.
“If we want a CCS cluster here, in the Tees Valley and Merseyside, government needs to underpin that with commitment to make that work. It has to be real and significant, de-risking what the private sector wants to do. If not we can wave goodbye to lots of jobs in industrial sectors.”
Mr Murison said the loss of major manufacturing capability to quickly handle orders of the magnitude to be needed was a “failure of government policy over decades, which cannot be allowed to continue”. He also eyed the export prize, with lines drawn back to offshore wind. “There are huge export markets if we can crack this on the Humber,” he said. “If we can crack this we can help others crack it around the world. The export potential of know-how needs to work exactly in the same way we imported know-how to do offshore wind, particularly from Denmark and Germany. We have learnt about being the recipient, we need to be in control of our own destiny, and create a transition in the energy sector.
“Coming second, third or fourth does not bring the same opportunities as being first. That’s the North’s ambition, working with similar like-minded clusters and places across the North of the country.”
Dr William Joyce, innovation lead for UK Research and Innovation, told how “there is every possibility it could be the Humber that is the world’s first Net Zero carbon industrial cluster by 2040”. His appearance came hours after the launch of the Humber 2030 Vision prospectus that outlined £15 billion of investment to be unleashed on decarbonisation, principally of process and power sectors on the Energy Estuary.
Joining the event from the non-departmental public body of the government that directs research and innovation funding via the science budget of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, he was the closest to Westminster to speak.
“The UK has incredible offshore storage opportunities,tremendous storage capacity, equivalent to the entire EU27,” he said. “It could serve domestic demand and the rest of mainland Europe’s needs through CO2 import, with hundreds of years of storage to meet demand.
“The UK has strong potential to be the world leader in CCS technology. BEIS estimated the global market could be worth £200 billion. The UK has the potential to capture £150 billion of that market. We are looking to drive inward investment, boost competitiveness of these regions and create and protect jobs for future low carbon industrial sectors.”
From UKRI, the region is welcoming £12.5 million for Humber Zero, with “a particular highlight a world first application of CCS in a fluid catalytic cracking” at Phillips 66 Humber Refinery and post combustion capture at neighbouring power plant VPI Immingham. There is also £21.5 million in Zero Carbon Humber, the dual pipeline project for hydrogen supply and CO2 transport. Humber Industrial Cluster Plan has also been funded by UKRI, “a great neutral forum for industrial decarbonisation leadership,” Dr Joyce said.
Leading Phillips 66 is Darren Cunningham. The oil refinery - rebadging as a ‘refinery of the future’ is behind commercialisation of sustainable aviation fuel, key materials for batteries and increasing use of synthetic feedstocks for the road transport fuel it sells under its Jet and supermarket own label brands. He said: “We sit right in the middle of the Humber cluster, a big asset right on the doorstep, we’ve been around for a long time and will be around for another 50 years. We won’t achieve Net Zero without industries like ours playing a key role.
“CCS is a massive opportunity, with world first, first of a kind projects, with huge potential for jobs. There are massive opportunities for the region, massive opportunities for the UK and we have got to capture the supply chain. When we want to build projects on the refinery, it is really hard to find big pressure vessels, for example, we have got to build the supply chain again if we want to capitalise. We don't want to offshore this. We want to buy big machines, buy vessels and steel pipes from the UK.
“We also have to develop skills and labour. We need about 2,500 people during construction, and it is really hard to find 2,500 workers with these skills. It is not just the Humber, it is going to have lots of opportunities across the UK. It is a massive opportunity for UK Plc and we hope we take it, and we are happy to play our part in it.”
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