The Humber Industrial Decarbonisation Network was held on Wednesday 26th January at CATCH. Over 100 online and 15 in person delegates joined the network which was chaired by guest chair Richard Gwilliam, Head of Cluster Development at Drax Power Station.
The Humber Industrial Decarbonisation Network was held on Wednesday 26th January at CATCH. Over 100 online and 15 in person delegates joined the network which was chaired by guest chair Richard Gwilliam, Head of Cluster Development at Drax Power Station.
Richard welcomed delegates to the meeting and thanked the Cluster Plan team for the opportunity to chair the session. Richard reflected on the Humber’s scale and relative complexity, which seem like a challenge to industrial decarbonisation, but there is a huge opportunity to use our collective voice to promote the benefits of the region in delivering the first net zero cluster for the UK.
Richard Gow, Senior Government Policy Advisor at Drax gave the first presentation, introducing the audience to Negative Emission Technology and the role NETs have in meeting the net zero challenge. Richard outlined current net zero targets and carbon capture and storage ambitions set by Government. The Committee on Climate Change recognise that emissions from sectors such as agriculture and aviation will be very hard to fully remove and that some use of NETs will be necessary such as Bio Energy with Carbon Capture and Direct Air Capture (engineered solutions) and also natural solutions such as afforestation, creating new saltmarsh or wetland and other nature based sequestration. Richard responded to a number of questions, stating the importance of using sustainable biomass sources and describing some of the current barriers to deployment.
Richard welcomed Bill Walker, Chair of Marketing Humber, to the meeting to launch the latest Humber map dedicated to a 2030 vision for industrial decarbonisation, commissioned by the Humber Industrial Cluster Plan and created by experts at Marketing Humber. A copy of the map and full press release can be found here
Dr Laura de Vito, Senior Research Fellow at the University of the West of England, Bristol gave a presentation on research into a Journey to Net Zero: Challenges for the UK industrial sector. Laura highlighted the size of the gap in emission reduction across all sectors and the cost of inaction being far higher than the estimated cost of reducing emissions now. Cross sectoral challenges were analysed during the research, commissioned by Zurich UK and the main findings included understanding interdependencies between industrial sectors was key to unlocking new opportunities.
Jonathan Oxley, Humber Industrial Cluster Plan Manager gave an update. The project has completed the first 12 months with notable progress on both recruitment of the full team and procurement of a range of key work packages to support the delivery of a Cluster Plan – a road map for industrial emissions reaching net zero by 2040. Work is progressing well with consultants to develop an energy systems model that can test a wide range of scenarios for reducing industrial emissions over time.
The next HICP session will be the Humber Hydrogen Network on 9 March at CATCH and online. Guest chaired by Helen Sanders, SSE
