United Kingdom – Over £31 million in new UK government funding will help industry reduce reliance on fossil fuels and reduce carbon emissions, allowing it to become more environmentally friendly while also lowering energy costs.
Red diesel, also known as gas oil, is a type of fossil fuel commonly used for off-road vehicles and machinery, particularly in the quarrying, mining, and construction industries. The funding includes over £6.6 million to help industry move away from using it.
It will see the development of alternatives to red diesel, such as e-fuels and green hydrogen, as well as technologies that capture and store energy that would otherwise be wasted by a vehicle or machine and use it instead. The funding is part of the Red Diesel Replacement competition, which announced the winners of Phase 1 today.
Over £5.5 million is also being invested in the development of technologies that will help industry reduce its use of high-carbon fuels and switch to cleaner power sources like hydrogen, electrification, or biomass and waste-based fuels. The money will go toward projects that will replace natural gas with hydrogen in industrial processes and design heat pumps for use in manufacturing plants, according to the winners of Phase 1 of the Industrial Fuel Switching competition.
Advancing CCUS
Furthermore, winners of the first stage of the Carbon Capture Usage and Storage (CCUS) Innovation 2.0 competition will receive a share of over £12 million for trailblazing projects aimed at advancing next-generation CCUS technology for deployment at scale by 2030, putting the UK at the forefront of the growing carbon capture market. The competition’s second call was also launched today, with up to £7.3 million available for this round. CCUS is a cutting-edge technology that involves capturing and storing carbon emissions from industrial processes in industries like power, cement, chemicals, and refining. By 2030, establishing a CCUS industry in the UK will help unlock tens of thousands of jobs while also supporting the economic transformation of our industrial regions.
The funding today builds on previous government support for greening industry, such as the £505 million BEIS Energy Innovation Programme, which included £100 million for industrial decarbonisation and CCUS, and the £315 million Industrial Energy Transformation Fund, which supports the development of technologies to help high-energy-use industries transition to a low-carbon future. This investment will aid industry in the transition to a lower-carbon economy, complementing the government’s plans to increase the UK’s long-term energy independence.
