Overview

Decarbonising heavy process industries such as steel, cement and chemicals will be a vital element of achieving net zero within the next 25-30 years. Projects are under development across the world, many using hydrogen, CCS, and electrification. Most recently, you may have seen that the Viking CCS project in the Humber region and the Acorn CCS project in Scotland were picked as Track 2 projects under the UK Government’s Cluster Sequencing project, joining the Track 1 projects already announced in March 2023: Hynet and East Coast Cluster.

Since 2019 in the UK, and to 2024, UKRI’s £210 million Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge (IDC) programme has been supporting the decarbonisation of six of the largest industrial clusters in the UK: the Humber, the North West, the Black Country, Scotland, South Wales, and Tees Valley. Industrial clusters collectively account for about half of the UK’s industrial emissions, and so effective decarbonisation of these regions has a material impact on the UK’s ability to reach Net Zero. 

In this two speaker webinar organised by the IChemE’s Clean Energy Special Interest Group, Dr Bryony Livesey of UKRI will firstly describe the programme of Industrial Cluster Decarbonisation projects underway across the UK, and provide an update on progress made and the remaining challenges. Professor Mohamed Pourkashanian OBE will follow, giving more detail on the role of hydrogen in achieving net zero. He will describe in particular the importance of hydrogen in industrial decarbonisation and other sectors, illustrating his talk with examples of ongoing research and development projects to give an overview of the current state of art and future opportunities in the hydrogen field. 

Speakers

Dr Bryony Livesey, Director, Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge (IDC)

Bryony leads the Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge (IDC), which forms part of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF). IDC is a £210m programme with £261m match funding from industry, designed to deploy low carbon technologies and enabling infrastructure in heavily industrialised regions of the UK. Bryony was previously Head of Technology at Costain, with responsibility for the identification and development of new technology. She was a member of BEIS' CCUS Cost Challenge Task Force, a Director of the CCSA (where she co-chaired the Technical Working Group) and chaired the Independent Advisory Panel for the UKCCSRC.

Mohamed Pourkashanian, Professor, University of Sheffield

Mohamed is the Head of Energy Institute at the University of Sheffield, UK (www.sheffield.ac.uk/energy), the Managing Director of the Translational Energy Research Centre and the Sustainable Aviation Fuels Innovation Centre (www.terc.ac.uk ), leads the University of Sheffield’s Energy 2050 initiative and holds a chair in Energy Engineering and is the General Secretary of International Flame Research Foundation (IFRF www.ifrf.net). In 2022, Mohamed received an Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to Net Zero Research and Innovation.

Mohamed has successfully managed over 100 research contracts and grants, with a total value of in excess of £87 million. His research is in the field of future clean and sustainable energy technology. He and his students have authored over 492 publications in refereed journals and have co-authored a several books. He is a member of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund (ISCF): Industrial Decarbonisation Advisory Group responsible for Hydrogen theme, Member of Defence Supply Forum Working Group and a Fellow of the Energy Institute and a Chartered Engineer.

The material presented in this webinar has not been peer-reviewed. Any opinions are the presenters' own and do not necessarily represent those of IChemE or the Clean Energy Special Interest Group. The information is given in good faith but without any liability on the part of IChemE.

Webinar archive

This webinar is free of charge and open to all to attend, but if you wish to access the slides and a recording to replay on demand then you will need to be a member of the Clean Energy Special Interest Group.