The country’s leading hydrogen trade association is looking to accelerate the journey towards a holistic hydrogen talent pipeline to plug an emerging skills gap in the sector.
A new paper, Electrolytic Hydrogen Action Plan, released by the Hydrogen Energy Association (HEA), looks to identify key areas limiting the rollout of electrolytic hydrogen and offers a series of recommendations for Government to ensure a proactive approach to the evolution of the UK’s hydrogen economy.
Along with recommendations around incentivising electrolytic hydrogen use and breaking down planning and consent barriers, it highlighted the work it has been doing with the Hydrogen Skills Alliance to develop a strategy that looks at a gap analysis of curriculum to identify suitable areas where hydrogen awareness, education and training could be successfully incorporated.
The proposals come ahead of an eagerly anticipated Green Jobs Plan, devised by the Green Jobs Delivery Group co-chaired by the Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero Graham Stuart, which aims to set out clear plans to enable the UK workforce to deliver net zero and wider environmental goals.
To support this, the HEA has called for the allocation of sufficient funding for up-skilling and retraining, collaboration with educational initiatives and institutions to create clear career transition pathways and a fund for a national hydrogen skills training programme to ensure a pipeline of new and existing talent.
CEO Celia Greaves said: “The limited availability of skilled labour within the hydrogen sector is an increasingly urgent consideration and failure to address this issue now will result in sector-wide shortages and supply chain disruption that will inevitably constrain the pace at which the UK hydrogen economy can develop.
“While developing a hydrogen workforce is unique in the sense that it has to be built from scratch and at unprecedented pace, it has the advantage of skills transferability from the existing oil and gas industry. This indicates a need to create a joined-up approach to people and skills right across the energy industry.
“Skills shortages are already visible in the hydrogen sector, and this will only intensify once the backlog of electrolytic hydrogen projects enter the construction and operation phases.
“Electrolytic hydrogen production in particular, will require a whole spectrum of roles and skills, including the operation, servicing and maintenance of the electrolyser and Balance of Plant (BoP) technologies, the transmission, transportation and storage of hydrogen, as well as the servicing of end user applications.”
The HEA has been working through the Hydrogen Skills Alliance (HSA) to identify the challenges associated with hydrogen skills.
But with 84% of employers noting an insufficient number of skilled workers for hydrogen, and 61% claiming this is impacting their ability to scale up, Celia said it was “essential that Government invest in ways to strengthen the pipeline.”
Alongside challenges to skills, education and training, the paper also identified other key areas limiting the rollout of electrolytic hydrogen and offered 27 actionable recommendations for Government.
Among these were calls to develop a simplified and proportional adaption of the Low Carbon Hydrogen Standard (LCHS), adopt a strategy of distributing targeted and accessible information to local councils and planning authorities to ensure they have sufficient information about hydrogen to make swift and informed planning decisions, and focus on increasing the capacity of the planning and consenting system.
The HEA is now set to work with Government and other stakeholders to take forward the recommendations to optimise outcomes for electrolytic hydrogen and facilitate the rollout of the hydrogen economy more broadly.
Celia said: “Addressing these key areas of electrolytic hydrogen production, demand, supply chain development, and cross-sectoral impacts, will help the UK hydrogen economy to accelerate at the pace needed to reach the target of up to 6GW of production by 2030, and allow the UK to capitalise on the long-term economic benefits of supporting this industry.
“If the UK is to deliver a world leading hydrogen economy, the Government must continue to act proactively in its hydrogen strategy and the recommendations in our Action Plan present an opportunity to do so by streamlining the rollout of electrolytic hydrogen capacity and usage.”
The full list of recommendations are:
- Develop a simplified and proportional adaption of the Low Carbon Hydrogen Standard (LCHS) that is specific to electrolytic hydrogen.
- Increase the support threshold for the Sliding Scale Top Up Amount to reduce volume risk.
- Reconsider the stance of Risk Taking Intermediaries (RTIs) as ineligible offtakers under the Low Carbon Hydrogen Agreement (LCHA) and introduce them in a limited and controlled capacity.
- Incorporate price controls and volume limitations to manage the inclusion of RTIs, and address concerns around value for money.
- Introduce an interim easement period where RTIs can be eligible for a number of years until the hydrogen economy establishes itself and volume risk decreases.
- Relax temporal correlation requirements to adopt a monthly metering basis until 2030 to reduce individual project cost.
- Set the carbon intensity of curtailed wind at 0 in Version 4 of the LCHS.
- Tie The Reference Price to the price of electricity to shield producers from high market volatility.
- Give Electrolytic hydrogen producers the option of CPI Strike Price indexation or Strike Price indexation that is tied to electricity prices.
- Permit electrolytic hydrogen developers more optionality around the indexation of the Strike Price or place it on equal terms with CCUS.
- Incorporate a proportional criteria for electrolytic hydrogen projects in the ‘Guidance on emerging techniques for hydrogen production by electrolysis of water’ and any subsequent BRef documents. Rather than electrolyser capacity, this could be determined by inputs and outputs such as water usage / discharge and emissions to air / water / ground.
- Prioritise the development of electrolytic hydrogen specific BRef documents that align with the work that the BSI and HSE are doing to create hydrogen safety standards.
- Adopt a strategy of distributing targeted and accessible information to local councils and planning authorities to ensure they have sufficient information about hydrogen to make swift and informed planning decision
- Update current planning frameworks such as the NPPF and TCPA to include a definition of low-carbon and electrolytic hydrogen.
- Focus on increasing the capacity of the planning and consenting system.
- Allow energy intensive businesses using hydrogen to remain exempt from CCL charges in order to incentivise fuel switches by reducing electricity charges.
- Alternatively, include a strike price adjustment for any volumes sold to customers who previously had a CCA.
- Accelerate decision making on the extent to which hydrogen blending will be permitted and update the market at the earliest opportunity.
- Conduct a detailed economic analysis to explore viable options for revenue support mechanisms for blending as an offtaker of last resort. Introduce blending initially as an offtaker of last resort for HAR winners, where necessary, and include blended volumes in revenue support under the HPBM.
- Ensure the £390 million of GIGA funding allocated to CCUS and hydrogen is widely accessible to a variety of electrolytic hydrogen projects to increase the supply chain coverage.
- Provide financial relief for electrolytic hydrogen manufacturing and innovation.
- Maximize the utilization of existing supply chain capabilities where possible, such as from the offshore oil and gas industry.
- Increase the weighting of ‘economic benefits’ in the proposed HSBM assessment and align this figure with the upcoming HTBM assessment criteria.
- Focus on establishing a domestic supply chain to support the deployment of electrolytic hydrogen production and, ultimately, establishing new export opportunities.
- Undertake a gap analysis of curriculum to identify suitable areas where hydrogen awareness, education and training could be successfully incorporated.
- Allocate sufficient funding for up-skilling and retraining, as well as collaborating with educational initiatives and institutions to create clear career transition pathways.
- Fund a ‘Holistic Hydrogen Talent Pipeline’ and a ‘National Hydrogen Skills Training Programme’ to ensure a pipeline of new and existing talent.
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