South West hydrogen supercluster programme to launch following £2.5 million investment

By Peter Davison

9 October 2023

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Professor Tim Mays

Academic, civic and industry partners are to work together to unlock the huge potential of the South West's region’s hydrogen ecosystem, as part of a new 'supercluster'.

The initiative will provide solutions for storage and distribution, transport, and the energy sector supporting up to 100,000 jobs by 2050.

GW-SHIFT: Great Western Supercluster of Hydrogen Impact for Future Technologies led by the University of Bath and University of Exeter has secured £2.5 million from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) as part of their Place Based Impact Acceleration Account awards (PBIAA).

Researchers from across the GW4 Alliance of Bath, Bristol, Cardiff and Exeter universities alongside Swansea, South Wales, and Plymouth will work with 25 civic and industry partners, contributing over £1.5 million in additional funds and in-kind support, to maximise the enormous potential of the South West of England and South Wales hydrogen ecosystem.

Supported by a range of partners including the Western Gateway, Great South West, West of England Combined Authority, Hydrogen South West and SETsquared, GW-SHIFT will enable cross-sector partnerships to drive the development of hydrogen skills, infrastructure and technology.

Hydrogen technologies will play an important role in decarbonising transport and energy to meet the UK government’s 2050 Net Zero target and large scale aims to drive the growth of low carbon hydrogen.

GW-SHIFT will be a key enabler of these priorities, supporting the UK transition to green hydrogen production. Green hydrogen is produced by electrolysis powered by renewable sources like wind, water or solar.

Over the next four years, GW-SHIFT will support innovative research and activities to create a thriving low carbon hydrogen supercluster focusing on key themes such as production, storage and distribution, conversion and transport.

Working with existing and identifying new partners the project will co-create low carbon hydrogen solutions for aviation and shipping, heating buildings, and the power sector.

The Western Gateway Hydrogen Delivery Pathway calculates that investing in hydrogen infrastructure within the area could create up to new 40,000 new jobs and safeguard a further 60,000 existing jobs.

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Professor Tim Mays (pictured) GW-SHIFT principal investigator and co-director and GW4 net zero ambassador, from the University of Bath's Department of Chemical Engineering, said: “GW-SHIFT will develop as a place based supercluster to accelerate the impact of research and innovation in sustainable hydrogen technologies in the South West of England and South Wales to secure the UK’s net zero carbon emissions target for 2050.

"All partners are incredibly excited to be involved and look forward to working together over the next four years and beyond.”

By Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country.

An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts.

Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.