Blackfriar: Yorkshire is leading the way on green energy

On Monday clean fuel firm ITM Power announced an agreement to lease new premises in Sheffield for its global manufacturing headquarters.

This is big news for the region as the 134,000 square feet site at PLP Bessemer Park will have the biggest electrolyser manufacturing capacity in the world.

ITM Power manufactures integrated hydrogen energy solutions for grid balancing, energy storage and the production of green hydrogen for transport, renewable heat and chemicals.

The company has been leading the green energy wave for several years. It signed a forecourt siting agreement with Shell for hydrogen refuelling stations in 2015, which was extended in May this year to include buses, trucks, trains and ships.

ITM Power also signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement with Sumitomo Corporation in July last year for the development of multi-megawatt projects in Japan.

Its other customers and partners are major energy players, including Ørsted, National Grid, Cadent, Northern Gas Networks, Gasunie, RWE, Engie, BOC Linde, Toyota, Honda, Hyundai and Anglo American.

The need to expand the firm’s production capacity has been led by the growth in the company’s order pipeline.

ITM’s chief executive Dr Graham Cooley said ITM Power is “undoubtedly in the right place at the right time”.

The market for electrolysis is growing very strongly. The Committee on Climate Change report “Net Zero” predicts between 6 GW and 17 GW of electrolyser capacity will be required in the UK by 2050.

Iona Capital, which invests in environmentally friendly energy plants, sees Yorkshire as a key area for its green energy projects and is particularity excited about its latest scheme - to produce energy from world-famous Yorkshire Wensleydale cheese.

Well, not the cheese itself. Iona Capital has signed a deal with Wensleydale Creamery to produce over 10,000 MWh of energy per year from whey, a by-product of the cheese making process. That’s enough power to heat 800 homes a year.

Iona’s Leeming Biogas plant in North Yorkshire will process the whey and turn it into nearly one million cubic meters of green gas.

Wensleydale Creamery, the maker of Yorkshire Wensleydale cheese, produces 4,000 tonnes of cheese every year at its dairy in Hawes in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales.

Mike Dunn, co-founder of Iona, said this latest partnership with Wensleydale shows the firm’s commitment to Yorkshire. He said there’s a buzz in Yorkshire as the region is very much promoting green energy and it’s very aware of climate change.

Last week we learned that environmental infrastructure fund JLEN is to take over several Yorkshire-based hydropower and battery storage projects including Kirkthorpe hydro, a 500kW single turbine hydro project located on the River Calder.

JLEN said the £4.3m deal will be its first investment in two new sectors – run-of-river hydro and battery storage - which will diversify the company’s portfolio of environmental infrastructure projects.

The firm has also bought Thrybergh hydro, a twin screw 260kW hydro project located on the River Don, commissioned in 2015, and a 1.2MW battery co-located at Thrybergh, commissioned in January 2018.

At a time when climate change is becoming increasingly worrying, it is good to see Yorkshire firms leading the pack.