Hydrogen Hub | West of Scotland

It’s back to All Energy in Glasgow this week and a chance to help catch up with old acquaintances on the heels of a positive development announced this May for Oban and the West of Scotland’s green-hydrogen-production-hub.

That, and developments around the aviation sector and Glasgow airport, which now hosts to an aviation innovation hub.

The Oban green light enables a future production and distribution centre for green hydrogen off the west of Scotland bringing together two key things in the energy transition wind, forty-to-six-megawatt wind farm which is supplying the renewable feedstock or power.

This year All Energy conflicts with an invite to Rotterdam and another Hydrogen conference. As someone quipped in London, it’s a pity FID’s or Financial Investment Decisions are not going through at the same rate.

In Scotland the backcloth is against stabilised political events and a  respected new First Minister, whom as the pleasure of meeting while heading up the Islay offshore wind farm 10 years ago. He showed a keen interest and asked astute questions. Presumably any issues we faced are now being troubleshot by Machair and possibly utilising the former Argyll Array connection point. Their and economies of scale bigger turbines and of course, a bigger site, help project economics.

Last year’s All Energy was a muted affair came on the back of some unpalatable political developments. ScotWind is moving forwards, albeit perhaps more slowly, than some of us would like the hydrogen, green hydrogen of which Scotland wishes to be a world leader.

This year I detect evidence around two associated strands of the Energy Transition.  One is carbon capture and storage, the industrialization of industrial clusters largely through methane and the second the strangely named

INTOG | Innovation and Targeted Oil and Gas , an unusual combination of renewables coupled with carbon extraction.

The INTOG model is being watched around the world and even oil and gas or at least the production and operation elements can be decarbonized by bespoke floating wind sites located where needed, rather than for optimal resource.

For those of you less familiar with the West of Scotland planning process I share a selection of relevant infographics:

Hydrogen Scotland