ITM Power and Vattenfall are among several winners in the UK Government’s £60m HySupply 2 competition.
The funding is spread across 28 projects in all four nations of the UK and will help establish an industry and lead to creation of around 12,000 jobs.
ITM Power, based in Yorkshire, has been awarded more than £9.2m to build a next generation 5MW electrolyser stack, designed to separate hydrogen from oxygen in a vat of water using electricity.
Building on its findings from the first Hydrogen Supply programme, ITM is seeking to bring the lowest-cost green hydrogen solution to the market via the Gigatest project.
Business and energy secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said: “The British Energy Security Strategy made clear that we are backing hydrogen not just as a viable source of clean, affordable homegrown energy but as an emerging industry of the future in which the UK can lead the world.
“This funding will accelerate the development of this exciting new industry, helping position us as a hydrogen superpower on the global stage.”
Funding for Stream 1 winning companies will be awarded in two phases.
Stream 1 Phase 1 will support the development of feasibility studies to test how ready technologies are, with companies receiving up to £300,000 per project.
Stream 1 Phase 2 will later select projects from the Phase 1 group and support demonstrations of the new technology at up to £6m per project.
Funding for Stream 2 has all been awarded through this initial allocation.
Of the competition’s 28 projects, Stream 1 feasibility support funding will go to 21 lead organisations across the UK, including innovators based in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and in several English regions.
Vattenfall has been awarded £9.3m to develop a hydrogen-producing offshore wind turbine, with the electrolyser sited directly onto an existing operational turbine.
The pilot project at Vattenfall’s Aberdeen Offshore Wind Farm will be able to produce enough hydrogen every day to power a hydrogen bus to travel 15,000 miles.
The hydrogen will be piped to shore at the Port of Aberdeen.
Work on the project has commenced, with the goal of first production as early as 2025.
Other winners include Edinburgh-based energy storage outfit Gravitricity and Arup, which together secured £300,000, to study the feasibility of storing hydrogen in purpose-built underground shafts.
The design will also include integration with gravity energy storage and inter-seasonal heat.
If successful, the project could be selected to enter Phase 2, where the partners would build a multi-million pound scale demonstrator in the UK.
Alternative clean hydrogen winners include Compact Syngas Solutions (CSS), based in Deeside, Wales, which has secured £299,886, to make clean, green, low-emission hydrogen fuel, based on gasification technologies applied to waste that would normally be sent to landfill.