Key Features
BEIS is providing £5 million in funding to support innovation in hydrogen BECCS (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage) technologies.
Programme: BEIS
Award: Share of up to £5 million
Opens: 17th Jan 2022
Closes: 4th Mar 2022
The Hydrogen BECCS Innovation Programme forms part of BEIS’ £1 billion Net Zero Innovation Portfolio, which aims to accelerate the commercialisation of innovative clean energy technologies and processes through the 2020s and 2030s. Hydrogen BECCS for the purpose of this programme refers to generating hydrogen from biogenic feedstocks via gasification or other bioenergy conversion routes, combined with carbon capture and storage.
Low carbon hydrogen will be critical for meeting the UK’s legally binding commitment to achieve net zero by 2050, and hydrogen generated via bioenergy has the potential to deliver negative emissions required to offset emissions from hard to decarbonise sectors.
The overall objective of the Hydrogen BECCS Innovation Programme is to support development of technologies which will enable the commercialisation and deployment of Hydrogen BECCS at scale to achieve negative emission and hydrogen production targets as outlined in the UK’s Sixth Carbon Budget covering greenhouse gas emissions for the period 2033-2037.
The programme will be split into two phases. Phase 1 (total budget £5m) will support multiple projects to scope and develop a feasible prototype demonstration project to be run in Phase 2. Phase 2 will select the most promising projects from Phase 1 and support the proposed physical demonstration of their innovation. Only those applicants who are
successful in securing Phase 1 funding and have completed their Phase 1
deliverables may enter into Phase 2.
A Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) pre-commercial procurement process will be used to deliver this competition. Thus, this competition will only support projects where the core technology being developed has not been previously operated widely or in a commercial environment.
In both phases of the competition the development of technologies within three categories will be supported:
• Category 1: Feedstock pre-processing
• Category 2: Gasification components
• Category 3: Novel biohydrogen technologies
To be eligible for funding, proposed projects must meet all the following eligibility criteria:
Innovation and technology readiness
This Competition is to support the development of innovative Hydrogen BECCS projects. It is to support the development of technologies that are not yet commercial from Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) 4 to 6 at the start of the project.
The project lead must be a UK registered company, academic, research, public, third sector or community organisation.
Phase 1 and Phase 2 activities funded in the Competition must be conducted largely in the UK.
Technology scope
The technology must be in scope for the category applied for.3
For further information, please see competition guidance notes here.
Funding will not be provided for projects where the technology development focuses on any of the out-of-scope technologies.
BEIS is unable to fund retrospective work on projects.
Projects can only be funded where evidence can be provided that innovation would not be taken forwards (or would be taken forwards at a much slower rate) without public sector funding.
BEIS reserves the right to allocate more or less than the total budget depending on the number and quality of applications received and budget availability.
A maximum of £5m will be available for Phase 1 feasibility studies, with a maximum expected value of £250k (excluding VAT) per project. BEIS reserves the right to allocate more or less than the total budget depending on the number and quality of applications received and budget availability.
Funding will be split equally between categories and assigned to projects ranked in order of merit and scoring above the pass rate (60%). Any remaining budget in a category will be transferred to a central pot, where all remaining/unfunded projects across the Categories will be combined and ranked in order of merit, funding will be assigned against order of merit to projects (with a minimum 60% threshold mark) until the central pot of money runs out.
The maximum funding available per project in Phase 2 depends on the category which is applied to:
• Category 1 (feedstock pre-processing) £2.5m (excluding VAT)
• Category 2 (gasification components) £5m (excluding VAT)
• Category 3 (novel biohydrogen technologies) £5m (excluding VAT)
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