Recent headlines around the Acorn, Speyside and H2Teesside projects have been interpreted by some as evidence that hydrogen—particularly CCUS-enabled hydrogen—is faltering. The reality is more complex and more instructive. These projects are not collapsing due to technological immaturity or lack of industrial demand. They are running into planning friction, misaligned infrastructure decisions and an investment environment that lacks the coordination we have previously seen in sectors such as offshore wind.
If we want hydrogen to succeed, we must focus as much on delivery architecture as on technology choice.
Problem is pace, not physics
CCUS-enabled hydrogen production uses technologies that are already deployed commercially around the world. The UK has world-leading geological storage resources and cluster infrastructure that position us strongly in this space. Typical CCUS-enabled projects are in the 350–600MW range—an order of magnitude larger than the UK’s first-mover electrolytic projects.
Large-scale baseload production builds market momentum. It matches industrial demand profiles. It justifies transport and storage infrastructure. It concentrates value in industrial heartlands and supports the transition of our skilled oil and gas workforce. It is precisely the kind of anchor capacity that allows a hydrogen sector to form around it.
Yet our planning and consenting systems often assess such projects through fragmented lenses—local planning here, energy policy there, industrial strategy somewhere else. Nationally significant infrastructure is frequently judged without a sufficiently national framework. Competing land uses are resolved case by case rather than strategically. Timelines drift out of alignment with investment cycles.
Offshore wind did not scale because turbines were conceptually elegant. It scaled because policy, planning, grid and finance were aligned behind deployment.
Hydrogen now needs the same systemic clarity.
Scale and costs
There is also a deeper economic truth at play. Costs do not fall in PowerPoint slides; they fall in steel and concrete.
Estimates from NESO suggest that CCUS-enabled hydrogen production costs could be as low as £3.50/kg by 2030. Reaching comparable costs for electrolytic production will require a step change in the availability of cheap renewable power and access to hydrogen transport and storage infrastructure. But these modelled trajectories depend on delivery, and with the UK expected to require 44.5TWh of CCUS-enabled hydrogen per year by 2050, we need to move at pace.
Every project that we deliver teaches us how to build faster and more efficiently, with each successive project risk premiums and Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) costs fall. Supply chains mature. Standardisation increases. Operators optimise performance, getting more out of units and delivering maximum benefit at minimum cost. Learning-by-doing is not a slogan—it is how industries move from demonstration to commercially viable, globally competitive infrastructure, supported by frameworks that enable early deployment. Hydrogen must be given the same conditions to scale.
If we delay deployment in pursuit of a perfectly designed future system, we risk locking in higher costs for longer. Without early scale, electrolytic hydrogen also remains more expensive because it lacks the network, storage and demand pull that large anchor projects help to create.
This is not a ‘blue versus green’ argument. The UK has been clear in supporting a twin-track approach, and rightly so. Electrolytic hydrogen will grow rapidly as renewable capacity expands and power prices fall. But in the meantime, CCUS-enabled hydrogen provides a route to scale demand that justifies infrastructure and builds confidence across the value chain.
Delivery unlocks the wider system
The benefits extend beyond production. Hydrogen transport and storage networks (essential for hydrogen-to-power and industrial decarbonisation) are more viable when underpinned by substantial, steady volumes. Cluster development is accelerated. Industrial emitters gain credible decarbonisation pathways. Investors see bankable offtake and durable market signals.
The UK Modern Industrial Strategy has highlighted the importance of clusters to national economic resilience, and CCUS-enabled hydrogen is one of the most direct ways to future-proof the heavy industries which underpin them. Hydrogen UK’s members suggest that around 800 jobs could be created per CCUS-enabled hydrogen project across construction and operation—jobs created in our industrial heartlands, where we need them most!
At the same time, hydrogen projects are required to operate within some of the most stringent compliance frameworks in the energy system. From carbon intensity standards to monitoring, reporting and verification requirements, hydrogen must evidence its low-carbon credentials in ways that renewable electricity was not asked to in its early scaling phase. This reflects the importance of environmental integrity—but it also means hydrogen deployment depends even more heavily on clear, coordinated policy and enabling infrastructure.
None of this diminishes the importance of environmental scrutiny or community engagement. Clean energy must be credible and affordable, as well as having low-carbon intensity. The answer to legitimate concerns is, however, better coordination, proportionate regulation and clearer national direction—not paralysis.
Hydrogen is not too slow. The UK’s capability is not in doubt. The missing piece is alignment: of planning with policy, of infrastructure with strategy, of ambition with implementation.
If we want hydrogen to deliver jobs, energy security and industrial competitiveness, we must treat delivery as the strategic priority it is. Because in the end, the fastest way to bring costs down, build confidence and prove value is the simplest one: build.
The author is vice president, Hydrogen UK and lead, CCUS-Enabled Hydrogen Working Group
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