Meeting of the Parliament 01 May 2025
I believe that hydrogen offers an extraordinary opportunity for Scotland that promises not only to transform our energy landscape but to secure our economic prosperity for generations to come.
As a Parliament, we should be fully committed to helping the Scottish hydrogen sector to develop and grow, including by integrating it into a wider European and international network.
Scotland has a vast capacity for renewable energy production, which gives our nation the potential to become a world leader in renewable hydrogen production and to export at scale. Scotland not only has in abundance all the raw ingredients that are necessary to produce low-cost, clean hydrogen; we are also well placed when it comes to the workforce and industrial base.
Scotland’s reputation for excellence in energy, our extensive oil and gas supply chain and our strong onshore and offshore wind sectors will be the key to our achieving a just transition to a low-carbon and, subsequently, net zero age, with hydrogen at the very heart of that transition.
Hydrogen will play a significant part in the decarbonisation of our energy system by being a key component in an integrated energy system. The first key area is green energy storage. That is because hydrogen is an ideal partner for wind energy. When there is too much wind energy to utilise, that energy can be stored as hydrogen and, when there is not enough wind, that hydrogen can be turned back into clean green energy.
In that partnership, hydrogen has the potential to be the large-scale and long-term energy store to replace or augment the critical balancing and resilience services that natural gas provides to our energy system today.
The growth of renewables and the hydrogen economy are complementary, so we need a strong renewables sector to support the development of a range of green hydrogen projects. That is why I am glad to see that the Scottish Government’s ambition for hydrogen production is closely aligned with its ambition for expanding the capacity of both offshore and onshore wind.
Just like natural gas, hydrogen can be stored as a compressed gas or liquid, but there is also the potential for storing hydrogen underground, including in depleted natural gas fields. With its expertise in oil and gas, Scotland should be at the forefront of hydrogen geological storage as well as carbon capture and storage.
We also need to explore the recent discovery of natural hydrogen reserves, where hydrogen produced underground has been trapped, much like natural gas. Although that work is still in its infancy, we should be exploring whether Scotland has hydrogen reserves. The skills base in the north-east is ready to be called into action, at home or abroad, if that discovery bears fruit.
I have touched on the issue of carbon capture, and I do not think that we could have this debate without mentioning Grangemouth. Research has shown that the Grangemouth refinery could have a future in hydrogen production. The UK and Scottish Governments both invested in the project willow study, which identified hydrogen production as one of the key pathways for the cluster’s future.
Project willow confirmed that hydrogen production at Grangemouth would be significantly more commercially viable if the Acorn carbon capture project had track 2 status. Ed Miliband has recently announced huge deals for carbon capture in England. It is now time for Scotland’s share; it is time that Ed Miliband and the UK Labour Government confirmed track 2 status for Acorn. If Scotland is to realise its vast green energy potential, the UK Government must urgently ensure that resources are put into Acorn so that we can move forward with our ambitions. We have waited far too long. It is now time for those resources to come to Scotland, which will help to boost Grangemouth’s potential.
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