NEW PAPER: Between energy transition and industrial revival

Kraushaar‐Friesen, N., Bridge, G., & Kuchler, M. (2025). Between energy transition and industrial revival: Exploring hydrogen imaginaries in the United Kingdom and Teesside. Geo: Geography and Environment, 12(2), e70033. https://doi.org/10.1002/geo2.70033

In this paper, we examine the contemporary moment of visioning low-carbon futures, focusing on two emerging hydrogen imaginaries: one at the national level of the UK and a second one at the regional level of Teesside (an industrial region in the North East of England). We examine the dynamic interrelations between the two imaginaries - how the national level carves out a specific role for post-industrial regions (including Teesside) in achieving the country’s hydrogen future and conversely how Teesside’s regional imaginary embraces and places itself within the national vision, competing (against other similar regions) to gain national support for building out regional hydrogen infrastructure. In our analysis, we take stock of the diverse materialities – of hydrogen and its associated technological pathways (for production, consumption and transport) but also of renewables and fossil gas, the main primary sources currently under consideration for hydrogen production. In scrutinizing how these multiple materialities are set in relation to each other within the two emerging hydrogen imaginaries we answer RQ2 (‘How are emerging low carbon visions taking shape around incumbent materialities of offshore oil and gas? And what are the implications of these visions for the country’s transition away from offshore oil and gas?’).

At the national level, we find that hydrogen functions as a ‘multi-scalar silver bullet’, appraised for its potential to facilitate a ‘frictionless’ transition by substituting for natural gas across a range of current applications and sectors. This vision of hydrogen as a ‘versatile replacement for high-carbon fuels used today takes form around the diverse and flexible material affordances of the energy carrier: carbon-free combustion; materialisation in multiple physical states (solid, liquid and gas); infrastructural resonance with existing (natural gas) systems; versatile storability and convertibility; its status as a non-depletable fuel; and its role as a molecular energy carrier (able to support decarbonisation in sectors where electrification is more challenging). As such, across emerging net zero policy, hydrogen features within the decarbonisation of hard-to-abate sectors (e.g. in industry including steel, glass, chemicals but also transport including shipping and aviation) but also in light manufacturing and the food and drink sector; as a support to a decarbonised power system by providing system flexibility through energy storage; as a ‘drop-in’ solution within existing natural gas consumption systems requiring little change from consumers; as complementing electrification in road vehicles; and as repurposing of existing fossil gas infrastructure, including transport systems, storage sites and some fossil gas reserves. In essence, rather than disrupting or transforming current energy services, existing infrastructure (of natural gas), gas-fuelled lifestyles of consumption or industrial processes, national policy sees hydrogen enabling their continuity under decarbonised conditions. And it actively holds these diverse options open through a trope of experimentation, wherein the UK would serve as a hub for trialling diverse hydrogen technologies.

We show how the national vision foregrounds large scale future demand (between 250-460 TWh by 2050 compared with current demand levels of 10-27 TWh), while the sociotechnical configuration of the future hydrogen system is maintained tactically open and ambiguous. This sharp scalar difference between current and future demand generates urgency to rapidly scale up production, which is stabilised within low-carbon hydrogen production targets (first for 5GW by 2030, later doubled to 10GW). Importantly, the hydrogen imaginary is placed within the UK’s existing market-driven energy model. It recognises that ‘low-carbon’ hydrogen - narrowly defined as being of lower carbon intensity relative to current production, thus enabling inclusion of blue alongside green production within the label ‘low-carbon’ - remains more expensive than existing ‘grey’ production via transformation of natural gas without CCS. Combined with a concern for cost-effectiveness, this essentially guides the vision towards blue pathways in the near future (within the 2020s), while substantial volumes of green hydrogen are only deemed achievable in the further, mid-future (from the 2030s). In this way, the national imaginary is simultaneously shaped by a logic of anticipation (seeking to reduce short-term uncertainty, specifically by narrowing possible near-term production pathways) and of speculation (keeping mid- to long-term options open so the market can determine the system's eventual form while ensuring early rapid and large-scale growth).

Beyond serving as a crucial means of decarbonising various sectors, hydrogen additionally fuels ambitions for boosting socio- and geo-economic standings across scales. Placed within the UK’s wider net zero vision, hydrogen also serves as a vector for the economic promise of enhancing the country’s geopolitical leadership through export of hydrogen knowledges, skills, technologies and fuel. And domestically, it is deemed as having a critical role in rejuvenating the UK’s industrial regions, including Teesside, the Humber, Merseyside, North Wales and the North East of Scotland. Early hydrogen production can effectively be anchored in particular places, through existing regional material conditions (e.g. adjacent offshore wind capacity, potential carbon storage sites and plans for CCUS roll out, and/or access to natural gas).

On Teesside, industrial legacies and existing resource and infrastructural materialities of natural gas serve to anchor and give more concrete form to the regional hydrogen imaginary. This imaginary is placed within the contours of the national vision, embracing key themes such as the ‘SuperPlace’ designation and a need for speed, scale and cost-effectiveness. Yet in contrast with the national vision’s emphasis on experimentation, Teesside’s regional imaginary foregrounds practical implementation achieved through the region’s ‘unique’ set of existing spatio-material attributes. These include: proximity to offshore renewables, fossil gas resources and carbon storage sites; dense clustering of industrial assets suitable for a hydrogen economy; access to salt caverns for potential hydrogen storage; port infrastructure for prospective export; and existing knowledges, skills and infrastructures from current hydrogen production. The imaginary reflects a competitive tone, placing Teesside (in implicit comparison with the UK’s other post-industrial regions) as distinctly suited for initiating and expanding the country’s hydrogen production and thus deserving of and warranting national support (through selection within national funding mechanisms).

Teesside’s regional imaginary goes further than the national vision in channelling early hydrogen production towards blue pathways. The imaginary explicitly centres on existing fossil gas assets presenting blue hydrogen production as a practical, near-term route for scaling production and building up a regional hydrogen hub. Green hydrogen, currently deemed less cost-efficient than blue, is only considered possible (at scale) further into the future. Blue hydrogen is thus presented as a ‘transition’ pathway to a future growth in hydrogen supply premised on (offshore) renewables. Nonetheless, when this transition from blue to green is expected to occur remains distant, ambiguous and undetermined. And additional evidence within regional planning documents points to considerations for a durable coupling between Teesside's hydrogen and existing gas assets. In a telling phrase describing a scenario favoured within regional plans (the ‘Race to Scale’ scenario), by 2040 ‘[t]here is still demand for natural gas in the UK due to the reliance on methane reformation for hydrogen production’ (TVCA et al., 2023a, p. 17). In this view, future hydrogen production, paradoxically, becomes a reason for sustaining a long-term role for fossil gas in the UK's low-carbon transition.

Importantly, we demonstrate how the regional imaginary, and the privileged role of blue hydrogen therein, is shaped not merely by existing materialities, but by the way those materialities are embedded within existing distributions of social power. Interviews with representatives of the incumbent fossil gas industry, for instance, revealed the importance of (blue) hydrogen for sustaining their fossil gas assets through the low-carbon transition (and even capturing additional value from them). Moreover, a scenario privileging blue hydrogen production was explicitly selected and included within regional planning documents over three alternative pathways, despite evidence that this pathway would only be viable in a context projecting (by far) the highest UK hydrogen demand by 2050. The imaginary is further stabilised through co-production with regional identity presenting hydrogen as natural continuation of the region’s industrial history legacy. This symbolic quality of the imaginary is not only performed within regional planning documents and statements by representatives of the public authority (e.g. the Mayor of Teesside Ben Houchen), it is also widely reflected within the promotional material of bp, a key industrial incumbent in the region. Bp’s webpage for Teesside contains diverse pieces of content drawing linkages between its hydrogen (and other low-carbon) projects and the region’s industrial history, including a short clip by a local historian placing hydrogen as natural continuation for the region.