Wrightbus Hydroliner drives key energy leaders to Parliament

Hydrogen Wrightbus drives key energy leaders to Parliament to push plans for 24,000-job mega-project

Wrightbus was at the heart of Westminster recently as a power alliance of more than 20 energy-intensive UK businesses met MPs to make the case for a hydrogen mega-project which will inject £6.5bn into the economy and create 24,300 jobs across the UK’s industrial heartlands.

Project HySpeed has mobilised an army of UK-based firms from FTSE100 to SMEs - including Wrightbus, Centrica, Heidelberg, ITM Power, JCB and National Gas - in direct response to the Government’s call to make the UK a clean energy superpower.

Arriving in Parliament on a Wrightbus hydroliner, the leaders met a group of more than 40 MPs and Parliamentarians to push for action, citing the issues with British Steel, blackouts in Iberia and job losses as reasons behind the need to step up the UK’s energy resilience.

HySpeed plans to produce 1GW of capacity by 2030 and reduce CO2 emissions by one million tonnes a year, scaling hydrogen production, cutting costs, strengthening the UK’s renewable energy leadership and safeguarding more than five million jobs linked to foundation industries.

Green entrepreneur Jo Bamford, Executive Chairman at the HydraB Power group who bought Wrightbus out of administration in 2019, said HySpeed had unified the hard-to-abate industries.

“It is clear, even from events over the last few weeks, that the UK needs to prioritise its approach to generating, supplying and storing its own energy. While batteries can help electrify certain industrial elements, there are more than five million jobs in the foundation industries that are reliant on us coming up with an alternative plan. We believe HySpeed can deliver energy security and independence while protecting millions of jobs.”

Wrightbus CEO Jean-Marc Gales added: “Public transport is at the forefront of the zero-emission transition and our world-leading hydrogen buses are in operation across the UK and Europe.

“We are delighted to support Project HySpeed which will help safeguard good green jobs at our factory in Ballymena as well as the 7,500 jobs we create in the supply chain.”

The project will aim to build a robust hydrogen ecosystem that benefits British industries and workers. Strategically located hydrogen production hubs will support local ecosystems and inject hydrogen into the gas grid to enable UK-wide industrial decarbonisation.

Coupled with aggregated procurement of equipment and services, optimised power purchasing and low-cost-financing, HySpeed will help reduce the cost of green hydrogen and embed manufacturing jobs for generations.

Chris O’Shea, Group Chief Executive Officer of Centrica, the energy giant which owns British Gas, said: “Hydrogen can play a crucial role in tackling emissions from sectors that other clean energy sources can’t easily reach. It can be used to power the UK when the sun doesn’t shine, and the wind doesn’t blow.”

Coupled with aggregated procurement of equipment and services, optimised power purchasing and low-cost-financing, HySpeed will help reduce the cost of green hydrogen and embed manufacturing jobs for generations.

The report said the UK would benefit from £2bn a year in Gross Value Added (GVA) from the creation of new industrial supply chains and hydrogen production facilities. Among the thousands of new jobs created, many would be in the construction, operations and manufacturing sectors and would support the UK’s Green Jobs Delivery Group’s target of 480,000 skilled green jobs by 2030.