With a £3.4 million injection into eleven hydrogen-focused initiatives, the Scottish Government has reaffirmed its commitment to scaling a domestic hydrogen economy—yet the relatively modest funding pool raises questions about pace and impact amid growing global competition.
More than 45% of the funding has been directed to just two players—Green Cat Hydrogen and Storegga Hydrogen—indicating a targeted, project-clustered approach rather than broad market stimulation. Green Cat alone received over £1 million across three schemes, including £490,088 for its Creca Hydrogen Facility in Dumfries and Galloway, which aims to produce over 4,000 tonnes of green hydrogen annually. The company’s Strathallan Hydrogen project, awarded £320,549, plans to leverage around 20 MW of renewable energy for local hydrogen production. These numbers suggest material scale at the demonstration level, but fall short of industrial decarbonization thresholds, where demand for low-carbon hydrogen could eventually reach hundreds of thousands of tonnes per year.
Storegga Hydrogen received £528,555 for its two Cromarty projects—Phase 2 Longman and Muir of Ord. While the projects represent progress in regional development, particularly in the Highlands, they collectively highlight a continued gap between funding ambition and the capital intensity of hydrogen infrastructure.
The support comes in response to the government’s 2023 call for match-funding of up to 50%, capped at £2 million per award. Most of the awarded sums remain well below that threshold, pointing to early-stage deployments rather than late-phase scaling. The largest award outside of Green Cat and Storegga went to Protium Green Solutions, whose Lanark Hydrogen Island project secured £450,619. Meanwhile, the European Marine Energy Centre’s Sustainable Fuels Orkney initiative received £375,000, reinforcing Orkney’s position as a testbed for integrated renewable-hydrogen systems.
While Scottish ministers have positioned hydrogen as a “critical pillar” of their 2045 net-zero target, the funding round underscores a reality: Scotland remains in a project seeding phase, not yet in one of systemic scale-up. In parliamentary debate this week, Acting Net Zero Secretary Gillian Martin emphasized equitable energy transition and regional inclusion. But such goals demand more than pilot project grants—they require alignment across industrial demand, workforce readiness, and large-scale infrastructure investment.
Crucially, the £3.4 million allocation must be contextualized within wider European and global funding trends. Germany’s H2Global mechanism, for example, recently advanced €4 billion for international green hydrogen contracts. Similarly, the UK Government’s Hydrogen Allocation Round 2 is expected to support multiple hundreds of megawatts of capacity. In that context, Scotland’s latest funding—though directionally consistent with net-zero goals—offers limited velocity for industrial transformation.
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