The production, storage, distribution and conversion of hydrogen is a rapidly emerging candidate to help decarbonise the economy. Here we focus on its role to support the integration of offshore renewable energy (ORE), a topic of increasing importance to the UK given the falling costs of offshore wind generation (with prices expected to drop to 25% of 2017 by 2023) and Government ambition. Indeed, the latest BEIS scenarios include more than 120 GW of offshore wind, and even up to 233GW in some scenarios. This brings with it significant challenges to the electricity infrastructure in terms of our ability to on-shore and integrate these variable energy flows, across a wide range of timeframes. Current ORE plants composed of fixed offshore wind structures are sited relatively close to land in shallow water and use systems of offshore cables and substations to transform the electricity produced, transmit it to the shore and connect to the grid. However, in order to exploit the full renewable energy potential and requirements for the 2050 net zero target, offshore wind farms will need to be sited further offshore and in deeper waters. This brings possibilities into consideration in which transporting the energy to shore via an alternative vector such as hydrogen could become the most attractive route. Hence we consider both on-shore and off-shore hydrogen generation. Not only can hydrogen be an effective means to integrate offshore wind, but it is also increasingly emerging as an attractive low carbon energy carrier to support the de-carbonisation of hard to address sectors such as industrial heat, chemicals, trucks, heavy duty vehicles, shipping, and trains. This is increasingly recognised globally, with significant national commitments to hydrogen in France, China, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Germany, Portugal, Australia and Spain in the last three years alone, along with the recent launch of a European hydrogen strategy, and the inclusion of hydrogen at scale in the November 2020 UK Government Green plan. Most of the focus of these national strategies is on the production of 'green' hydrogen using electrolysis, driven by renewable electricity. However, there remains interest in some countries, the UK being one example, in 'blue' hydrogen, which is hydrogen made from fossil fuels coupled with carbon capture and storage and hence a low carbon rather than zero carbon hydrogen. Today, 96% of hydrogen globally is produced from unabated fossil fuels, with 6% of global natural gas, and 2% of coal, consumption going to hydrogen production, primarily for petrochemicals, contributing around 830 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per year. Currently green hydrogen is the most expensive form of hydrogen, with around 60-80% of the cost coming from the cost of the electrical power input. A critical factor that influences this is the efficiency of the electrolyser itself, and in turn the generator used to convert the green hydrogen back into power when needed. In this work we focus on the concept of a reversible electrolyser, which is a single machine that can both produce power in fuel cell mode, and produce hydrogen in electrolyser mode. Electrolysers and fuel cells fall into one of two categories: low-temperature (70-120C) and high temperature (600-850C). While low temperature electrolyser and fuel cell systems are already commercially available, their relatively low combined round-trip efficiency (around 40%) means that the reversible solid oxide cell (rSOC), which can operate at high temperatures (600-900C) is of growing interest. It can achieve an electrolyser efficiency of up to 95%, power generation efficiency of up to 65%, and hence a round-trip efficiency of around 60% at ambient pressure using products now approaching commercial availability. This project considers the development and application of this new technology to the case of ORE integration using hydrogen.

Vision: To determine novel and policy relevant pluralistic values for marine biodiversity and apply these values to co-develop green investment options, leading to a transformative shift in our understanding and utilisation of the economics of biodiversity. There have been significant developments in understanding how economies are embedded in nature and how biodiversity can be integrated into economic models and decision making. This has included growth in environmental valuation, ecosystem service assessments, natural capital approaches, and green investments. Despite these advances biodiversity is only sporadically integrated into decision making and remains external to our economic systems. The result is continuing biodiversity loss with negative implications for our society, economy, and fundamental wellbeing. Key challenges include: i. a nascent understanding of how biodiversity provides benefits resulting in a lack of decision grade data; ii. hesitance of users to apply values due to low confidence, poor understanding, and a negligible definition of the beneficiaries; iii. uncertainty regarding routes of green investment. To address these interconnected challenges ValMaB-DM brings together expertise in marine ecology, human geography, environmental and ecological economics, governance, and finance. The team includes academics, consultancies, and NGOs coupled with an extensive partner network of government, industry and commerce representatives. To drive a meaningful shift in the understanding and utilisation of the economics of biodiversity our partners highlighted a need for state-of-the-art theoretical development to be coupled with practicable representations. As such ValMaB-DM takes a twin track approach. One track will develop innovative, internationally applicable approaches whilst a parallel track will ground the research in key coastal habitats identified as priorities for net-biodiversity gain at the Solent and the Moray Firth, showcasing potential ecological, social, economic, and financial benefits. To address a critical evidence gap and inform the net zero agenda we will focus on the regulating services: bioremediation of waste and carbon sequestration. To tackle the stated challenges ValMaB-DM will first substantiate the interlinkages between marine biodiversity and carbon sequestration and bioremediation through the combination of new and existing data to assess how the condition of biodiversity affects the quantity, quality, and resilience of the services. Collaborating with international expertise we will develop consensus on scaling these findings from local to national and generic. Building on current understanding robust, generically applicable, monetary valuations of carbon sequestration and bioremediation will be further developed and applied to support natural capital accounting frameworks, and also coupled with novel ecological understanding at the case studies. As singular monetary valuations may not align with community aspirations participatory mapping initiatives will be advanced and deployed to engage real world communities in mapping the social values and trade-offs associated with biodiversity and Natural Capital resources. The ecological, monetary, and social values of biodiversity will be connected to decision-making through the co-design and implementation of green investment to maintain and enhance coastal habitats. Communication and capacity building are at the heart of ValMaB-DM. Strategic stakeholder engagement will be choreographed through the co-development of research, stakeholder mapping, the Programme Steering Group, and sharing of outcomes (e.g. policy briefs, trade shows, social media). We will also run a training programme for practitioners, collaborators and external stakeholders, enabled by Natural Resources Wales and the Coastal Partnership Network, and develop of an MSc course module and capitalise on links to the SuMMeR Centre for Doctoral Training