Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has launched the UK’s new Innovation Strategy plan, setting out the Government’s vision and aiming to boost private sector investment in R&D.

The UK is committed to increasing annual public investment on R&D of £22bn, that it hopes will attract private funding too, with the Government outlining seven strategic technologies including clean technologies.

Energy distribution, storage and fusion technologies all are mentioned, alongside the generation from wind and solar, as critical to achieving net-zero. In addition, the Strategy looks to protecting the natural environment restore biodiversity.

In particular, large scale capture solutions are cited as a vital part of the system, which will store, and make use of greenhouse gases alongside negative emission technologies.

Interestingly hydrogen is mentioned too, the Cinderella of clean fuels is perhaps getting a little more attention. The document refers to hydrogen heating trials, and a Hydrogen Neighbourhood with scaling up to a potential Hydrogen Town before the end of this decade.

Energy storage and management solutions are also key, it says. Long-duration storage technologies will accommodate increasing electricity demand in the context of more variable supply from renewables. Demand reduction technologies are needed to reduce UK energy demand by 40 per cent by 2050 through applied data science that drives behaviour change and regulation. Geoengineering and carbon negative technologies will also enable the cooling of the environment and the removal of greenhouse gases from the air.

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