From Ludo Thierry with further comment from Legerwood:
Noticed a piece (dated 18/02) on beeb site regarding ‘Govt’ funding (presumably a Westminster/Whitehall dept. – mentions £5.2M of funding for these trials) for 2 trial projects for industrial scale production of hydrogen. One is happening at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire (Pilkington Glass and Unilever in Port Sunshine are apparently due to be trialling large scale use of the hydrogen) and the other chosen site is the St. Fergus Gas Terminal in Aberdeenshire.Precious little info in the article but it was carried on the beeb Merseyside page and the beeb Science page – but saw no mention on beeb Scotland page. Link and snippet below:
The first low-carbon hydrogen energy production plants in the UK have been granted government funding.
Facilities at Stanlow Oil Refinery in Ellesmere Port, Cheshire and St Fergus Terminal in Aberdeenshire will produce hydrogen for manufacturing industries.
St Helens glassmakers Pilkington and Unilever in Port Sunlight will trial using hydrogen to cut carbon emissions.
Hydrogen is a low or zero-emission substitute for fossil fuels.
Scientists hope to demonstrate that it can be used instead of natural gas in a range of industrial settings, helping companies’ transition to a low-carbon future.
Director of Energy Lancaster at Lancaster University, Prof Harry Hoster, acknowledged that the schemes were “expensive but it is our only way of doing it at the moment”.
He added that he hoped production costs would eventually fall for hydrogen, as well as being “greener in the long run”.
There was also the Hydrogen Project in Fife. Joining renewable energy from wind and producing hydrogen as a storage form of energy for the times when the wind does not blow:
https://www.brightgreenhydrogen.org.uk/hydrogen-office-project/
I am not sure if it ever moved beyond the pilot project but it was successful in powering the Energy Offices and other businesses in the Innovation Park in Fife.
Reducing the carbon dioxide content of North Sea gas and storing the carbon dioxide in suitable areas in the North Sea would make gas even more eco friendly and is feasible as Norway has shown.In the early 1990s the Norwegian Government put a tax on the carbon dioxide content of gas from the North Sea. The state oil company, called Statoil back then, set up a carbon capture and sequestration system so that the gas pumped ashore had a lower carbon dioxide content and thus attracted a lower tax bill.The storage location was monitored over decades and behaved as the models suggested it would. The scheme has been extended to other areas within Norway’s oil and gas field:
Talking-up Scotland 'Albatraz' 
Hi John – beeb Scotland are apparently reading your blog – the article has just appeared on the beeb Scotland page! It fairly cheers one up on a chilly night.
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or they’re reading the bbc merseyside one?
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The only BBC Scotland Tweet I saw linked to https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-51546611, which was very short of detail on the whole subject (another of my complaints about the BBC generally – the DUMBING DOWN!). In cases such as this, I always consult with @DickWinchester who knows his stuff about green energy, as well as being an expert in oil & gas.
He pointed me to https://pale-blu.com/acorn/ which has info on the work at the St Fergus site, and I was then able to dig out a lot more on the subject, which is fascinating.
Today I also spotted this https://phys.org/news/2020-02-green-technology-electricity-thin-air.html, which is not a joke.
Of course, Scottish air is the best air, and may also be ideal for generating green electricity from our moisture-laden atmosphere. I’m not clear how scaleable this is but, as Dick pointed out, it would be great to see exciting science like that being conducted here.
Of course, there may well be exciting things happening in Scotland but who is going to tell us about them?
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BBC Scotland actually has a pretty knowledgeable and genial Science Correspondent, Kenneth MacDonald, (no relation) who has the ability to take a complex subject and explain it in ‘common’ language, without prejudicing academic rigour. He also seems quite comfortable about being Scottish. I am surprised he has not done a feature on this. Of course, he might have done the one which appeared on the BBC Science pages, but his Scottish colleagues did not accept it.
Anent the Scottish pages on the BBC site, particularly the Scottish Politics one – they do not change very much, stories can be on the site for days. Is anyone actually running this full time?
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