UK gov aims to cut hydrogen permitting delays with time-limited trial approvals
Source：h2-view
The UK government has outlined plans to introduce faster, time-limited permits for hydrogen trials, aiming to cut regulatory bottlenecks that are slowing industrial adoption.
Under an eight-week consultation, the government will assess plans to modernise permitting for industry and energy, with hydrogen given as a central example.
If a steel mill, cement plant or refinery wants to test hydrogen burners, fuel switching or blending, a “common-sense” trial permit will allow time-limited approvals for hydrogen-based technologies.
The consultation also proposes replacing process-by-process approvals with flexible, facility-wide permits based on an overall emissions cap, allowing operators to switch processes to hydrogen without multiple new applications.
The Environment Agency (EA) is considering digitalisation and a risk-based system to speed up approvals, which could enable low-risk hydrogen projects to be cleared in days rather than months and freeing capacity for larger industrial schemes.
“Learning from international best practice from other countries, including the US, new flexible permits could be issued,” the government stated, which could strip away “layers of bureaucracy and reduce duplication of red tape, while also cutting emissions.”
The trial announcement follows the Corry Review, which earlier this year found UK environmental permitting to be overly risk-averse, slow and complex.
SLR Consulting highlighted the need for reform after Geopura became the first UK company to secure a bespoke environmental permit for an electrolysis plant last year.
Despite the project’s modest scale, the process took more than 17 months from submission to approval, including five-and-a-half months for the EA’s determination.