Teesside Airport is to become home to a new permanent hydrogen refuelling station.

The airport previously became home to a temporary refuelling station and secured low-emission hydrogen-fuelled vehicles – including cars, trucks, forklifts, vans and tugs – as part of the region’s Tees Valley Hydrogen Transport Hub trial in 2021.

Now, after being successful in the Government’s latest £8 million Hydrogen Transport Hub Demonstration, it will see a permanent hydrogen refuelling station based at its site. 

Mark Harper visited the airport last week to give one of the new hydrogen-powered vans a test drive.

Accompanying him was Ben Houchen, Tees Valley Mayor, who was keen to express how the research could make Teesside a global destination for investment.

The test drive went without a hitch and Ram Gokal, CEO of Innervated Vehicle Engineering, expressed his excitement at the investment.

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He said: “There are a lot of exciting projects going on in this area.

“We want to set up here and grow.

“It took £2m to research and get these vehicles together. With this new investment we can take the next steps for the project.”

Mr Harper explained that the aim of the two projects is to make hydrogen powered vehicles competitive with diesel ones.

The Northern Echo: The new hydrogen powered airport van

He said: “We are just announcing the winners of a competition, a couple of companies have won £8m of taxpayer funding to develop hydrogen technology for some of the harder-to-de-carbonise parts of the transport structure.

“Specifically, how we de-carbonise the air side of transport and de-carbonising the airport operations themselves. I think this will be a real boost to this area.

“We have been clear that hydrogen technology is going to be important to the harder-to-de-carbonise parts of the economy like maritime transport, aviation and heavy goods vehicles. The key is commercial vehicles and testing this in practice to show businesses that it works commercially and we can scale it up.

“The technology works, it’s about showing that it works commercially and that’s what this competition was about.”

After his test drive, doing a few loops around the airport entrance he gave a quick review of what it was like to drive.

He said: “If I can drive it, it can’t be very difficult. It was actually really good.

“It was very smooth, had good acceleration, the braking worked well and most importantly you can deliver a commercially competitive product compared to a diesel vehicle.”

Mr Houchen believes that the research into hydrogen technology will make Teesside a world leader.

He said: “It’s another piece in the jigsaw of everything that we are doing for carbon capture.

The Northern Echo: Ram Gokal, Mark Harper and Ben Houchen inspect the van

“We are doing a huge amount of hydrogen production but this is about practical application.

“One of the biggest and most difficult things to carbonise is transport, particularly away from cars with HGVs and vans.

“This is about how hydrogen can be cost-competitive with diesel vans and diesel trucks and it can be good for the environment.

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“It’s all clustered here because that’s what we want to do, we want to be on the forefront of it.

“We are already the UK centre for net-zero technology, we want to make sure that we keep that title.

“What we are trying to do is go to the next level and be more than just the leading centre in the UK.

“It’s not hyperbole to say that we could be synonymous with net zero in the same way that Silicon Valley was with social media.”