With ASKAR SHEIBANI,

CEO, Comtek Network Systems UK Ltd and chair, DBF

For the UK to achieve its ultimate net-zero climate ambition, it has to look at all the emerging technologies.

Water is basically a combination of hydrogen and oxygen (H2O) and extracting hydrogen (H) from water could produce fuel.

Hydrogen fuel can be produced in various formats to suit the eventual use. For instance, we could convert all our buses, heavy goods vehicles and, eventually, all trains, homes, large ships and even aeroplanes to use hydrogen as the net-zero energy.

China, South Korea and Japan are heavily investing in hydrogen fuel technology, albeit utilising brown coal as the initial source for producing hydrogen by a method called gasification.

Although this method of producing hydrogen fuel is cheap, it has other environmental issues such as water contaminations and also all the carbon (CO2) within the coal must be separated, captured and buried under the ground.

The UK government does not permit coal gasification methods for the production of hydrogen fuel.

Hydrogen-based batteries are not yet as efficient as normal electric batteries, however, the technology is advancing pretty fast and expected to catch up very soon.

At the moment only two per cent of the 600 billion cubic metres of hydrogen manufactured worldwide is produced from water. About 98% of the hydrogen produced comes from natural gas.

Many countries all over the world have committed to some form of eventual net-zero emission. This, in turn, has created a great opportunity for the establishment of green-based technologies and manufacturing.

This is the right time for government intervention in support the UK's green energy technology manufacturing.

Hydrogen fuel produced from water, using only renewable sources of energy such as solar panels, would be the future technology.

At the moment it's expensive to produce hydrogen fuel from water using renewable energy. However, the Paris-based International Energy Agency expects the costs to be reduced by at least 30% by 2030.

The costs will very likely will go down further as we are witnessing great reductions in the cost of solar panel projects.

A study by Swansea University found that up to 30 per cent of domestic gas could be safely replaced with hydrogen energy, hence reducing carbon emission by 18 per cent.

We are very fortunate that Flintshire County Council, with the support of the North Wales Economic Ambition Board, is using funds from the Growth Deal to help the creation of a Hydrogen Hub in Deeside Industrial Park.

Deeside is an ideal place for the development of the Hydrogen-based industry as it has ample water and renewable energy resources.

Deeside is a power-house for manufacturing and is home to many international freight companies with large fleets of heavy goods vehicles.

Anglesey will also be receiving approximately £5million from the government to establish a Hydrogen Hub in Holyhead.

Now North Wales has the unique opportunity to utilise the expertise of both Wrexham Glyndwr and Bangor Universities to establish itself as the UK's leading region for the development of Green Hydrogen Energy.

This opportunity will create a new advanced world-class industry and high-skilled, well-paid jobs in North Wales.