A UK green business entrepreneur has partnered with a multi-family investment firm to launch an ambitious hydrogen fund.

Hydrogen economy sees capital boost
Heir to the JCB fortune, Jo Bamford, has partnered with multi-family office Vedra Partners to launch HYCAP, a hydrogen investment fund.
 
The fund, which has £200 million committed from a first investment round and around 40 firms already earmarked, will primarily focus on UK firms and speeding up green hydrogen production and supply.
 
Bamford believes the sector will need a £1 billion injection to help it compete with other regions.

“The UK has missed the boat on batteries, a sector dominated by China and the Far East, but we can be global leaders in the production and supply of hydrogen - an economy said to be worth $2.5 trillion in revenues by 2050,” he said.

The fund is being launched at a time of renewed interest in hydrogen, including a pledge by the UK government to have 5GWs of low-carbon hydrogen in production by 2030.

Hydrogen has been hailed as a potential green energy panacea for decades, thwarted in this promise by production that is largely still powered by fossil fuels. But interest is beginning to soar again as governments look for all available solutions to slashing emissions.

Last month, Business & Energy Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng launched consultations to boost the UK’s hydrogen prospects, with the goal of creating 9,000 UK jobs and channelling £4 billion of investment into the sector by 2030.

In another policy pledge, the government is consulting on designing a £240 million net-zero hydrogen fund to support new low-carbon hydrogen production plants across the UK. It says the approach will follow that of offshore wind, where early government wholesale price-protection incentives along with private sector backing helped to quickly boost offshore wind capacity.

Vedra Partners' founder Max Gottschalk said the HYCAP fund will be investing across the entire hydrogen value chain, focusing on production, manufacture and supply.