One of the main stands at Innovation Zero 2024 show in Olympia, London recently was the impressive Humber Pavilion. Each of the separate stands was very well designed with passionate and articulate representatives at each one.

The context for this is that the Innovation Zero is the UK’s largest event to accelerate business action towards net zero commitments, and one its most ambitious participants is the Humber 2030 Vision.

The Humber is a large tidal estuary on the east coast of Northern England and is home to one of the UK’s most important and thriving energy and industrial hubs. With climate change now being more of a pressing emergency than ever, the UK can’t reach its Net Zero commitments without the decarbonisation of the Humber Estuary. It’s a hugely ambitious project but is well under way.

C02 has to be removed from a variety of industries like power generation, steelmaking, concrete, chemicals and oil refining.  Businesses are working together to make this happen and are pledging billions in investment to reach a fundamental change in productivity and create thousands of jobs for the area.  These are some of the industries who are involved in these unprecedented decarbonising projects: Drax, Equinor, SSE Thermal, National Grid, Gigastack, Centrica.

Here’s a link to a great website connected to the project: https://investhumber.com/

Most of the stories Global Positive covers are small scale activities, but this is on a monumental scale  – as is the ambition of making real changes for a whole region as big and industrially vital as the Humber. Here are a few facts and figures from the site to get you thinking:

• 80,000 people are employed in manufacturing in the Humber.
• Decarbonising the Humber will safeguard 1 in 10 existing jobs in the region and provide thousands of new jobs.
• 80% of the UK’s licensed CO2 storage capacity is accessible from the Humber.
• 35% of the total UK offshore wind capacity operating today from the Humber.
• The Humber is home to eight offshore wind farms including the world’s largest.
• The Humber will be able to produce half of the UK’s renewable electricity, enough to power 25 million homes.