Leading the post-industrial revolution? Policy windows, issue linkage and decarbonization dynamics in the UK’s net-zero strategy (2010–2022)

Abstract

Industrial decarbonization and the net-zero climate strategy has arisen as one of the most important policy challenges of the modern era. But how do industrial decarbonization policy efforts link with other issues? The UK claims to be the first major economy in the world to posit a net-zero target. In this paper, drawn from an original qualitative dataset involving expert interviews (N = 46), site visits (N = 20), and a review of the literature, we explore ongoing policy windows and efforts to decarbonize both the Humber and Merseyside. These regions have aggressive implementation plans in place for the deployment of net-zero infrastructure, with Zero Carbon Humber and HyNet seeking billions of dollars of investment to build green and blue hydrogen facilities coupled with carbon storage networks. These two clusters are leading national net-zero ambitions, with actual, enforceable timetables to achieve decarbonization. Investigating the unfolding efforts being undertaken by these two regions to decarbonize industry offers insight into the “green gold rush” and nascent business opportunities in the so-called carbon economy, including large-scale investment of capital into the policies nominally designed to tackle climate change. Through the identification of 24 different issues linked to decarbonization, the paper also offers more conceptual depth into the interplay between policy windows and issue linkage, which coevolve and shape each other as net-zero ambitions solidify.

1. Introduction

Reaching “net zero” for climate change is becoming one of the most salient economic and political challenges of the modern era. Net zero is more challenging than just trying to mitigate climate change, or even reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 50% or 80% (National Audit Office, 2020). Instead, realizing net zero means decarbonizing all parts of the economy in addition to reducing emissions significantly (Davis et al., 2018; Dubois et al., 2019; International Energy Agency, 2021). In a very small number of sectors, such as electricity or buildings, pathways to net zero may be well understood and even cost-effective, but these are the exceptions, not the norm.

A key part of addressing the net-zero challenge is industrial decarbonization. As Langley et al. (2021: 495) write, “rapid and far-reaching transitions in … industrial systems are clearly necessary for decarbonizing economy and society.” Industry stands out as particularly difficult to decarbonize. The global industrial sector accounted for 38% of total final energy use in 2020 (International Energy Agency, 2022). Moreover, industry is the fastest-growing sector of carbon dioxide emissions, as well as the single largest source of global greenhouse emissions (more than one-third) when one accounts for related electricity consumption and heat generation (IPCC, 2022).

Net-zero commitments since 2019 have begun to challenge the carbon intensity of these various industries, leading to increasing policy interest in industrial decarbonization in recent years (International Energy Agency, 2021). Nevertheless, progress in decarbonizing industry has been phlegmatic (International Energy Agency, 2022). Despite its critical importance to global climate stability, industry has long been sheltered for the past decade from strong energy and climate policies over concerns about job losses, national competitiveness, and carbon leakage.

Against this backdrop, the UK has emerged as perhaps an unexpected leader in industrial decarbonization efforts. According to the government (HM Government, 2021a: 3), the UK is “the first major economy to legislate an ambitious net zero target and … are taking a leading role globally in the fight against climate change.” The UK is actively pursuing low-carbon industrial clusters by 2035 and net-zero industry as soon as 2040, supported both by law (the Climate Change Act of 2008 and its amendments in 2019) and the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. The Fund has 23 challenges and is backed by £2.6 billion of public money, with £3 billion in matched funding from the private sector (UKRI, 2022). Their approach to net-zero industry is based on clusters, which cut across engineering, spatial, and socio-political dimensions (Sovacool et al., 2022). For example, in the UK as a whole, six specific clusters account for more than 50% of direct carbon emissions from industry (HM Government, 2021a). Two of the largest of these clusters in terms of industrial emissions are the Humber (12.5 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year) and Merseyside (6.3 million tons of CO₂ equivalent). These clusters play instrumental roles in community wellbeing and economic activity, with industry contributing some £170 billion to the national economy, and providing (according to official government numbers) as many as 7.6 million direct and indirect jobs across the industrial value chain (HM Government, 2021a).

Much work on industrial decarbonization focuses on the technologies or policies needed to mitigate carbon emissions in various industry supply chains, or on new technical innovations in resource efficiency, processing, manufacturing, or refrigeration that can assist industry in decarbonizing (AbdulRafiu et al., 2022). Far less work has looked at the different political coalitions behind decarbonization, especially work that goes beyond the oil and gas industry (e.g., Green et al., 2022), or the strategies and possible linkages to other issues that may make net-zero policies more, or less, politically feasible (Cha and Pastor, 2022). This gap is important to address, given that political effectiveness is a critical component of the implementation of any decarbonization policy or pathway (Tozer, 2020). Rosenbloom and Meadowcroft (2014) add that while much research emphasizes the sociotechnical processes of system change, political dimensions have been far less investigated.

In this paper, we ask three interlinked questions: What are the actor coalitions supporting industrial decarbonization, what policy windows are they taking advantage of, and how have industrial decarbonization policy efforts become linked to other issues? In answering these questions, the paper explores how industrial decarbonization becomes linked to different political (and non-political) issues in England and Wales via a cross-case comparison. Both regions have aggressive implementation plans in place for the deployment of net-zero infrastructure, with Zero Carbon Humber (in the Humber) and HyNet (in Merseyside) seeking billions of dollars of investment to build green and blue hydrogen facilities coupled with hydrogen and carbon transportation and storage networks. These two clusters are leading national net-zero ambitious, with actual, enforceable timetables to achieve decarbonization.

In embarking on this path, the paper aims to advance conceptual, empirical, and policy-relevant findings. At the conceptual level, we examine the interplay between policy windows, decarbonization, and issue linkage, which coevolve and shape each other as net-zero ambitions solidify. At the empirical level, investigating the unfolding efforts being undertaken by Humber and Merseyside to decarbonize industry offers insight into the “green gold rush” and nascent business opportunities in the so-called low-carbon economy, including large-scale investment of capital designed to tackle climate change (Janković and Bowman, 2014). At the level of policy change, we hope our charting of policy windows and issue linkage offers descriptive data or even inspiration for those seeking to build coalitions to achieve net-zero globally, as well as recommendations for how to improve local and national policy in the UK.

2. Conceptual approach: green policy windows and issue linkage

This section outlines our conceptual approach, and the next section justifies our case study selection and explains our qualitative research design.

2.1 Green policy windows

Policy windows refer most generally to periods in a political or regulatory system when substantial policy change is more likely. Policy development, like technology deployment, can be path dependent, but if policy actors can tap into an emerging window, they can switch the trajectories of institutional development before the window shuts (Aamodt and Stensdal, 2017). This commonly occurs via external events, such as famines, wars, global economic crises or most recently the Covid-19 pandemic (Sunio and Mateo-Babiano, 2022), although they can also be created endogenously and domestically.

“Green” policy windows refer to those windows in the environmental domain seeking to enhance environmental protection or the introduction of clean or more environmentally friendly technologies. Rose et al. (2017) comment that for environmental policy, policy windows arise from the convergence of three separate streams: problems (natural disasters, global conflict, pandemics), policies or proposals (new technologies or policy mixes able to address such problems), and politics (changes in government, political views, or governance). Focusing on wind energy in China, Dai et al. (2020) identify three distinct conditions by which green policy windows can occur: through changes in technology, through changes in user preferences or demand or through changes in institutional regimes. They emphasize that windows vary in scope in terms of their size and may close or open unexpectedly.

Within sustainability transitions and policy studies research, policy windows sit alongside other approaches that seek to explain policy change, including notions of advocacy coalitions as well as Baumgartner’s punctuated equilibrium theory, which was initially honed to explain policymaking in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s (Kern and Rogge, 2018). Policy windows are often discussed within research building on Kingdon’s multiple streams approach, which was utilized to describe the agenda-setting process in fields such as health policy or transportation policy. It seeks to explain how alternative courses of policy come about, and why some issues receive more attention from government; within these multiple streams, policy entrepreneurs can strategically use certain moments (“windows of opportunity”) to merge the three streams in order to achieve policy change (Kern and Rogge; Kingdon, 1995; Zahariadis, 2008, 2014; Cooke, 2011).

2.2 Issue linkage

Conceptions of issue linkage have their genesis in early theories of negotiation as well as political science. The first systematic attempt to understand issue linkage traces back to James Rosenau (1969), who published a volume on Linkage Politics half a century ago, traced the relationship between issues in domestic politics and international politics. Issue linkage is, according to Ali (2003), a substantive means of enlarging the “zone of agreement” between stakeholders deliberating a particular topic.

At its most basic level, an “issue” refers to a single goal that has risen onto a particular decision-making or policy agenda; agreement, or disagreement, in the bargaining process will determine the resolution of that issue. “Issue linkage” thereby refers to the bargaining that involves more than one issue at once (Haas, 1991). Poast (2012: 278) defines issue linkage as “the simultaneous discussion of two or more issues for joint settlement” as well as a “a key instrument by which states secure agreement.” Issue linkage is a frequently utilized negotiation strategy that involves combining issues together in a manner that can tip the balance of power or interest in favor of a negotiated agreement (Davis, 2004: 153). In an industrial context—the focus of this paper—issue linkage can help broaden the “policy space” that helps connect industrial topics with a more extensive political agenda including finance and innovation policy, free trade, state procurement, and public investment (Pianta et al., 2020).

The literature on negotiation, international relations, and political science posits multiple advantages to issue linkage theory. In a classic work, Haas (1980) writes about how issue linkage can expand the knowledge domain and learning of policymakers into broader, multiple areas—the linking acts as a form of knowledge transfer that builds the intellectual capacity of actors. Interests are shaped by consensual knowledge, and issue linkage helps overcome fragmented linkage or expertise rooted in only one issue. Haas (1980) also argues that issue linkage offers politicians a way to maintain the cohesion of a coalition—a sort of community of issues rather than a community of place or political party. Davis (2004) has argued that issue linkage takes more time and thus gives more stakeholders time to “come around” and reach consensus—encouraging broader participation, and helping minimize obstructionist forces such as parochialism or protectionism. Issue linkage can also create a more visible public focal point that sends a signal to democratic groups about what is on the table for the formal agenda for negotiation. Cross-sectoral linkage in particular (e.g., linking farming policy to other topics like the environment or health) can increase negotiation stakes, and make it politically possible to override the protests of powerful lobbies (Davis, 2004). Poast (2012) believes that issue linkage can simultaneously address three problems in negotiation and policymaking, enabling better distribution of preferences, better enforcement of norms, and better representation of perspectives across diverse parties. McKibben (2010, 2013) adds that when linked issues are valued differently by opposing stakeholders, linkage creates a possibility for mutually beneficial exchange of concessions; this can be effective at constraining outliers as well, whenever unreasonable negotiators or state actors yield power in unfavorable ways.

According to Haas (1991), three different types of linkage exist. Tactical linkage refers to when issues are linked to no intellectually coherent manner (i.e., the linking of unrelated or unconnected topics), but are done so to win over public favor or provide positive inducement or create compromise where it would not otherwise be possible. An example here would be linking salmon recovery with say funding for public schools on a spending appropriations statute in order to appease two critical votes on a bill. The goal of tactical linkage is to extract a concession not obtainable if political debate remains confined to a single issue. Other tactical linkages include side-payments and package deals, elements of political “horse-trading.” Substantive linkages are the opposite, and result from intellectual coherence and evident synergies between the topics being linked. An example here is linking patent acquisition, foreign investment, and the construction of factories all under the issue of “technology transfer.” Finally, fragmented issue linkage is said to occur when bargaining demands that actors maintain cohesive coalitions when confronting a mismatch between knowledge and interest; each coalition is held together by a commitment to some particular goal, even if individual actors disagree about how to attain it. Under this form of linkage, uncertainty about outcomes is the “glue” that holds coalitions together, even though it leads to the most volatile, and changeable, forms of linkage. The goal of all three types of linkage—tactical, substantive, and fragmented—is to reach a “win-set” where the entire package of issues is effectively incorporated into policy and agreed upon. In general, having a larger win-set implies one needs not only to involve more groups and include more issues, but it also may make it more difficult to satisfy all stakeholders. A larger basket of interests implies a larger number of issues that call for linkage to become acceptable. As Ali (2003) adds: substantive issue linkage refers to when improved knowledge enables a basis for connection and a stable issue area, often resulting in consensus; tactical issue linkage is more symbolic, not truly meant to reach genuine change, but perhaps offering greater political acceptability; and fragmented issue linkage occurs when knowledge is not sufficiently agreed upon, or is incomplete, leading to dissensus.

2.3 Combining green policy windows with issue linkage

In sum, the efficacy of any given linkage depends on the type of issues being linked, as well as the specific topic and the actors involved. To advance these approaches, we connect green policy windows with issue linkage, and we build on and extend a typology of issue linkage consisting of orientation (implicit vs. explicit), strategy (tactical vs. substantive), existing knowledge, and goals.

Conventional issue linkage discussions focus mostly on the international stage, and on tit-for-tat, horse trading, or quid pro quo relationships. In Figure 1, we posit a framework to examine how domestic entities link issues to industrial decarbonization where the key actors are politicians and experts but also business leaders and community groups. Moreover, issue linkage here can be mutually beneficial, rather than zero sum. We broaden both the scope of political analysis (national and subnational) and the range of actors and issues involved. Whereas much previous issue linkage work has been applied to non-environmental issues, we apply it to the very modern challenge of net-zero and low-carbon industry. Whereas most previous work has been quantitative, we explore it qualitatively with a rich and original dataset derived from expert interviews.

We will explore the specific issues linked to decarbonization in a UK context, and the conditions that move toward the most effective quadrant of the typology, analytical decision-making with resultant substantive issue linkage. In other parts of the diagram, knowledge within this complex system can also remain myopic or stable, specific or expansive. We will return to the goals evident within our policy windows, issues, and decarbonization projects in Section 4.

In the further sections, we explore the evolution of policy windows in the UK related to climate policy and net-zero targets, and we also showcase early mover dilemmas and a coupling to domestic issue linkage. More importantly, the policy window concept is specifically linked to policy trajectories and lock-ins, and to salient issue-frames that seemingly matter to actor coalitions. Harnessing both concepts together not only reveals the policies behind net-zero action in the UK, but also politics and the constellation of political interests involved in shaping it. It showcases a broadening out of the net-zero issue, often framed primarily in energy security or climate change terms, into other areas such as economic policy (jobs), leveling up (poverty reduction), industrial strategy (competitiveness), and even rural development and health.

3. Research design: case-study selection and data collection

To examine policy windows, issue linkage and goals connected to industrial decarbonization, we chose two industrial clusters to examine in closer detail in the UK.

3.1 Case-study selection

We selected the Humber because it is the largest industrial region in the country, home to £52 billion in gross value-added economic activity along with 600,000 jobs (Drax, 2019). The Humber region spans more than 100 km from Bradford to the Humber Estuary, and it includes a robust mix of different industrial emission sources including Scunthorpe (the largest steel plant in the country) along with the largest biomass power plant (Drax), a large chemicals park (Saltend), and two refineries (Lindsey and the Humber). The region has a long history of supporting innovative energy technologies and decarbonization, with the White Rose carbon capture and storage project proposed more than a decade ago (Ecofys, 2017). The Top Panel of Figure 2 visualizes Zero Carbon Humber’s emphasis on multiple locations and technologies for net-zero industry, with the dotted line for carbon storage indicating a strong coupling and connection to the East Coast Industrial Cluster and carbon storage via the Northern Endurance Partnership. At a projected total cost (as of 2022) of £59.2 billion, Zero Carbon Humber will employ carbon capture usage and storage and low carbon hydrogen to enable net-zero industry by 2035, with the first stage focusing on carbon transport and storage to gas reservoirs and saline aquifers in the North Sea (Ember, 2021; Zero Carbon Humber, 2021b).

Merseyside, by contrast, is not only smaller than Humber but it also has a diversity of industrial centers of activity including chemicals, food and beverages, fertilizers, glass, oil refining, and many other high-temperature operations (Ecofys, 2017). The HyNet Northwest project (visualized in the bottom panel of Figure 2) seeks to utilize carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, and fuel switching to decarbonize the area. The eventual plan is to blend hydrogen with natural gas for supply to homes and even vehicles. The idea for HyNet dates back to at least 2017, when a report by incumbent gas supplier Cadent and a new energy company Progressive Energy pushed a concerted effort to endorse hydrogen. In tandem with this report, the incumbent Northern Gas Networks was pushing a plan to bring hydrogen to Leeds known as H21. Conceived as a hydrogen and carbon capture project to provide a decarbonization pathway in the North West, HyNet seeks a total of £46.8 billion to provide the infrastructure to transport and store the carbon dioxide produced as a byproduct of the hydrogen production process in Liverpool Bay and the Irish Sea via North Wales (Amion Consulting, 2022; HyNet Northwest, 2022). Edwards et al. (2022) add that HyNet is integrated with other regional hydrogen projects including Project Vanguard (the first green hydrogen fueling station in the Northwest); Project Centurion (a 100 MW Power to Gas energy storage system); HySecure (a demonstration hydrogen salt storage project); HyDeploy (the piloting of homes using hydrogen-gas blends); and the Liverpool Hydrogen Bus Trial Project (which features 25 hydrogen buses).

3.2 Qualitative research design

With our two regions and projects selected, we embarked on a research design involving original data collection via interviews and multiple site visits, coupled with an analysis of available documents and policy and industrial roadmaps.

Semi-structured expert interviews were conducted with 46 expert respondents over the course of February to June 2022 (see Table 1). To ensure the credibility of our knowledge base, our recruitment and sampling of experts was triangulated based on the following criteria. We aimed firstly for a diversity of stances (advocative or critical positionings), disciplines (technical and engineering sciences, economics, environmental and climate science, social sciences, and humanities), sectors (research, technology development, government and policy, and NGO), and expertise on the technologies in question (renewable energy, energy efficiency, hydrogen, carbon capture, and storage). We intentionally sought to include not only a diverse range of perspectives from industry (who dominate our sample, given the topic) but also national government and policymakers, local authorities, and members of academia. Within industry, we were able to secure interviews with some of the most prominent actors in each industrial megaproject, including all lead institutions.

 Annex I shows our complete interview guide, with some interviews focusing on context and high-level policy issues, and others more narrowly focused on specific project management relating to each industrial cluster. Questions generally focused on the history and drivers behind each project, expected benefits as well as prospective barriers, as well as implications for policy and lessons learned. Interviews lasted between 30 and 120 min, were recorded, and then fully transcribed. They were then coded by the authors inductively to identify recurring themes and topics. Our interviews were semi-structured, enabling the research team to gauge different topics that emerged with more flexibility and depth. To protect the anonymity of respondents, all specific qualitative data are referred to only by a generic respondent number. Ethics approval for the project was granted by the Social Sciences & Arts C-REC board at the University of Sussex with reference number ER/BS289/6.

To be clear, the research team has published two other studies using some of this qualitative data—Sovacool et al. (2023) employ a Social Construction of Technology analysis to reveal contested frames, and Geels et al. (2023) utilize a megaproject framing that focuses on technologies, actors, and institutions. Neither of these papers, however, utilized policy sciences and public policy approaches such as policy windows or issue linkage. Moreover, this paper is entirely different and relies on framing, key arguments, analysis, and findings that are unique and not published elsewhere.

To triangulate the interviews and match-stated preferences with a type of revealed or observed preferences, members of the research team also conducted a total of 20 site visits. As Figure 3 indicates, this involved seven site visits across the Humber (inclusive of the cities and villages of Easington, Hull, Immingham, and Drax):

1. Saltend Chemicals Park

2. Centrica Gas Compression and Storage Terminal

3. Langeled Pipeline Entry Terminus

4. VPI Immingham Combined Heat and Power Plant Plant

5. Humber Oil Refinery (owned by Philips 66)

6. Lindsay Oil Refinery (owned by Prax, formerly Total)

7. Drax power station

It also involved 13 site visits throughout Merseyside (inclusive of the cities and villages of Liverpool, Manchester, Runcorn, Chester, Ellesmere Port, and Daresbury, as well as Flint in North Wales):

1. Rocksavage Power Plant

2. Viridor Runcorn Energy Recovery Facility (waste to energy)

3. Thorton Science Park

4. Cadent gas compressor station at Northwich

5. Essar refinery at Stanlow

6. Ineos salt and chemicals plant at Weston Point

7. Ineos/Inovyn salt cavern and brinefield at Northwich

8. Storengy salt cavern gas storage at Stublach

9. Uniper Gas Storage at Holford

10. Tata Europe Chemicals facilities at Lostock and Winnington

11. The Protos Energy Facility (which included CF Fertilizers Billingham, ENCRIC Glass, a biomass power plant, an energy from waste facility, and the Frodsham Wind Farm)

12. ENI’s Point of Ayr Terminal in North Wales

13. Uniper’s Connah’s Quay Power Station in North Wales.

The site visits enabled naturalistic observation as well as the documentation of visual evidence (photographs) about operations and onsite industrial practices. In some cases, they also led to further research interviews. Figure 3 shows the immense economic and spatial scale of some of the industrial facilities that need to be decarbonized, as well as the diversity of sites, firms, and technologies involved.

3.3 Coding and thematic analysis

The interviews were semi-structured, meaning that in every interview, all central questions were asked, but depending on answers, not all sub-questions were necessarily asked; these were asked only when relevant and only when they fit into the conversational flow of the interview. The interview schedule was adjusted to ask more specific questions related to particular industrial actors, based on studying available information prior to the interview. This semi-structured approach conforms to standard qualitative research methodology (Longhurst, 2003; McIntosh and Morse, 2015; Newcomer et al., 2015).

All interviews were recorded, fully transcribed, and then coded by the research team. Given that interviews were completed over a 5-month period, blocks of interviews were sent to a professional transcription service as they were completed. Upon being returned, all transcripts were then checked and “cleaned” by the authors. New nodes (and sub-nodes) were iteratively created in order to capture the diverse perspectives of the expert sample, including, for instance, to reflect where different understandings of specific aspects of policies or issue linkage arose. The resulting dataset thus presents a structured coding of the interview data, which can be simultaneously utilized to explore both consensus views across experts and significant differences of opinion or perspective. Analysis was thematic and inductive, with perceptions of policy windows, issues, and other themes (such as scaling, learning, innovation costs, benefits, policies, etc.) coded and recoded iteratively within the research team.

To provide more details about the process, data collection commenced separately from the thematic analysis. That is, all interviews were conducted first, then cleaned and transcribed, and only after that fact did thematic analysis commence. This was intentional, and executed to avoid any possible bias in results toward (or away from) any particular theory or conceptual framework. Only after we completed data collection did the authoring team then undertake a deep, thematic analysis of interview data. Thematic analysis is a form of pattern recognition and classification that identifies core themes through the careful reading, and often rereading and reanalysis, of qualitative or textual data (Fereday and Muir-Cochrane, 2006; Alhojailan, 2012). Like other approaches such as ethnography, phenomenology, and content analysis, thematic analysis seeks to distill meaning from data via the pinpointing, sharpening, recording, and/or evaluation of recurring themes.

Following the guidelines from Javadi and Zarea (2016), the author team implemented an inductive thematic analysis, where the findings were not predetermined toward any particular theory at first, but were instead grounded entirely in emergent themes about policy, politics, and issues within the data itself. This included a phase of (i) recognizing and listing the data (parts of patterns), (ii) combining nascent patterns into themes, which included generating our initial codes and testing the fit of our data with both the policy windows and issue linkage concepts, (iii) searching for themes and recognizing subthemes and sub-patterns, or recurring patterns in the material that cluster together, which resulted in an initial list of 30 interrelated topics, (iv) further synthesizing subthemes into what became a shorter list of consolidated, recurring themes, (v) reviewing and refining our final short list of themes (notably those that emerge in Sections 4.2 and 4.3 as well as Section 5), and finally (vi) formulating results and drafting the analysis.

3.4 Limitations

Notwithstanding our efforts at triangulation across our data sources, some limitations are apparent with our approach. First, we were not able to interview all relevant actors for each project. Moreover, our emphasis on anonymity presents difficulties for the potential replication of our findings, given the issue of correlating the identity of respondents with particular interviewee statements. Secondly, during the interviews, we did not correct or problematize expert statements, so we present the views of participants, even if they may have had misperceptions on specific points about industrial decarbonization or policy. Consequently, the interview data offers a mapping of the current perceptions of experts regarding policy and issues related to the net-zero industry, but such findings are still based on expert opinion and subject to intersubjective interpretation.

Furthermore, in combing through our interview data, respondents spoke about policies and “policy windows” in ways that may conflate the term with other elements of policy agendas or the policymaking process. In simpler terms: our respondents did not always utilize the same conception of policy windows as that present in the literature. Moreover, more themes discussed in Sections 4 and 5 were present. The authors present only 12 issues per project (three for each part of the typology) both for symmetry, and to emphasize the most prominent issues arising from the material. Nevertheless, the issue linkages we present are not meant to be exhaustive or fully representative, only illustrative. Issues in many cases refer to or involve different dimensions of complex socio-technical systems, and many of the issues for HyNet are also relevant for Humber (e.g., standards, coupling with offshore wind, jobs), but we present them as distinct in our analysis below.

4. Results: policy windows and issue linkage in a domestic net-zero context

This section focuses on our results, including a description of the green policy window emerging around net-zero industry in the UK, as well as the application of our conceptual framework on issue linkage across both case studies. We begin with major energy and climate policies implemented since 2010 up until 2022, when we completed our qualitative data collection.

4.1 The emergence of green policy windows and net-zero governance in the UK

Multiple respondents or literature discussed the topic of “windows” in policy within our original data or evidenced meaningful changes in net-zero governance. Table 1 shows the emergence of multiple new policies implemented in the UK related to carbon pricing, demonstration, deployment, or changes in behavior, featured in the country’s Industrial Decarbonization Strategy and summarized in Table 2. On the topic of windows, R17 explained that “usually implementation on a policy issue wont’ happen because as issue has lost its salience,” but “policy windows are not closed” on the topic of industrial decarbonization, they are very much “open” and government actors are spending “non-trivial sums of money.” R38 added that:

The scale and pace of change for delivering net-zero in the UK are very important policy issues right now. Policymakers here recognize the danger of slowing down the scale and pace of the low-carbon transition that we need to get to, to be able to meet that 2050 target. Because we need to in reality, we need to have pretty much got to net zero industry by 2040, we have to show we can tackle the really hard stuff. So there is a window open right now, to decarbonize, and it stretches from now to the very early 2040s.

Indeed, UK policymakers started exploring the challenge with a series of Industrial Decarbonization and Energy Efficiency Roadmaps in 2015, which in 2017 were followed by seven Industrial Decarbonization and Energy Efficiency Action Plans that were jointly developed with industry. These explorations increased confidence and prepared the ground for the 2017 Clean Growth Strategy, which articulated a general sense of direction for industrial decarbonization and highlighted the need to go beyond energy and material efficiency innovations toward fuel switching and CCS.

Subsequently, the government’s 2018 CCS Action Plan not only emphasized an industrial cluster approach to CCS, but also articulated specific targets such as the development of a first CCUS facility by the mid-2020s and deployment at scale during the 2030s. In 2018, policymakers also created the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, which had clean growth as one of its four themes. The Fund, which is backed by £2.6 billion of public money and £3 billion in matched funding from the private sector, enabled industrial firms to engage in more detailed pre-FEED (front end engineering and design) studies of low-carbon technologies (UKRI, 2022).

Policy momentum further increased in 2019, when the UK government enshrined a net-zero emission target in law by amending the 2008 Climate Change Act, and in 2020 when the Prime Minister’s Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution aimed for the production and use of 5GW low-carbon hydrogen by 2030 (mostly from natural gas and CCS) and the deployment of CCS in two industrial clusters by 2025 and four clusters by 2030 (Devine-Wright, 2022).

This was followed by a landmark Industrial Decarbonization Strategy (HM Government, 2021a) published in 2021, which set out a multitude of formal goals. It posited that four of the largest industrial clusters would be linked up to “necessary decarbonization infrastructure” by 2030, and that at least 3 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent of industrial emissions would be captured by that year as well, equivalent to planting 500 million trees. It also spotlighted the role of low-carbon fuels such as electricity, hydrogen, and bioenergy as substitutes for at least 20 TWh of fossil fuel electricity generation, along with “maximum energy, resource, and material efficiency within industry,” the creation of a market for low-carbon materials, approaches to equip workers with new skills, and cooperation with other leading nations committed to industrial decarbonization. In addition to these targets, the Industrial Decarbonization Strategy espoused the four principles of strategy (aligning net-zero with other goals such as clean growth and leveling up), effectiveness (holding industry accountable if remedial action is needed), proportion (placing the burden dually on government and industry), and flexibility (being responsive to changes in technology, society, or markets). Figure 4 features an overview of the Strategy’s technology targets from 2020 to 2050.

The following Net Zero Strategy: Build Back Greener (2021) built on the Ten Points Plan and set out policies for decarbonizing different sectors and a vision for a decarbonized economy in 2050. The UK Hydrogen Strategy (Aug 2021, updated July 2022) specifically outlined a comprehensive roadmap for the development of the hydrogen economy: how the UK can rapidly and significantly scale up production and lay the foundations for a low carbon hydrogen economy by 2030, and how to capture the economic benefits of growing the UK hydrogen economy, i.e., the government support for innovation and investment.

To support the real-world deployment of these technologies, policymakers also introduced a £240 million Net Zero Hydrogen Fund that aims to support the commercial deployment of new low carbon hydrogen production projects during the 2020s, and a £1 billion CCS Infrastructure Fund, which were implemented through a cluster sequencing strategy in which cluster-based partnerships could first apply for funding for transport and storage pipelines and infrastructures, and in a second phase for funding for CO₂ capture installations, hydrogen production, and fuel switching. The Hydrogen investor roadmap published in April 2022 provides a comprehensive summary of the UK government’s low-carbon hydrogen economy and aims to provide certainty to unlock private investments. It reflects the increase in the UK’s hydrogen ambition, which was doubled to 10GW of low carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030, with at least half of this to be from electrolytic “green” hydrogen.

Building on and in many instances connecting with these changes, the government implemented policies in broader areas that also aligned with net-zero goals, notably policies focused on industrial strategy, skills, innovation, leveling up, and building back better following the Covid-19 pandemic. The National Infrastructure Strategy was published in 2020, committing the government to make major investments in infrastructure and launching the UK Infrastructure Bank (HM Government, 2020). They published a Skills for Jobs White Paper in 2021, introducing reforms to further education and skills to enable people to get good jobs and improve national productivity (HM Government, 2021b). In March 2021, the government announced its “Build Back Better” plan for growth, with a swathe of funding mechanisms and goals shown in Table 3, all attempting to reduce the greatest fall in annual GDP the UK suffered in 300 years, due to the Covid-19 pandemic and associated restrictions (HM Government, 2021c). The government also published in July 2021 an Innovation Strategy aiming to make the UK a global hub for innovation by 2035 (Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, 2021).

A series of additional changes altered the governance structure for decarbonization and net-zero itself within UK institutions. In 2019, the government restructured its net-zero tasks into a single Climate Action Strategy Committee chaired by the Prime Minister as well as a Climate Change National Strategy Implementation Group and a Net Zero Steering Board (see Figure 5), with high-level government representatives. These entities all seek to minimize fragmentation and coordinate actions between departments responsible (separately) for the environment, transport, energy, housing, treasury, and the Cabinet Office. Such coordination aims to generate a sense of collective ownership, rather than a single central body, concerning responsibility, and levers to implement net-zero.

Such national-level policies and plans have been buttressed by a wave of more local policies at the level of cities, local enterprise partnerships, and regions. In Western England, for example, the Cheshire and Warrington Local Enterprise Partnership have an Energy and Clean Growth Strategy aiming to deploy hydrogen power and heating systems at scale by 2040; similarly, Cheshire West and Cheshire Council have a cross-party task force to plan for net-zero implementation (Edwards et al., 2022). The cities of Liverpool and Manchester also have enforceable carbon neutral strategies. In Eastern England, the City of Hull has a net-zero target for 2050. In Wales, Zero 2050 South Wales is being implemented, and Scotland has its Net Zero Nation initiative, which is targeting a net-zero economy by 2040.

The implication of both policy windows and multi-level governance arrangements is that a rare cross-party consensus exists on net-zero policy, one with credibility at multiple policy scales: local authorities, local enterprise partnerships, members of parliament, and those in Westminster. R01 spoke about this alignment, noting that:

The UK has invested considerable political resources in setting up a regulatory environment, with the right funding. That is to say why the UK spent a long time developing business models to demonstrate how you can fund net-zero in the absence of an international carbon price. You basically need industry to start this process because many industries only have certain opportunities for deploying kit when it’s related to overhauls or maintenance. And we haven’t got a massive amount of time left to 2050 to start installing the equipment.

R011 concurred when they noted that:

Everyone is committed to net-zero industry and it’s a race to see who wants to go first, the only question is who that will be … usually you hear that the political nature of net zero projects is always a risk, but here in the UK we don’t hear any real opposition. Even if there was a significant change, and the government goes from Tories to Labor, everyone is still on board. There is a cross party coalition in favor of net-zero and a big enabler of net zero goals … everyone is working towards this.

Analogously, R05 spoke about how:

Everybody rallies behind large industrial projects like this. Scholars talk about it as the technological sublime, who can make the fastest airplane, longest bridge, or deepest tunnel. It helps that there is lots of money to be made, enough in the billions. It not just about pride and politics. It’s a about unions and the labor market, and recognition of a political ambition to do something beautiful.

R018 agreed and noted that unlike other policy areas, “there is a political will to work together in a collaborative way.”

4.2 Issue linkage and policy goals in the Zero Carbon Humber Cluster

Although political consensus and green policy windows create a macro-environment conducive to industrial decarbonization, each of our projects still exhibit differentiated policy goals and issue linkages.

Zero Carbon Humber is seeking to respond to local and regional policy goals. Zero Carbon Humber is committed to further benefitting local industries, especially Drax, Sculthorpe steel, Philips 66, and the Lindsey Oil Refinery. A part of this goal is not only maintaining industrial jobs and employment but growing them considerably by mid-century. Zero Carbon Humber reflects an appreciation of the region’s legacy of industrial development. Zero Carbon Humber is promoting new social norms about decarbonization through media campaigns such as “Oh Yes Net Zero” and training efforts at local universities (such as the University of Hull) and via apprenticeships.

Furthermore, Zero Carbon Humber has become linked to the 12 distinct issues shown in Figure 6. The bottom left of the diagram shows those issues more certain and more directly related to industrial decarbonization (e.g., more fragmented or narrow issue linkage), such as validating a commitment to net-zero industry, helping the country meet its legal carbon budgets, and developing technical innovation for hydrogen and carbon capture. R013 articulated this best when they noted that:

Zero Carbon Humber is a very credible proposition, predicated on policy and subsidy decisions in Whitehall. The momentum is there, the finance is there, the catalectic finance to put the kit on the ground is there, we have investors getting in touch with us asking to invest up to billions in the Humber, and we have to tell them no, we already have enough funding. This all adds to the credibility of Zero Carbon Humber being a feasible way to deliver net zero.

R018 agreed that “They’ve got the financing, nobody talks about finance as if it’s a problem.” R017 added that Zero Carbon Humber was reshaping business models to no longer be about point sources of carbon, but erecting “innovation new networks, almost an ecosystem for innovation in hydrogen and carbon capture.”

The upper left of Figure 6 shows issues still related to industrial decarbonization, but more uncertain. One of these is whether the Humber has sufficient storage capacity for hydrogen or carbon. R01 put this issue as follows:

Principally when you develop a transport and storage network, especially the ones that are looking at putting millions of tons of CO₂ underground, you have to outline where would be your geological storage site, and there are limits to how much you can inject at any one time. You are going to get different cluster forming. For example, as you have with Zero Carbon Humber, if you think that there are too many emitters that want to join one network, you will then look at your own network, because then you will take it in your own hands, you are in control of that process rather than having to compete with lots of other emitters. Humberside is probably the best example where they have massive amounts of potential CO₂, the emissions that could be captured and where people would want to continue doing business and bring those amounts of CO₂ and stores online in the pipes online and all that is a massive effort. But there may simply not be enough capacity in the pipelines to transport or handle it all.

Multiple respondents (R01, R02, R03, R04, R07, R09, R11, R13, R14, R15, R25, R27, R30, R37, and R46) spoke about the issue of the viability of final investment decisions in lieu of competing projects also within the Humber, such as “Humber Zero” (not the same as Zero Carbon Humber), “V-Net-Zero” (not the same), or Northern Endurance (not the same, although it could be coupled with Zero Carbon Humber). A third issue was what R13 identified as the “three Ps,” or potential barriers of “people, policies, and profitability,” especially whether social acceptance could be guaranteed; whether planning and policies would be in place in time; and whether once the project was built it would actually be profitable. R13 suggested that due to these three Ps, which could derail the project, “all bets are off” as to whether it would occur.

The bottom right of Figure 6 depicts issues more certain but beyond industrial decarbonization, i.e., broader and more substantive issue linkage. This includes the creation of local jobs and “leveling up” the entire Humber region to minimize national economic disparities, as well as improving the future energy and economic security for the entire region. As R30 put it:

The issue is if we don’t decarbonize at some point our industries are not going to be competitive particularly in some of the large markets. We’re not going to be able to keep those jobs and those skills around.

R13 framed this as a “reversal of offshoring,” arguing that:

Although Zero Carbon Humber started as a climate project, it suddenly became a broader issue. People began to see the element of competitiveness brought into the equation … one can sell the ability for people to invest in this region, tackle net-zero aspirations. It’s a reversal of what we’ve done for many years, reduced c02 emissions by offshoring manufacturing. Industrial clusters and freeports can even export greener products … there is real value capture in terms of offering a price premium for green products. Britain could be the new leader for green steel, green chemicals, green consumer items.

A related issue was enhancing the legitimacy of the UK on global climate policy—a broader domain than only industrial decarbonization. R23 said that:

With Zero Carbon Humber, the UK is seen in the vanguard of measures to tackle climate change. “Oh it’s us here now, out in front here now” … What we’re seeing manifest is people getting in touch with us from around the world, wanting to know how it’s happening, leveraging knowledge and kudos and expertise. The UK can sell the expertise, skills, and experience to others who want to follow our leadership.

Finally, in the upper right of Figure 6, we see issues beyond industrial decarbonization, but more uncertain. One of these was the extent to which the UK’s strategy of using blue hydrogen, which depends on natural gas, would be compatible with other European climate agendas, based on renewable energy or green hydrogen. R011 spoke about how “the UK government, as opposed to some governments, is in favor of and betting on blue hydrogen, unlike Europe, which is generally against blue hydrogen.” R012 added that “greening the power is the enabler of greening the industrial cluster, and Zero Carbon Humber does nothing to lower the global carbon footprint of the Humber or get it off fossil fuels or natural gas.” In order to work, the issue of Carbon Border Adjustments may need to be resolved. And yet, R29 cautioned that “for Zero Carbon Humber to be a success, you need a strong, enforced international agreement on low-carbon products in the long run. Otherwise, in the current way of doing economics, the low-carbon products just look more expensive.” A final issue mentioned by R04, R10, and R40 was whether there would be sufficient global market demand for English products being made from the Humber.

4.3 Issue linkage and policy goals in the HyNet Northwest Cluster

Various policy goals are at play within HyNet, although not identical to those in Zero Carbon Humber. HyNet places a greater focus on retaining jobs, keeping existing firms open, and protecting Ineos (a global chemicals firm), which R20 called “more powerful, more important than government” to the area. Like the Humber, HyNet is rooted in the acceptance of the legacy of industrial development. Social norms for net-zero are buttressed by city policies (Liverpool, Manchester), Local Enterprise Partnership agendas, as well as the regional Northwest plan for decarbonization. HyNet’s ability to revitalize the Essar oil refinery, and generate future markets for low-carbon chemicals, is a strong local goal. Similar to Zero Carbon Humber, HyNet showcases the regional leadership of Merseyside, and what R24 called a “if we can do it here, we can do it anywhere in UK” mentality (rather than a global showcasing of leadership). Similar to Zero Carbon Humber, it seeks to demonstrate competence through the enhancement of skills and capabilities.

As Figure 7 depicts, there are some overlaps between issues as well, although also some striking divergence from the Humber. In the bottom left, we have the same three more certain and specific to industrial decarbonization issues that Zero Carbon Humber faces. Multiple respondents (R16, R18, R20, R22, R23, and R43) spoke about how HyNet enshrined the national government’s commitment to develop net-zero industry and meet carbon budgets. R20 even expanded how this is seen as “the law” that every corporate actor must obey:

The sheer scale of the proposition for HyNet is ambitious, but there is a very English dimension to this as well. Most other countries do not have the financial institutions nor the carbon budgets, the net-zero legislation, which is a core driver. Don’t get me wrong, the industry around here wants this to happen … they are committed to net-zero and the energy transition. But this is because it’s the law they have to be carbon zero by 2050, to meet the fifth carbon budget … if not, it is bye bye industry, bye bye jobs.

R02 expanded upon how a multi-actor coalition has emerged in favor of HyNet, but also one deeply in favor of the issue of accelerating technical innovation for hydrogen:

In the past few years there has been a real coming together … in the Northwest region to bring lots of different partners together to build that common narrative around net-zero industry … With fracking, there was a tension between local and regional government, and national government, there was a national push which wasn’t supported by local governments. What’s different with this is you have the support from the mayors, the members of parliament, the local authorities that aligns with the government’s push. All of these actors promote innovation and support the idea of a hydrogen network.

However, in the upper left of Figure 7, which illustrates more uncertain issues with industrial decarbonization, three new items emerge that are different than the Humber. One relates to social acceptance, especially concerning rights of way over carbon or hydrogen pipelines and infrastructure. R20 spoke about how “anything with a stack on it, or a pipe going into it, people are going to be concerned about, and increases in vehicle movement and traffic, new infrastructure, it becomes very easy for people in the public to perceive that to be scary, or unneeded.” R02 added social acceptance was also more difficult, and problematic for blue hydrogen, rather than green hydrogen, given opposition from NGOs and a history of distrust over previous efforts of fracking, all of which engenders ample “skepticism from local greens.” Standards for hydrogen and carbon capture and storage are another uncertain issue, one that R02 even called “the burning issue”:

Widespread frustration exists within HyNet particularly around hydrogen regulation, we don’t have enough policy steer on that still, also some frustration around different levels of regulation for pipelines for CO₂ compared to natural gas pipelines, which are treated very differently. The UK has been shipping natural gas around for years and years, regulation haven’t evolved that much, and now HyNet is trying to put new substances in, it’s a whole new different set of hoops to jump through, than were in place before. So there are some challenges around working through the regulatory side, the details are not there, no policy framework is in place … that is the burning question, nobody really knows when or how things go through Parliament, or how fast government can move things along.

R014 also commented that “no regulator for hydrogen storage exists yet in the UK, making licensing, planning and consents difficult” and that the “Oil and Gas Authority cannot tell us about the criteria, even though we need this as soon as possible.” A final issue of uncertainty was the extent to which HyNet would at a later date provide green hydrogen, or be coupled with renewables. As R20 said, building a Tidal Lagoon on the river Mersey is “a fabulous proposition” as it “provides the region with an opportunity with significant green hydrogen, and links into salt caverns,” but it is “difficult” to determine if this will ever occur. Other respondents (R02, R13, and R40) spoke about potential, but still indeterminate, couplings to offshore wind or even solar energy.

The bottom right of Figure 7 shows more certain issues that extend beyond industrial decarbonization, including the creation and maintenance of local jobs. This issue is part of the national leveling up agenda, but with HyNet is more about North Wales, and more about maintaining existing infrastructure, such as keeping the Essar oil refinery and chemical industries open if not thriving. R20 put it as follows:

Essar, Ineos, and Tata are huge employers in the area. HyNet is in part a recognition that keeping them there is a good thing, there is a broad buy in for decarbonization which supports that.

R05 agreed and said that fundamental issues behind projects such as HyNet were “keeping industry alive.” R023 added that HyNet was also seen as a mechanism for the region to “further help unlock a significant amount of future industrial investment … HyNet is critical for Essar, ENCIRC, and CF Fertilizers to being able to decarbonize in the short term.” Other respondents (R27, R32, and R36) spoke about how HyNet augmented the legitimacy of Merseyside on regional climate policy, offering a model for other clusters (such as South Wales or Grangemouth in Scotland) to learn from and follow. R020 even suggested that “HyNet North West is the UK’s leading hydrogen and carbon capture project.” Net Zero North West (2022) notes the political (and economic) promise of lifting up the region with £285 billion in gross value added via the project, providing “social uplift,” as well as developing a prospective workforce of 660,000 new and existing jobs across the North West, which would also have bragging rights as the “UK’s first net zero region by 2040.”

Finally, the upper right of Figure 7 depicts issues more uncertain but broader than industrial decarbonization. One of these was the extent to which HyNet could link Western England with Ireland, given, as R10 noted, they are already linked via offshore wind farms and oil and gas production in the Irish Sea. R19 spoke about how:

HyNet, at the moment, is very much focused on delivering this region but we are thinking bigger. We already have very vague but growing plans on a western mega cluster which looks up to Cumbria, across Lancashire, and even out to Ireland … yes, hydrogen out to Ireland, there’re pipelines that run across. So we are thinking bigger, that is obviously further into the future. By expanding that network up and looking at alternative places to produce hydrogen.

Interoperability is another issue, especially if the entire region develops into a hydrogen economy or an integrated carbon storage network. R37 questioned whether “are going to end up with a system that integrates, we need to make sure that actually when we come to plug the two things together they match and we don’t end up with the square pipe one end and a round pipe the other, for example, a completely bizarre system that only emerged in fragmented ways.” The ability to retain industry was a final uncertainty, with R30 commenting that plans could backfire and risk offshoring and losing industry: “if we put too much pressure on industry to decarbonize and it’s too expensive, and therefore they’re no longer competitive on an international market, simply they’ll move their organizations elsewhere.”

5. Discussion and policy implications

Zero Carbon Humber and HyNet are linked to a multitude of issues and grounded in variegated policy goals. This shows firstly that finance, policy, and technology are mutually shaping and co-evolving; assumptions about low-carbon technology attract finance and correlate with the carbon reduction ambitions of the Committee on Climate Change. Furthermore, the two cases of Zero Carbon Humber and HyNet illustrate that a cluster approach to decarbonization can work for different clusters, i.e., can be adapted to scale, regional circumstances, and different political constituents. Both clusters aim to contribute to a net-zero economy, and both depend on government support and funding for decarbonization. They face the same challenges but demonstrate that there could be different solutions in terms of how to address them (e.g., different local and regional policy goals).

Consequently, there is a need to sort out the principles of government support and business models, so that the clusters and industry actors within would adapt them to regional circumstances. Although both Zero Carbon Humber and HyNet are using similar technical means (hydrogen, carbon capture) to harness innovation, labor, governance, and finance for net-zero industry, pathways are beginning to separate, and different issues are being actively linked. If decarbonization projects in both clusters are successfully implemented, or at least progressing, such issue linkage could very well offer lessons for other clusters in the UK and beyond.

Our study also reveals a degree of uncertainty about the future development of both projects, given they are at nascent stages of development, with few policy outcomes or deliverables apparent in late 2022, when our analysis ends. Whether these specific projects will deliver hydrogen and carbon storage effectively has great unknowns. Some of these even permeate the 24 specific issue linkages identified, including uncertainty over hydrogen or carbon network standards; uncertainty over the viability of market demand for low-carbon products; uncertainty concerning social acceptance; and uncertainty over more immediate final investment decisions.

Although both projects respond to local and national policy pressures for decarbonization, they are already illustrating divergence. As Figure 8 visualizes, Zero Carbon Humber is more myopic and uncertain, given potential competition from other projects within the cluster such as V-Net Zero and Humber Zero. Zero Carbon Huber also possesses a more expansive set of goals, including the international interests of Norway and Equinor, and a focus on the expansion of jobs. HyNet, by contrast, is more grounded in the specifics of industrial decarbonization, especially hydrogen. HyNet envisions itself as a regional rather than global player, and it exhibits a greater degree of alignment (no fragmentation with other internal projects) and a more grounded range of policy goals such as the retention of jobs and maintenance of infrastructure.

Even though Zero Carbon Humber and HyNet have some of the same fundamental structural drivers behind their green policy windows—broad agreement on the problem of climate change, strong net-zero policies erected—they exhibit some spatial variation in how they are implementing net-zero infrastructure. The Humber is much larger—spatially and economically—than HyNet, spanning 100 km from Bradford to the Humber Estuary, and encompassing 600,000 jobs and £52 billion in gross economic output (Sovacool et al., 2023). Zero Carbon Humber will employ carbon capture usage and storage and low carbon hydrogen to enable net-zero industry by 2035, with the first stage focusing on blue hydrogen and carbon transport and storage to gas reservoirs in the North Sea, and more international actors involved, such as Equinor and those investing in the Rough Gas Field.

HyNet , by contrast, is smaller than the Humber but it also has a diversity of industrial centers of activity including chemicals, food and beverages, fertilizers, glass, oil refining, and many other high-temperature operations. It stretches over a much smaller geographic area, intending to transport and store the carbon dioxide produced as a byproduct of the hydrogen production process in Liverpool Bay and the Irish sea, but without any international Irish or other European actors.

Our qualitative data also reveal multiple dimensions of tensions and tradeoffs within the clusters and also between different policy objectives. At the most elemental level, R12 and R28 both spoke about a tension between the politics of fiscal austerity (Treasury wanting to minimize government expenditure in a post-Covid world) and the need to invest billions in net-zero infrastructure. R03 spoke about tensions between different scales of government, noting that:

Certainly, there are tensions within government. You’ve got again very different drivers at different levels of government, cluster projects are trying to balance and manage four local authorities, two Local Enterprise Partnerships, and national goals of Parliament … it’s tricky and takes continual conversation, consolidation, harmony, and again bringing people back to that shared goal that’s actually if we fall out of this nobody gets it. You have to keep pushing the narrative that if we manage to stay together – everybody can reach net-zero eventually, it’s just a matter of when.

R108 spoke about tension and competition within clusters to secure funding for individual projects at the level of facilities versus shared projects that cut across facilities, and between clusters to attract the necessary financing and skills to implement plans and deploy technologies, especially with scarce contracting skills currently available as of 2021. R33 articulated acute tensions between different policy objectives, stating that:

There are multiple tensions to be managed for net-zero implementation. There is a tension between testing a wide range of new and innovative technologies against having projects which are highly credible and deliverable. We want clusters that can deliver significant levels of emissions reduction, can make a significant contribution most immediately as we look to meet our 2030 targets and deliver on carbon budget six. But we also want job creation and potentially revitalizing industry in areas which have perhaps lost a lot of jobs in recent years. We want clusters that can demonstrate a range of technologies … Then, of course, there’s the fact that we need to do this in a way that represents value for money for both the taxpayer and the energy consumer as well, both of whom will be impacted by the operation of direct government subsidy and the way the business models work.

Each of these objectives—innovation, credible delivery, emissions reductions, job creation, and value for money—can conflict. What is most innovative technically, e.g., BECCS or direct air capture may not be credible or a sound value for money; what provides the most emissions reductions, e.g., energy or resource efficiency measures, may lower job creation.

Lastly, there are issues over the degree of generalizability of the UK industrial decarbonization experience, and a possible extension of our findings to other settings. On the one hand, the particular progression of policy measures, the portfolio of technologies being considered, and the integration of policy objectives across energy, climate, industrial strategy, skills, infrastructure, and innovation could be replicated. A strong political commitment to industrial decarbonization across the political divide, largely consistent core climate policy and binding carbon targets over time, the provision of adequate financing, and the strategic use of harbors, seaports, and pipelines to distribute hydrogen and transport CO₂ are efforts that other countries can employ. On the other hand, Sovacool et al. (2022) write that some elements will be difficult to emulate, such as the smaller geographic scale of the UK economy, the wide scope and stringent enforcement of the Climate Change Act, and the ubiquity of carbon storage capacity in depleted oil and gas reservoirs and salt caverns, plus domestic supplies of natural gas to produce blue hydrogen, which when combined are collectively unique to the UK.

6. Conclusion

The Zero Carbon Humber and HyNet Northwest industrial net-zero projects represent critical components of efforts to decarbonize industry in the UK. They have become focal points for a range of social, technical, political, and economic issues. In this way, our study reveals the different dimensions of net-zero projects and corresponding domestic issue linkage. To get traction, or perhaps due to the sheer size, scale, and importance of industrial net-zero projects, they have become linked to a greater number of political issues spanning local and national agendas. This is perhaps a reflection that the more issues that can be linked to a project, the more actors are enrolled and the more politically significant it becomes. Technical issues include the value proposition of innovation in hydrogen and carbon capture and the interoperability of infrastructure. But these sit aside economic issues such as job retention, leadership, competitiveness, and leveling up, which also sit aside political issues such as local acceptance, cross-party solidarity, and international prestige, which sit aside socioenvironmental issues such as coupling with renewable energy or integration with European climate objectives.

Net-zero industrial megaprojects are therefore co-evolutionary with policy goals, and spatially and economically differentiated. Issue linkage thus becomes not only about widening critical agendas, but also about endowing project sponsors with flexibility or malleability that they can use to respond to challenges as a true “win-set” and pragmatically adjust to agendas as they change. Here, even if the specific technical aspects of blue hydrogen and expansive carbon capture and storage networks fail or struggle, the political support such projects have garnered in the near-term bodes well for the future of climate policy in the UK, and perhaps even the global climate.

Funding

The authors would like to acknowledge that this work was supported by the UKRI ISCF Industrial Challenge within the UK Industrial Decarbonization Research and Innovation Centre (IDRIC) award number: EP/V027050/1.

References

Annex I: Research questions utilized for the expert interviews

IDRIC megaproject context interview questions

Drivers: What are the main drivers behind industrial decarbonization megaprojects funded from the CCS infrastructure fund in the UK (Hynet and East Coast Cluster in 1st round, potentially Acorn/Scotland and other ones in 2nd round)

• Decarbonization?

• Industrial strategy/competitiveness?

• Political interests, lobbying, and greenwashing?

• Something else?

One or multiple projects?

• The Humberside cluster has several projects, which are funded differently and led by different organizations, e.g., (i) Zero-Carbon Humber part of East Coast Cluster, funded from CCS infrastructure fund, (ii) Humber Zero, funded by Innovate UK, and (iii) Green Hydrogen for Humberside, funded from the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund. Do you see these as separate projects, or as sub-projects of a larger megaproject? If they are separate, do you envisage or hope that they will combine in the future? Any synergies between them?

Visions and plans:

• What sorts of benefits could decarbonization megaprojects bring?

• How credible and viable are current plans, what’s the feasibility of these megaprojects, what are the chances that they will be implemented as planned?

• What are the main strengths and weaknesses of each cluster proposition/plan? Major differences? (selection of Track 1 megaprojects)

• How malleable are current plans?

• How receptive are government or financial actors to the visions being put forth by megaproject sponsors, and to any changes to the original visions/plans (e.g., timeframe, costs, what is actually achieved, benefits, scale)?

Implementation negotiations:

• What is the current status of negotiations concerning implementation of the industrial decarbonization projects that were selected in the first round of the CCS Infrastructure Fund?

Technologies and systems: Do UK companies have sufficient skills to develop and deploy the relevant technologies (e.g., CCS, hydrogen production, hydrogen use)? Or do you anticipate particular technical bottlenecks or areas of uncertainty, which may preclude large-scale commitment?

Governance: These megaprojects are very large, complex, involve many partners, and several radically novel technologies. Is the project management designed to accommodate likely or potential setbacks, surprises, or partial failures, which often characterize the development and deployment of radical innovations?

Other implementation barriers: What other barriers/challenges will they face? What struggles and conflict of interests might occur? Is there any “competition” between megaprojects/technologies/companies?

IDRIC megaproject interview questions

Technology implementation, experimentation, and knowledge:

• Where did the idea [for this particular megaproject] come from? Whose idea was it?

• What are the specific implementation and deployment plans (including the role of learning, experimentation, knowledge sharing, stakeholder engagement, risk/reward sharing)?

• What are the technical skills and capabilities needed for each megaproject?

• What are the main challenges?

Visions and value propositions:

• What are the technical and commercial visions, including costs and value propositions (which may linked to green hydrogen, green electricity/BECCS, or other values)? How these visions have evolved?

• Who will finance the megaprojects, what are the potential business models?

• What is the competitive advantage for doing this within the UK?

Actors, coalitions, and social acceptance/legitimacy:

• Who are the lead actors and broader coalitions for each project, and what are their motivations and interests? Who is not involved?

• What is the degree of collaboration and alignment within these coalitions? Any changes overtime?

• What interactions occur with broader stakeholders such as government and local communities?

Policy and governance:

• How do the megaprojects sit within the wider cluster context, both in terms of governance (within and across government departments, cluster governance in relation to these, local/regional government, etc.) and in terms of the wider policy and regulatory landscape?

• How consistent are the support policies for megaprojects with wider energy, industry and trade policy, climate policy, safety and environmental regulation, informal rules of thumb and routines inside companies, corporate governance?