INDUSTRY NEWS
NEW HUB CREATED TO ACCELERATE INNOVATION IN OFFSHORE WIND
The Wind Innovation Hub, which aims to become the innovation and industrialisation engine for the UK’s offshore wind industry, has been officially launched. This is an independent initiative which combines the specialist skills and expertise of the Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Catapult with the advanced manufacturing know-how of NCC and National Manufacturing Institute Scotland (NMIS), both part of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult. Its mission is to accelerate innovation across the UK’s offshore wind sector, focused on the five priority areas of opportunity outlined in the Industrial Growth Plan (IGP) for offshore wind. These include advanced turbine technology, industrialised foundations and substructures, future electrical systems and cables, smart environmental services, and next generation installation and operations and maintenance (O&M). Funded by Innovate UK, the Hub will bring together industry, government and academia to define technology priorities and identify knowledge gaps, in addition to aiding the design, development, de-risking and demonstration of next-generation technologies to accelerate their transition from advanced R&D into industrial deployment. Its first initiative will be the £2 million ‘Accelerating Innovations’ programme, designed to provide tailored in-kind support to high-growth
INTELLIGENT ENERGY COMPLETES HYDROGEN AVIATION RESEARCH PROGRAMME
Intelligent Energy has successfully completed H2GEAR, the UK’s flagship hydrogen aviation research programme, and is now applying the technology, expertise and infrastructure to its next phase: commercial hydrogen fuel cell systems for zero-emission aircraft. The £54 million H2GEAR
(Hydrogen Electric Aircraft Propulsion System)
programme, led by GKN Aerospace and supported by the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI), the Department for Business and Trade and Innovate UK, brought together industry and academic partners to develop scalable hydrogen-electric propulsion technologies for future aircraft. For Intelligent Energy, the programme marks a significant milestone,
demonstrating progressive advances in power density, drag reduction and dynamic response that bring commercial hydrogen-powered flight closer to reality. The knowledge and capability built through H2GEAR now directly underpin Project HEIGHTS, a £17 million ATI-backed programme launched in 2025 to develop IE-FLIGHT 300, a modular hydrogen fuel cell platform designed for eVTOL aircraft and next-generation sub-regional planes. H2GEAR enabled Intelligent Energy to adapt nearly two decades of fuel cell
expertise for aviation applications, delivering advances in power density, thermal management, aircraft integration and system validation. The programme also supported the development of a 1.3MW fuel cell test facility in Northamptonshire, enabling large-scale validation of high-power aviation systems using green hydrogen generated from onsite renewables. Working alongside GKN Aerospace, Intelligent Energy also identified
opportunities to reduce overall aircraft system mass. The rapid response characteristics of its fuel cells can help reduce reliance on batteries and supercapacitors, lowering mass while maintaining performance. Chris Dudfield, chief technology officer at Intelligent Energy, said: “H2GEAR has taken hydrogen aviation from concept to credible pathway - accelerating our technology, strengthening our position in the aerospace sector and creating the IE FLIGHT platform we are now advancing through HEIGHTS towards commercial service.”
https://www.intelligent-energy.com/
www.essmag.co.uk
UK companies developing mission-aligned technologies. Qualifying businesses will be able to access expert technical assistance, manufacturing and materials insight, testing and validation, commercial readiness support and stronger routes to investment. Though central UK industrialisation focus points exist for other industries, including the aerospace and automotive sectors, the Wind Innovation Hub will be a first for the wind sector. Lynne McIntosh-Grieve, programme director for The Wind Innovation
Hub said: “Our role is to identify and accelerate the innovations and technologies the sector needs most, focusing effort on the five key technology areas identified in the Industrial Growth Plan. By combining market intelligence, roadmapping and hands-on technical support, the Wind Innovation Hub will connect the right challenge to the right expertise - and turn shared insight into coordinated action.” Minister for energy, Michael Shanks, added: “Offshore wind is the
backbone of our future energy system. By backing British innovation, we can go further and faster in building a system that protects families and businesses from fossil fuel price shocks.”
https://ore.catapult.org.uk/
VERTICAL AXIS WIND TURBINE ‘OPERATES WHERE CONVENTIONAL WIND ENERGY HAS FAILED’
Following three years of development and testing, Austrian innovator Clean Energy has introduced
naca.boost, a vertical axis wind turbine engineered to operate where conventional wind energy has always failed, at ground level, in the turbulent, unpredictable airflow of industrial sites, rooftops, and remote locations. At the company’s facility in Neukirchen, the engineering team put
the
naca.boost rotor through hundreds of test cycles, refining the aerodynamic geometry iteration after iteration. The challenge was not incremental improvement. It was a complete rethink of how a rotor captures energy in turbulent air, the company explains. Beyond aerodynamic performance, near-ground deployment eliminates costs that make large-scale wind infrastructure prohibitive for most operators.
naca.boost does not require resource-intensive infrastructure – no underground cabling, no substations. It avoids the land lease commitments and extensive site engineering that conventional installations demand. The result is compelling economics: no grid infrastructure, no site engineering delays, and a system that is generating power within days of delivery. “We knew from
the beginning that solving the near-ground wind challenge required a fundamentally better turbine,” said Franz Humer, CEO & co- founder, novventos. “That is what
naca.boost is, and three years of engineering work went into building
it. But a better turbine alone is not enough. The real answer is wind and solar working together, and
naca.boost, with its integrated photovoltaic panels, is the proof of
that.The aerodynamic challenge of near-ground wind is genuinely hard. What the
naca.boost achieves, after years of testing and refinement in our novventos lab and on our test sites, is a rotor engineered for those conditions - one that performs. That is the innovation we set out to deliver.”
www.novventos.com ENERGY & SUSTAINABILITY SOLUTIONS - Summer 2026 5
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