Wild Hydrogen secures more than £1 million in Innovate UK funding in 2025 as new Investor Partnerships project begins
We have launched a £1.4 million project through the Innovate UK Investor Partnerships: Clean Energy and Climate Technologies programme, supported by match funding from Cambridge Angels. This marks our second major Innovate UK award in 2025, bringing total Innovate UK support this year to more than £1 million.
The 18-month programme, Engineering a Carbon-Negative Future with the Rising Pressure Reformer, will advance our patented RiPR platform from a TRL 6 prototype to a fully engineered system ready for commercial scale. This represents a major step towards establishing carbon-negative hydrogen and biomethane as reliable, scalable and cost-competitive alternatives to fossil fuels.
RiPR uses supercritical water, a high-efficiency thermal process that converts wet, mixed waste streams, including agricultural residues, food and municipal waste, into hydrogen, biomethane, biochar and captured carbon dioxide. Unlike anaerobic digestion or electrolysis, RiPR operates without expensive pre-treatment, rare critical minerals or high grid electricity consumption. This flexibility enables a lower-cost route to clean gas production, turning waste into a valuable, carbon-negative energy resource.
Across the programme, we will deliver:
• Development of a proprietary high-pressure feedstock loading and sealing mechanism
• Integration of a closed-loop energy recovery system
• Delivery of a Pre-FEED (Front-End Engineering Design) package for a commercial-scale RiPR system
Together, these advances will reduce operating costs, improve system efficiency and scale our RiPR technology, ready for deployment into industrial environments. They will lay the foundation for decentralised, modular clean gas systems capable of serving industrial users, utilities, rural communities and off-grid sites.
This programme builds on momentum from our £350,000 Innovate UK Smart Grant awarded earlier this year. Securing two Innovate UK awards in the same year reflects both the urgency of decarbonising gas and the confidence placed in our approach to carbon-negative innovation.
Our goal remains clear. We are focused on delivering hydrogen and biomethane that are clean, carbon-negative and affordable, helping to build a circular, low-carbon energy system designed and engineered in the UK.
