Ceres Power's fuel cell manufacturing facility has been officially unveiled in Horsham by the Minister of State for Business and Enterprise, Mark Prisk MP.
Ceres Power has created more than 170 highly skilled 'green collar' jobs at the new manufacturing facility and at its technology centre in Crawley. As part of the group's plans for a mass market launch of the CHP product in the UK, the manufacturing facility can be expanded to produce up to 30,000 fuel cell CHP products a year which will create substantial additional skilled jobs in advanced manufacturing engineering and operations and the local supply chain. There are also further opportunities to export significant volumes of the CHP product globally.
Speaking at the opening of the facility, Mr Prisk said: 'Here in Britain we have a vibrant low carbon environmental goods and services market which is already the sixth largest in the world and worth £112 billion. It is thanks to innovative research and product development by companies such as Ceres Power that we are leading the world with this sort of technology and which will help us realise our ambition to make the UK a leading high tech, highly skilled economy.
'Ceres Power's work in developing a revolutionary new product that can convert natural gas into electricity and heat without burning it will cut costs of annual energy bills and has the potential to make a major contribution to reducing carbon emissions in millions of homes in the UK and across Europe.'
Ceres Power has now completed the first phase of its advanced fuel cell manufacturing facility that produces the group's fuel cell module which is integrated within a compact wall mounted residential CHP product designed to replace a conventional boiler and generate almost all of a typical home's electricity. The group has partnered with British Gas to sell, install, service and maintain the CHP product in UK homes, offering households savings of up to 25 per cent of their annual total energy costs and reducing their CO
2 emissions.
