Transport: Hydrogen

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

I congratulate my noble friend and his company on their world-beating innovation, and I look forward to visiting his facility soon to see it in action. My department is working very quickly to update our regulations to create GB type approval schemes for all types of vehicles and engines following our exit from the European Union. The first step along that road will be a consultation to be published in the autumn. However, in some circumstances, it can be possible to grant a vehicle special order to provide some access to roads. I am happy to look into that further.

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

My Lords, the UK Hydrogen Strategy and transport decarbonisation plan both highlight the potential for hydrogen and electric aviation. Given that the UK is truly a leader in the world in this technology, can the Minister set out what steps the Government are taking to accelerate the R&D of that technology in the UK and what consideration she has given to airports acting as hydrogen hubs to generate and support more UK-manufactured hydrogen vehicles, planes and ships?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

The noble Baroness is quite right: aviation is one of the modes that we think will have a great future in using hydrogen for propulsion. She mentioned airports, and I know that work is being done on whether some of the tenders used at airports can be switched to hydrogen. Obviously, a significant amount of torque is needed to drag planes across the tarmac. She will know that we consulted over the summer on jet zero as a whole. We anticipate that many of the responses will cover hydrogen. We will be collating those responses and looking at them in detail, but I reassure her that significant funding is going into R&D for many sources, be that for planes or the vehicles in airports.