Hydrogen Economy

Baroness Sheehan Excerpts

Monday 19th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My noble friend makes extremely good points. We have a number of world-leading companies in these fields. Indeed, I was able to visit JCB a few weeks ago, and drive a hydrogen digger—also without apparent accident, which is quite amazing. A number of other companies are also developing excellent, innovative products in this field. We have some world-leading companies but, as I said in a previous answer, our hydrogen strategy will indeed be published in due course.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, the energy White Paper pledges to establish the UK as a world leader in the deployment of carbon capture and storage and clean hydrogen. This clean hydrogen is, in fact, blue hydrogen, which is a by-product of the fossil fuel industry. Does the Minister believe that CCS, the process that is supposed to render blue hydrogen clean, is proven at scale and, if so, can he name just one example?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

There are a number of demonstration projects around the world on CCS, but we need to demonstrate it at scale and, as the noble Baroness will be aware, we will shortly be announcing our first CCUS clusters in the UK.