Oral Answers to Questions

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

The hon. Lady raises some very good points. I am looking forward to appearing before the House of Lords Committee on this very topic on Thursday. I am sure that her Committee has done important work on this. We want to make this process as affordable as possible for people. That is why we have introduced the boiler upgrade scheme. That is why we are spending £6.6 billion of public money in this Parliament on energy efficiency, making sure that those options are there and are affordable. That is one of our key aims, particularly if we are to get to 600,000 heat pumps per annum by 2028.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister may know that our gas pipes are capable of taking 40% hydrogen, as they did with coal gas. Will he meet me and also Professor Andrew Barron who works at Swansea University, which is pushing forward technology to take the hydrogen produced by renewable wind farms off peak, converting it and putting it into the gas grid and therefore reducing the carbon footprint of boiling an egg by 40%. Surely that is the best way forward in the short term to reduce our carbon footprint.

[Greg Hands]

The hon. Gentleman raises a good point. Late last year when I visited the Whitelee wind farm just south of Glasgow, the UK’s largest onshore wind farm and the second largest in Europe, I saw for myself the potential there for renewable energy to convert to hydrogen. The UK Government announced a facility to assist with that. Blending is also an important aspect that we will actively be looking at. Of course we will have a number of other important uses of hydrogen, notably in maritime, transportation and the decarbonisation of industry, and those are all in the frame for consideration for what will undoubtedly be our big need for hydrogen in the future.