Steve Yemm
Main Page: Steve Yemm (Labour - Mansfield)Department Debates - View all Steve Yemm's debates with the Department for Transport
Hydrogen-powered Aviation
Steve Yemm Excerpts(1 day, 15 hours ago)
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Steve Yemm (Mansfield) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) for securing this timely and very important debate.
My constituency of Mansfield is just a stone’s throw away from East Midlands airport, which is one of the UK’s key freight and passenger hubs. It is important not only to our local economy, but to many of my constituents, who use the airport to get away on family holidays. With climate change being a significant concern to many of my constituents, and with the instability of hydrocarbon-based aviation fuel pricing as a result of numerous factors, including global conflict, I very much welcome the consideration of hydrogen-powered aviation as a practical and vital path towards sustainable flight.
The east midlands has always been at the heart of British industry and innovation, and now we must be at the forefront of clean technology. Aviation accounts for around 7% of our carbon emissions and the figure is growing, but rather than grounding its progress, we need to power it differently. Hydrogen offers us a really tangible solution: it produces zero carbon emissions at the point of use, and has great potential to fuel short and medium-haul flights by the mid-2030s—exactly the kinds of routes that operate out of East Midlands airport.
Hydrogen has real, tangible benefits over other approaches such as sustainable aviation fuel and battery power. We are already seeing British companies—including companies local to me in the east midlands, such as Rolls-Royce, and ZeroAvia in the south-west, which is working with East Midlands airport—investing in hydrogen engines. I believe that the Government have a responsibility to at least consider supporting that transition, not only to meet our climate targets but to protect and grow jobs in aviation, engineering and logistics in the east midlands.
Let us not forget that our constituents all want cleaner skies and to reach net zero, but they also want the opportunity to travel. Hydrogen-powered aviation can potentially deliver both, but to develop the technology to do that, we need the right investment in infrastructure, and particularly in research and development. We can turn regional airports into hubs of innovation that are important for the regions, and create a new export market in green aviation technology—that is not pie in the sky thinking. It will take some work to achieve it, but it is practical and necessary.
We should back British innovation and cleaner aviation. Let us ensure that the east midlands, Britain and the UK lead the world with this new, exciting technology.