Hydrogen Supply Chains

Tom Collins Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Tom Collins (Worcester) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered hydrogen supply chains.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Betts, and a great pleasure to see my hon. Friend the Minister in his place. I congratulate him. It is good to see him back at the Dispatch Box, renewing his already well established work in our Government’s mission for growth and change. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) for securing this debate. Unfortunately, there has been a switcheroo and I am taking his place, but I am very glad to be doing that and very grateful to him for the opportunity.

This is of course a very important topic. We have faced an overly warm summer this year and we keep seeing the weather reminding us of the urgent need for change. The global energy system is also rapidly transitioning, and the UK needs to respond to that. With our ambitious mission for growth, looking to have the highest growth in the G7, it is vital that we are competitive and, indeed, that we lead in the energy space, as well as renew ourselves industrially. The UK has shown great leadership in hydrogen supply chain development and hydrogen technology development. We have been leaders, but we have also navigated and illustrated the technically complex, multi-sector, internationally charged difficulties in decarbonising our economy. It has been unclear which technologies will win, but although there is still some small uncertainty associated with how the mix of technologies will play out, the questions of how we will produce, transport and store energy at that macro scale are now finding firm answers, so we are at a turning point. The transition is no longer being led by technology, but by economics, and it is time for us to respond to that shift.

The wider picture is beginning to resolve into clear focus, especially for hydrogen. In the future energy system, the UK will be more independent. It is quite likely that it will still be a net importer of energy but with a very strong position in Europe, given our incredible assets in renewables. Hydrogen and ammonia are likely to replace oil as the vector for intercontinental energy transport, and electrification will be common, especially in well-developed societies. The competitive economic battlefield will be for these fuels.

Just as that crystalising picture informs our context, it informs the UK energy strategy. We know that we will electrify what we can—and that will require a huge expansion of our electricity system across the board, from production to transportation, storage and end use—but it is also vital that we go big on hydrogen, as this is critical for reindustrialisation, for heavy transport and for us to maximise our country’s strengths. That all points to hydrogen if we are to reindustrialise the UK, which is vital for economic growth and national resilience.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

The hon. Member is making an excellent speech on a very important subject. He mentioned the production of ammonia. The fact is that fertiliser is made from ammonia and right now our farmers are facing increasing prices for a number of world reasons. Does the hon. Member agree that one of the strategic purposes of creating hydrogen is to support hard-pressed farmers all over the UK?

[Tom Collins]

The hon. Member is entirely right. Ammonia is a very important part of the future energy mix. It is interchangeable bidirectionally with hydrogen and it is a very compact energy carrier. It is a liquid—it is relatively easily handled and stored—but it also, vitally, provides direct injection into the agricultural fertiliser chain. That makes it a vital asset in our future energy system, as agriculture currently plays a very large role in our total carbon emissions.

How we get to the future energy system is similar to how we got to this point: economics is overtaking technology as the driver for change. It is not about choosing technologies; it is about choosing these key energy vectors and then facilitating markets to grow around them. If we look more closely at that challenge and at the current UK energy system, we have seen electricity decarbonising, but if we look at electricity use in comparison with other vectors in the UK, it plays a relatively modest role. If we look at our energy use over the course of a year, our daily electricity consumption is pretty flat, but if we overlay on to that the amount of gas we use as a country—remember, gas is providing a vital part of our electricity production, and indeed the responsive part—and we see waves with peaks in the winter and troughs in the summer. The peaks of those waves are three times higher than our day-to-day electricity use. Gas is doing the lion’s share of moving energy around the UK and supporting our electricity system, and oil, which is primarily used for transport and is our main vector for transport, sits at about the same level as electricity. That is the picture of how energy is split across the UK energy system.

What we can learn from that is that UK energy demand is peaky. It varies very rapidly, seasonally and throughout the day, especially for heat applications. As we move into a renewable world, we need to recognise that renewable production is also subject to these synchronous peaks and troughs. The UK is a small enough country that one weather system can influence the production of all our renewables. We are therefore subject to fluctuations both in the supply of renewable energy and in demand. We also know that global prices for energy will continue to fluctuate, and part of our Government’s strategy to make the UK rightly more energy independent is informed by our vulnerability to variations in international energy prices.

Whatever our vector mix, and however we cut up the pie of our future energy system, we absolutely will need storage to navigate these variations. The transition has rightly been described as a chicken-and-egg problem: how do we build a new energy system out of an existing one? We are led by economics, which means that we need a price for the new system. We need a price that breaks the cycle by providing producers with a way to sell their energy and by providing people decarbonising at the end-use point with the ability to buy the energy they need for decarbonisation and to make long-term investments. That price enabler is made stable by storage. The crux, therefore, of building this future energy system is to build transmission and storage of the key vectors that we want to use in the future. Therefore, it would be very valuable for the UK to develop a plan to commission and build out a strategic national clean energy reserve. That can be left to markets, but the Government need to drive it with an extremely strong and firm grip and with a clear vision. I urge the Minister to look at the ways that we can build on our current work in storage, while expanding it with a very clear and ambitious vision.

We can also start blending. Blending is sometimes misunderstood. There are currently investigations into blending hydrogen into our natural gas supply. That has a small benefit for decarbonisation, but it has a huge benefit for allowing us to build out production of hydrogen, because it gives producers a large and available sink for their hydrogen to be produced and sold and it allows them to build large-scale production with the certainty of a market. Blending is therefore a key enabler not of decarbonisation but of building production for a future energy system with hydrogen playing a major role.

It is also vital that we take action to fill the remaining gaps. Through my experience as an engineer working in research and development I have seen personally how powerful it is when the Government set goals and work in partnership with industry to try to meet those goals. Goal setting cuts through the noise of the usual business of research and development and the competition for investment, and it allows us to move forward. It has put the UK in an incredibly strong position.

The UK is already the leader in hydrogen standards, and with the publicly available specifications 4444 series, it is leading the way in establishing technical standards. We have an opportunity to build those out up to the norms of the British Standards Institution and the International Organisation for Standardisation. The UK has led and is leading that. The UK has led on technology with a series of first-in-the-world projects in hydrogen over recent years, and we have an opportunity to lead through our geography with a well-established oil and gas industry ready to transition with fantastic geology for salt cavern storage.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

The hon. Member refers to geography. In Northern Ireland, particularly in my adjoining constituency of North Antrim, hydrogen buses have become a phenomenon that was unheard of 15 or 20 years ago. This week, with the tube strike taking place, buses are being used inordinately in London and are making very slow progress through the congested streets. Hydrogen buses emit much less pollution than diesel or petrol vehicles. Does he agree that we need to promote hydrogen in all aspects, but particularly transport, whenever difficult times come?

[Tom Collins]

I thank the hon. Member for his point—he is entirely right. Hydrogen is a key enabler for industrial processes that need high temperature, high power and reducing atmospheres. It is a vital feedstock for a large part of our materials supply chain, and it is a key enabler for future heavy transport, with buses being an excellent example. I share his passion—my constituents will be the first to tell everyone how important buses are to me, and I desperately desire our current oil-fuelled buses to be replaced by some form of electrified transport, be that energised by batteries or by hydrogen and fuel cells.

So, what next? There are quick wins available in the space of hydrogen. Reviewing some of our safety regulations, which are slightly outdated for a world where hydrogen will become more commonplace, could make a big difference, particularly on exclusion distances and ammonia, which is currently treated as a chemical for storage. Introducing regulations that treat ammonia as a fuel and allow its storage under simplified guidance would make a huge difference. I have already mentioned blending. It is time for the Government to work in an agile and innovative way with other Departments—as they are doing—to build out this capacity.

A longer-term road map for heavy transport and for heat would be very helpful. These are hard-to-abate sectors. I would like to see recognition that heat has proven one of the hardest areas of our economy to decarbonise. It is important that, while we have ambitious targets to electrify heat, we keep the door open to hydrogen providing that fallback, as gas does now for many electrified projects, to allow us to get there with confidence, rapidity and depth of decarbonisation.

Our planning reform is doing fantastic things for the energy transition, allowing us to build out our electricity transmission system and future storage. There are opportunities for us to echo that in gas and liquid fuel transport and storage, alongside electricity, for hydrogen and ammonia in particular. As I have mentioned, innovation support is vital as we work cross-Department to bring this transition. I have seen at first hand how powerful it can be when Government set goals and work in close partnership with industry, but I have also seen where there is room for us to strengthen our innovation offer around hydrogen to make this transition even more successful.

There has never been a more important time for the agile, mission-led approach of our Government. There is a need for ambition in this space. Investment is currently following vision, and the UK has an opportunity to present a powerful vision. We have seen some of our work around hydrogen and the investment rounds slipping. This is the time for Government to be agile, mission-led and work in partnership with industry to accelerate that, bring shared focus and work in closer partnership with industry, with a goal-setting approach, to cut through the administration and bureaucracy and, with confidence, build out the future economy that we can start to more clearly envisage. With ambition and decisive action, the UK can prosper, and a vital part of that is our hydrogen supply chains prospering.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Thank you, Mr Betts; it is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair. I congratulate the hon. Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) on securing the debate—I supported the application—and the hon. Member for Worcester (Tom Collins) on introducing it so competently.

The UK has established strong foundations for a domestic hydrogen industry, which already contributes £8.4 billion to our economy. Improving hydrogen supply chains could benefit the economy by £18 billion in gross value added and 60,000 new highly skilled jobs by 2050, according to research from Hydrogen UK. Sixty thousand new jobs and £18 billion in gross value added for our economy are not something to ignore.

Sustainable, or green, hydrogen has the potential to drive job creation, economic growth and decarbonisation across sectors currently reliant on high-carbon fuels, and particularly the aviation sector. There is enormous potential for hydrogen in aviation. According to the International Energy Agency, 65 million tonnes per year of low-emission hydrogen must be produced globally by 2030 to meet our net zero targets. Domestically, Hydrogen UK has made it clear that we need 10 GW of hydrogen production capacity by 2030, alongside urgent investment in storage, to more than treble our capacity between 2030 and 2035. We need this infrastructure to reach a final investment decision.

A significant portion of the UK’s hydrogen storage will be for aviation. On a recent visit just north of my constituency, I saw the extraordinary work of ZeroAvia. Its business model is currently built on retrofitting relatively small aircraft, but it has the ambition to expand to medium-sized aircraft. It is absolutely fascinating to see what ZeroAvia has achieved. Backed by the likes of Airbus, British Airways and the UK Infrastructure Bank, ZeroAvia has already achieved world-first flight demonstrations of hydrogen electric engines. It has raised more than $250 million and employs more than 200 people.

ZeroAvia’s hydrogen electric engines are not a distant dream. Airlines are already pre-ordering more than 3,000 units, with commitments from American Airlines, United Airlines and UK operators. These engines can cut aviation’s climate impact by more than 90%, with only water as a by-product. Again, the real beauty of this is that ZeroAvia is retrofitting planes, so we do not have to build new ones. That in itself is an emission reduction. Of all modes of transport, aviation is perhaps the best suited to hydrogen. It is energy-intensive and weight-sensitive, making hydrogen’s high-energy density and efficiency critical. Unlike road or rail, aviation has more limited alternatives.

Hydrogen is not just desirable, it is essential. But we can achieve these things only with better storage solutions, as the hon. Member for Worcester mentioned, lower operational costs and a secure, consistent supply. Producing green hydrogen is extremely energy-intensive and requires a large amount of renewable energy. On average, producing 1 kg of hydrogen consumes around 50 kWh of electricity. This high energy demand means that to produce more green hydrogen, we must drastically accelerate our renewable energy capacity.

That is why I am a little concerned that some renewable energy projects are being pushed out of the grid connections queue, because they are not seen as immediately necessary. That seems a short-sighted approach, and it could hinder our ability to scale green hydrogen production. What we should be doing is oversupplying renewables so that we have a surplus that allows us to not only produce enough green hydrogen but potentially become a net exporter of renewable energy across Europe.

The hon. Member for Worcester also mentioned the need for stronger regulation for the wider applications of hydrogen. The Government must set clear standards for sectors such as domestic heating, where hydrogen boilers still lack the necessary regulation for home use. I know that the Government are a little slow on hydrogen in home heating.

[Tom Collins]

Before coming to this place, that was my exact area of work, and I can assure the House that the current regulatory framework has enabled the certification of these products. They have been shown to be safe; in fact, they are soon to be trialled up in Scotland, in Fife. So some of these barriers have recently been mitigated and reduced very quickly by UK innovation. The opportunity is there now to push forward into delivery.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I am glad the hon. Member clarified that. He also made a point about mixing hydrogen. Hydrogen is possibly not the end destination for heating in this country, but it will be extremely important to continue looking into it as a transition and to ensure that the Government do not miss an opportunity. In a recent meeting with Wales & West Utilities, which manages the gas grid in my constituency and beyond, it was explained that hydrogen remains a highly viable option for household heating, particularly if we look into blending.

We should take inspiration from the University of Bath, a national leader in research and innovation. Bath is a key partner in pioneering hydrogen aviation projects such as the hydrogen fuel cell-powered double-decker bus and liquid hydrogen pump technology.

Hydrogen is not a silver bullet, but in aviation it is the fuel of the future. If we back it with the urgency it deserves, Britain can lead the world in hydrogen supply chains, deliver cleaner, cheaper energy, and ensure that our journey to net zero is also a journey towards prosperity and fairness.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luke Myer]

I can only speak to the public shift we saw in our region. The public are fully behind projects such as hydrogen fuels for public transport, which we are seeing trials of in Teesside. But, for whatever reason, there was much more reluctance over the Redcar trial, and it was not without significant investment in educating people on the benefits.

[Tom Collins]

Once again, I intervene only because I have painful personal experience of this situation. The Redcar trial was subject to a distinct, explicit and targeted campaign seeking to bring about its failure. It was extremely frustrating to experience, as the trial was testing both electrification of heat and conversion to 100% hydrogen—two key pathways for decarbonising heat that need to be validated. It was very frustrating to see that, and it was the result of a targeted campaign, but we have also seen that where the engineering is well explained and consumers are able to understand that this is just a different gas—in fact, a gas that already circulated in UK gas pipes prior to the conversion of the 1960s—these things can be done successfully. It is therefore important that we show positive ambition for hydrogen and help the public to feel secure about a problem where the engineering has been solved.

[Luke Myer]

Having tried to make many of the points that my hon. Friend made during that experience, I am more sceptical about whether that shift will happen quickly or easily. There is certainly huge potential for industrial use and for transport.

In any case, our region helped to power Britain’s industrial revolution, and we can do the same today through the age of clean energy. Hydrogen can anchor a new era of good jobs and pride in our communities if we have the ambition to make it work for working people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate the hon. Member for Worcester (Tom Collins) on a very timely debate indeed; he knows his subject, and that is to the benefit of us all. Touching on the contribution made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), if we had mentioned hydrogen aviation prior to about 1940 it would have had people screaming in fear, because that was the era of the Hindenburg and the R101. The hon. Member for Worcester is absolutely correct that the potential for air transport is massive; the fact that when hydrogen and oxygen are combined we get water means that it is the cleanest of all forms of energy.

I made mention in my intervention of the production of ammonia. If my chemistry lessons have stuck, I think it is NH₄, which can then be turned into fertiliser. Our farmers are very worried by the increase in fertiliser prices, and it looks as if they are going up again this year. That can play merry hell with their farm accounts as they try to forward guess what their profitability will be. We know that EU tariffs on Russian fertiliser mean an increased price for EU countries. My point is a simple one: the more we can promote the manufacture of fertiliser out of ammonia from hydrogen produced in the UK, then the better that will be for this country. We have a great export opportunity.

I give great credit to the previous and present Governments—my constituents are very grateful to them—for having had the courage to go for Cromarty Firth and Inverness green freeport. The idea producing hydrogen was part and parcel of formulating that bid to the previous Government, and of the way we talk to the present Government. The experts in the field have been telling me that the potential for bulk hydrogen to be sailed across the North sea from the north of Scotland to very keen markets in Europe is huge, and that there is real money to be made here. When the bids were put together, the production of green hydrogen was part of that bid.

The Minister, whom I, like the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) am very glad to see in his place, knows full well that the issue of the grid we are proposing—where the pylons and lines go, whether they are sub-sea or above the ground, the batteries and all that—is a controversial and hot topic. However, I give him his due; in his previous incarnation he was as helpful as he could possibly be.

When the grid improvements were initially proposed, and yes we of course have to do that if we are serious about getting to net zero, I wrote to the then Prime Minister and the First Minister of Scotland to ask whether the proposals matched the production of green hydrogen that we are keen to do in the north of Scotland. I may or may not have got the formula for ammonia right but, if I remember my physics correctly, the longer the distance one has to send electricity down a wire or a cable, the more energy is lost. Is it I²R? It is something like that; I have probably got it wrong, and the Minister probably knows it better than I do, but the point is that the longer the cable, the more resistance, and energy is lost because heat is produced and radiates off it.

I earnestly say to the present Government, looking at the production of green hydrogen in the north of Scotland, “Would it not make sense to produce an awful lot of that as near as possible to where the energy is actually being created?” We have a plethora of wind farms in the north of Scotland. We have the Beatrice wind farm off the coast of my constituency and there are many others up and running or projected for Scotland. It seems to me that the manufacture of hydrogen as near as possible to that source of energy would make enormous sense.

[Tom Collins]

The hon. Member is entirely right. One of the key questions often asked about green hydrogen is cost. There are many projections showing cost coming down dramatically in future, and part of that comes from the fact that hydrogen production is able to utilise renewable electricity that would otherwise be constrained or not used. He is entirely right that geographical and time constraints on when energy is produced are vital, but create a low-cost source of energy for the production of hydrogen, which brings the cost of hydrogen down, so I thank him for his point.

[Jamie Stone]

I thank the hon. Member for his helpful intervention.

I want to conclude with two points. First, I am optimistic that this is a subject that will enjoy cross-party support—I cannot see anyone rocking the boat on this one; it would be madness to do that—and sometimes, when things have cross-party support, they really can happen. There is a great opportunity in this country.

Secondly, to make an unashamed, blatant advertisement for my constituency, as Dounreay decommissions, we have sites and skills particularly near to where the energy is being created. If the His Majesty’s Government would look at the creation of hydrogen in my patch, I would be most awfully grateful. With that blatant touting for business, I conclude my contribution.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Collins]

Mr Betts, I will be brief. I am grateful for your generosity with time, and for the generosity of other Members in allowing me to intervene. I thank the Minister for his response. He reasserted the fundamental role that hydrogen will play in our future energy system and the vital need for storage. I really appreciate that. I am excited about the hydrogen strategy, and to see that built with our new Government’s approach to partnership and with a clear vision for our future hydrogen system. That was reflected in his speech when he reasserted our firm commitment to working in partnership with industry.

I again thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) for securing this debate and for his continued championing of the energy sector and all our work in it. He is a strong and powerful proponent, and I am grateful to him for the opportunity he has given me today. The debate has reflected the huge opportunity that hydrogen presents for the UK in growing our economy and facing the challenges of decarbonisation and new energy systems. It has reflected the versatility of hydrogen, the importance of building a system where it is abundant, the need for us to support industry not just in classic industrial heartlands but in towns across our country, and therefore the need for us to transition the gas networks to hydrogen in the future as well.

The consensus that we have heard in the room today, for which I am very grateful—I am grateful for all Members’ fantastically knowledgeable contributions—shows that we are at the turning point where this transition is being led by economics rather than debates about technology. Electricity, hydrogen and ammonia form a pyramid of complementary energy vectors whereby we can provide sector coupling, flexibility and a dynamic future energy system that allows rapid and deep decarbonisation. I have had the opportunity to meet representatives of industry and hold workshops with a very diverse cross-section of industry, and the urge for the storage piece to be built urgently and in a decisive way, sponsored clearly by the state, is very clear, with that backed up by transition.

It is not often we hear industry asking Government to be more hands-on, but here they are. The need for that in building storage is very clear. They want Government to have a very clear vision and high ambition, and the Minister has been good today in helping to articulate that on the Government’s behalf. We are a Government of partnership, and now is the moment to build on that partnership and break down silos. In taking these steps, now is the moment when we can change gear, put our foot on the gas and bring about a rapid and ambitious transformation of our hydrogen supply chains.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered hydrogen supply chains.