Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps his Department has taken to expand access to (a) electric charging stations, (b) compressed hydrogen and (c) bio-fuels at fuelling stations across the UK.

Government and industry have supported the installation of over 28,000  publicly available charging devices including more than 5,100 rapid devices – one of the largest networks of rapids in Europe. The Government will provide over £1.3 billion over the next four years to support the continued roll-out of chargepoints on motorways and major A roads, in homes and businesses and on-street. Government’s forthcoming EV Infrastructure Strategy will define our vision for the continued roll-out of a world-leading charging infrastructure network across the UK. The strategy will be published soon.

The UK is well placed to lead on hydrogen powered transport, and government is supporting the use of hydrogen cars, vans, buses and lorries through our £23m Hydrogen for Transport programme. As of December 2021, there are fourteen publicly accessible hydrogen refuelling stations across the UK providing hydrogen for road vehicles, with just over 350 hydrogen vehicles operating on UK roads. Additional refuelling infrastructure will be deployed as part of our plans to demonstrate at scale hydrogen fuel cell trucks on UK roads.

One of the benefits of biofuels is that they can be deployed using existing infrastructure. The Department has supported the supply of liquid biofuels at fuelling stations across the UK through the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation which has been successful for 13 years in promoting a market for biofuels. The recent introduction of E10 in September 2021 now means that up to 10% bioethanol is blended into petrol while diesel is also blended with up to 7% biodiesel, a grade known as B7.