Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to support the Northern Ireland hydrogen economy.

The Government is committed to developing hydrogen as a strategic decarbonised energy carrier across the UK. Low carbon hydrogen presents an opportunity for Northern Ireland and the UK as a whole to deliver against our clean growth goals – meeting our decarbonisation needs while capturing commercial opportunities. This is especially important as we support our economy to recover from Covid-19.

In order to realise the opportunities from hydrogen, we are undertaking a range of activities:

• investing up to £121m in hydrogen innovation across the value chain;
• developing business models to support the deployment of, and investment in, low carbon hydrogen production;
• announcing the £100m Low Carbon Hydrogen Production Fund in 2019 to stimulate capital investment.

We will be setting out further plans in the UK Hydrogen Strategy, which we intend to publish in early 2021.

In order to aid this work, we established the Hydrogen Advisory Council to formalise regular engagement with Industry. The Council met for the first time on 20 July and membership includes officials from Northern Ireland government as well as Ryse/Wrightbus. We look forward to the Council’s ongoing input as we build a new low carbon hydrogen economy for the UK.