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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment his Department has made of the potential merits for businesses of using (a) hydrogen and (b) electricity as a fuel source.

There are a range of fuels and technologies that could play an important role in decarbonising energy use for business and industry including hydrogen, electrification, heat networks and biogas. Our understanding of the respective roles of hydrogen and electricity continues to develop informed by internal and external analysis, innovation and demonstrator projects.

We already have a number of policies and programmes that support business and industry to decarbonise, including Climate Change Agreements, energy audits under the Energy Saving Opportunities Scheme (ESOS), the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund and the Industrial Heat Recovery Support Programme, as well as our wide-reaching Energy Innovation Programme. For example, the £20m Industrial Fuel Switching competition aims to stimulate early investment in fuel switching processes and technologies, such as biomass, hydrogen and electricity, as part of our innovation programme to support the decarbonisation of heavy industry.