Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what recent estimate her Department has made of the operating expenditure cost of generating one tonne of blue hydrogen in a plant commissioning by 2030.

'Hydrogen Production Costs 2021’, published by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in August 2021, sets out the levelised cost of various hydrogen production technologies. The annex to the report (worksheet '2030_R') sets out a range of levelised costs for gas reformation with CCUS (blue) hydrogen production commissioning in 2030. Costs range from 1,454 to 3,096 £/tonne hydrogen depending on technology [1]. Please see:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hydrogen-production-costs-2021

We will continue to monitor and update cost estimates based on new evidence as it becomes available.

[1] Costs are calculated on the basis that the hydrogen is used for combustion and the latent heat of vaporisation of water is recovered.