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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to the Answer of 13 April 2021 to Question 173996, how much of the £171 million announced by the Government for hydrogen projects in the Industrial Decarbonisation Strategy is planned to be allocated to projects that include green hydrogen.

The Government announced £171m of funding to support nine projects looking to decarbonise activity across five industrial clusters through the Industrial Decarbonisation Challenge. Projects in Scotland, South Wales, Humberside, Teesside and the North West will all receive government support to deploy a range of low-carbon infrastructure and technologies, including but not limited to, low carbon hydrogen. The hydrogen projects supported in these cluster locations will be enabled by the development of the CO2 transport and storage network (blue hydrogen),and will in turn enable decarbonisation across the cluster in line with the objectives of the fund.

The UK has expertise and assets to support both electrolytic (green) and Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS) enabled (blue) hydrogen. Our twin track approach to enable both routes will drive cost effective supply volumes in the 2020s in line with our 2030 5GW ambition, whilst scaling up green hydrogen. Government support for hydrogen production, through the Net Zero Hydrogen Fund and business models is intended to support both green and blue hydrogen projects.

We will publish the first ever UK Hydrogen Strategy this year which will set out the key steps needed in the 2020s to deliver our 5GW ambition and set the context for further scale up on the way to net zero, this will include further details on the role of green hydrogen.