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 2 March 2020 to Question 20600, what recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for International Trade on the export potential of UK green hydrogen technologies.

While I have not had any direct discussions on this, BEIS officials are in regular contact with DIT counterparts and Welsh Government officials on this matter.

We are exploring hydrogen’s potential to deliver against our clean growth goals – meeting our decarbonisation needs and capturing the commercial opportunities of the global low carbon shift.

There is tremendous opportunity for the UK to build both internal capacity and export potential for low carbon hydrogen. The future market for all?hydrogen?technologies could yield around £5.3bn of GVA and create nearly 50,000 jobs to meet demand in export and domestic markets[1].

With South Wales being one of the UK’s key industrial clusters, we will continue to work closely with the Welsh Government and local stakeholders on a range of decarbonisation options including low carbon hydrogen.

[1] Energy Innovation Needs Assessment, Sub-theme report – Hydrogen and Fuel Cells, October 2019 - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/energy-innovation-needs-assessments.