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

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the potential impact of the development of a hydrogen strategy on employment in the UK.

The Government is committed to exploring the development of hydrogen as a strategic decarbonised energy carrier, alongside electricity and other decarbonised gases. As such we are currently developing our strategic approach to hydrogen and its potential to deliver against our net zero goals. In November 2019 we published the Energy Innovation Needs Assessment (EINA) for hydrogen and fuel cells. This identified that the future market for all hydrogen technologies could yield around £5.3bn of GVA and create nearly 50,000 jobs by 2050 to meet demand in export and domestic markets.

We are already investing up to £121m in innovation to support a range of projects exploring and developing hydrogen across the value chain, unlocking jobs and growth. We are developing further policies to grow the UK hydrogen sector and will assess the impact of these in due course, including the positive impact this could have on clean growth and jobs.