Baroness Brown, a former vice chair of the Climate Change Committee (CCC), is one of the members of a new group called the “Hydrogen Policy Commission.” This group will help policymakers as the green and blue hydrogen sectors grow in the UK.
In addition to Baroness Brown, there will be senior representatives from the Conservative Party, Labour Party, and Liberal Democrats on the Commission. They will be joined by people who work in hydrogen from the private sector and senior academics from the UK.
There will be a report later this year from the Commission about the UK government’s Hydrogen Strategy. The Commission will do this first. It has set up an eight-month meeting with people from industry and academia, as well as high-ranking officials from both the national and local government.
The Hydrogen Strategy was released last August. It builds on the promise made in the Ten-Point Plan to have 5GW of “low-carbon” hydrogen generation capacity in the UK by 2030.
In a statement, the European Commission said that it is worried that the Strategy isn’t ambitious enough or clear enough about how it will help people achieve long-term goals. This will make it hard for businesses to invest. Energy trade group the Energy Networks Association (ENA) said this month that the government should set a goal of 10GW of low-carbon hydrogen production by 2030 and give more money to help meet that goal.
Concerns have also been raised about the Strategy’s focus on blue hydrogen, which is made with natural gas and carbon capture technology; and whether the Government is focusing on the right hydrogen end-user sectors to make the most of both cost and carbon savings.
The Commission will look into these issues and figure out how the UK government can become a global leader in the export of hydrogen and other technologies. Baroness Brown has said that, at the moment, the UK is at risk of making the same mistakes it made with wind turbines and battery technologies, which have let countries like China get ahead in the global race for new technologies.
There should be an update on the Hydrogen Strategy by the end of the year.
