A hydrogen revolution

Today the government is launching its Hydrogen Strategy, its plan to demonstrate how the UK Government will work with industry to meet its ambition for 5GW of low carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030. Whilst the strategy hadn't been published at the time of writing it is understood that the government believes that hydrogen could and should play an important role in decarbonising energy-intensive industries like chemicals, oil refineries, power and heavy transport like shipping, HGV lorries and trains.

The rail industry is already making great strides into this and for this reason Network Rail identified hydrogen as being part of the solution in its Traction Decarbonisation Network Strategy published in July 2020. That document recommended that where track is currently not electrified 85% of it should be converted to electric traction, 8% to hydrogen traction and 5% to battery traction.

So I for one look forward with interest to see what the Strategy contains and to be part of the response to the consultation. We have already shown with regards to offshore wind that the UK can achieve a world-leading status by way of early government action together with strong private sector backing. Let's see if we can achieve the same with hydrogen.