UK Hydrogen Economy

The Government has legally binding targets under the Climate Change Act 2008 to reach ‘net zero’ carbon emissions by 2050. Background information is available from the Library webpage on Climate Change: an overview. 

In order to meet the net zero target, the use of fossil fuels (without abatement such as carbon capture usage and storage) across the economy will need to be almost entirely phased out by 2050. Hydrogen gas is regarded as an energy option to help decarbonisation, especially in relation to applications that may be more challenging to decarbonise. These applications include heating, transport (including heavy goods, shipping, and aviation) and some industrial processes. 

The Government has legally binding targets under the Climate Change Act 2008 to reach ‘net zero’ carbon emissions by 2050. Background information is available from the Library webpage on Climate Change: an overview.

In order to meet the net zero target, the use of fossil fuels (without abatement such as carbon capture usage and storage) across the economy will need to be almost entirely phased out by 2050.^[1],[2] Hydrogen gas is regarded as an energy option to help decarbonisation, especially in relation to applications that may be more challenging to decarbonise.^[3] These applications include heating, transport (including heavy goods, shipping, and aviation) and some industrial processes.^[4]

[1]     CCC, 2019. Net Zero – The UKs contribution to stopping global warming.

[2]     National Grid, 2020. Future Energy Scenarios 2020.

[3]     Sectors can be harder to decarbonise for many reasons, but a key reason is that the energy these sectors use cannot easily be replaced with electricity (an energy source with many low carbon generation options such as a renewables).

[4]     CCC, Hydrogen in a low-carbon economy, November 2018