The U.K. government published a new strategy on hydrogen use Tuesday, saying the country’s hydrogen economy could potentially support up to 100,000 jobs and be worth as much as £13 billion ($17.88 billion) by the middle of the century.
In a foreword to the strategy, Kwasi Kwarteng, the U.K.’s business and energy secretary, said the government, working with industry, wanted 5 gigawatts of “low carbon hydrogen production capacity” by the year 2030, which would be used across the economy.
“This could produce hydrogen equivalent to the amount of gas consumed by over 3 million households in the UK each year,” Kwarteng said.
Explaining how it could be deployed in the years ahead, he added: “This new, low carbon hydrogen could help provide cleaner energy to power our economy and our everyday lives — from cookers to distilleries, film shoots to power plants, waste trucks to steel production, and 40 tonne diggers to the heat in our homes.”
While there is excitement about potential use cases for low carbon hydrogen, the government’s strategy also tempered expectations when it came to using it for heating, stating it expected demand “to be relatively low” by 2030.
The 5 GW target was previously included in the government’s 10-point plan for a so-called “green industrial revolution,” published last November.
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