Hydrogen will be essential to ensuring the UK has a low-carbon and prosperous economy in the decades to come.
Building on the UK’s strengths
Producing, transporting and using hydrogen will require skills and experience already deeply embedded across the UK.
The UK’s oil and gas industry supports hundreds of thousands of jobs directly and indirectly through the supply chain. It has made a huge contribution to the UK for over sixty years.
The vast skills and experience accumulated in the sector will be vital for the future development of hydrogen in the UK. The hydrogen sector will give new life to pipelines currently used for natural gas, while our existing gas network can be repurposed to deliver hydrogen to homes and businesses. We will sustain jobs and continue to benefit from the collective experience of tens of thousands of engineers.
Creating new opportunities
Developing hydrogen will create thousands of new jobs in new sectors. As we scale up hydrogen production, thousands of new opportunities will be created in electrolyser manufacturing and deployment.
Hydrogen will be needed to decarbonise and sustain existing industries and jobs in a variety of sectors – it will be key to the low-carbon transition.
Having affordable, low-carbon hydrogen will in turn enable new industries to develop. Examples include the manufacture of hydrogen-powered aircraft and container ships. Hydrogen will also help to secure a low-emissions future for key industries such as steel.
And in the long term, cheap, low-carbon hydrogen will enable entrepreneurs and innovators to experiment with other potential applications, creating economic growth and new jobs.
Delivering benefits across the UK
The economic benefits of hydrogen will be spread right across the UK. Of the UK’s current biggest hydrogen projects, all but one are located outside of the south-east of England, with Scotland, the north- east, north-west and Wales all well represented. Hydrogen will create £14bn in additional economic growth for the UK.
Most of this growth will flow to communities across northern England, Scotland and Wales, which will host major hydrogen projects, bringing in investment and creating new, highly skilled jobs.
