Hydrogen could bring significant benefits to the UK’s energy system: heating homes and businesses, powering vehicles, and balancing intermittent renewables. This new roadmap provides an overarching industrial strategy for hydrogen and fuel cells to play a greater role in the UK’s energy mix.

The principal benefits outlined in the report are:

Environmental benefits – Adoption of hydrogen and fuel cells will improve air quality today, and following the actions described could reduce UK CO2 emissions by tens of millions of tonnes per year.

Economic benefits – By 2025, tens of millions of pounds and 1,000s of jobs could be created directly in the supply chain. These would underpin future growth in key UK manufacturing sectors such as automotive and energy-intensive industries as the world adopts tighter environmental targets.

The UK national roadmap has an appendix describing strategies for success in 11 key market segments where the UK could show leadership and derive economic, energy and environmental benefits, to 2025 and beyond.

E4tech worked with Element Energy to develop the roadmap, including ten workshops with stakeholders in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, and London. The roadmap was commissioned and steered by Innovate UK, the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS, formerly known as Department of Energy and Climate Change, DECC), Transport Scotland, the Scottish Government, Scottish Enterprise, the Scottish Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association (SHFCA), the UK Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association (UKHFCA), and the Knowledge Transfer Network (KTN).

Download the report and learn more about E4tech’s work in fuel cells and hydrogen here and in strategy development here.