Hydrogen is high on the agenda for mayoral election candidates across the UK

This article was first published by Business Green.

Some of the leading mayoral candidates for next month’s elections have made manifesto commitments to introduce hydrogen technology into their region within the next four years, should they be elected.

This marks the beginning of a new stage in the UK’s emerging hydrogen policy landscape. Until now, a lot of the calls for hydrogen have been from industry and academia, supported by MPs and local government leaders with big hydrogen production capacity, and therefore job creation potential - such as Teesside. The message has been ‘we can do hydrogen, let’s get going.’

Now, the message emerging from these manifestos is politicians saying ‘we want hydrogen, let’s get going’. This is a major shift, and will only grow as other councils seek to secure some of the ￡3bn of ‘shovel-ready’ private investment for UK hydrogen projects for their nations and regions

At Beyond2050, we have been analysing the manifestos for the 2021 elections in Scotland, Wales and the English mayoral regions. Hydrogen features strongly across manifestos at all levels, but not universally. 

In Scotland, every party has made strong commitments on hydrogen - but this is unsurprising given the Scottish Government has already pledged to produce 5GW of hydrogen by 2030, and hydrogen buses have been in use in Aberdeen since the turn of the year. In London on the other hand, there are just two brief mentions of hydrogen buses from the Conservative and Liberal Democrats candidates. Given that control of Transport for London is one of the Mayor's key powers, the lack of ambition from the candidates is striking (but this likely reflects the wider funding and political crisis at TfL rather than an outright dismissal of hydrogen).

Most interesting are the manifestos of Steve Rotheram, Andy Street and Tracy Brabin. In Liverpool, where Rotheram is highly likely to keep hold of his seat, the commitments include the production of “clean hydrogen” within the city region by 2023, “replacing methane with hydrogen in the city region’s gas grid by 2035” and switching “all Merseytravel and Combined Authority fleet vehicles” to electric or hydrogen.

In the West Midlands, both the main contenders to be Mayor post 6 May have commitments to hydrogen buses, but Andy Street goes further and aligns with Liverpool by committing to launch a programme for “the installation of hydrogen-ready boilers.”

And in the newly created role of Mayor of West Yorkshire, 1/10 favourite Tracy Brabin, has described green hydrogen as "one of the most exciting zero carbon solutions" and pledged to work to “develop a Hydrogen Economy which could provide zero carbon solutions for heavy vehicles and heating as well as creating thousands of jobs”.

These local-level commitments, combined with the multiple hydrogen hubs concept that have developed over the past few months, are helpful on a UK-wide government policy scale. It shows that many local leaders want hydrogen in their community because they see it as a route to net zero, cleaner air and local job creation. And given that hydrogen can require a complex combination of supply and demand, ministers in Whitehall should find comfort in seeing devolved administrations and local leaders putting themselves forward to be first movers in these new technologies.

It’s likely too that we’ll see a domino effect as a result of these manifestos, especially as the vast majority of local authorities across the UK have ambitious decarbonisation and economic growth targets - but few clear policies for how these will be met. The friendly rivalry that exists between local authorities (particularly the English Metro Mayors) will see some seek to out-do their peers, especially when they see shiny new, zero emission, UK-made buses, trains and boilers being introduced across their peers' regions. Local government leaders are likely to want to be seen as moving fastest and with more ambition to get behind a future net zero economy where the UK can lead the globe. Hydrogen looks set to go local.