Michael Fallon welcomes publication of hydrogen cars report
Michael Fallon welcomes the publication of the full UKH2Mobility report on hydrogen vehicles.
Welcoming the publication of the full UKH2Mobility report on hydrogen vehicles, Business and Energy Minister Michael Fallon said:
Securing new economic opportunities for the UK, diversifying our national energy supply and driving down carbon emissions go to the heart of my job in government. The findings of the report demonstrate hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles can have a real impact on all three.
It is very positive that all the UKH2Mobility partners will be joining us in the next phase of the project where they will be joined by Sainsbury’s. Successful commercialisation of the technology will require government to work in strong partnership with industry.
Prompt action is needed to ensure the potential benefits are realised by businesses and consumers in the UK and work on the next phase will start straight away.
The report provides further details and background to the findings published on 4 February 2013. It predicts over one and a half million hydrogen powered vehicles could be on UK roads by 2030.
The UKH2Mobility project - which brings together leading businesses from the automotive, energy, infrastructure and retail sectors with government – produced the report to provide a ‘roadmap’ for the introduction of vehicles and hydrogen refuelling infrastructure in the UK.
Sainsbury’s Head of Fuel, Richard Crampton said:
At Sainsbury’s we are always looking for solutions that reduce our impact on the environment and help our customers to live more sustainably. We currently have 280 filling stations serving customers throughout the UK and believe that exploring greener fuels today is fundamental to the long-term sustainability of our business.
We look forward to working together with government and the UKH2Mobility partners and to sharing our expertise to help shape this future low carbon solution. The project is also closely aligned to our own stretching target of reducing our operational carbon emissions by 30 per cent absolute by 2020.
Notes to editors
1.The full report is available from the BIS press office or can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-h2mmobility-potential-for-hydrogen-fuel-cell-electric-vehicles-phase-1-results
2 The press notice for the interim report can be found here https://www.gov.uk/government/news/future-of-hydrogen-powered-cars-mapped-out
3.The UKH2Mobility project was established to evaluate the benefits of hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs) to the UK and to develop a roadmap for the introduction of vehicles and hydrogen refuelling infrastructure.
4.There are currently twelve industry participants (below) in UKH2Mobility together with three UK government departments – The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, The Department for Transport and the Department for Energy and Climate Change in addition to the European Fuel Cells & Hydrogen Joint Undertaking.
- Air Liquide SA
- Daimler AG
- Hyundai Motor Company
- Intelligent Energy Limited
- ITM Power plc
- Johnson Matthey plc
- Morrisons
- Nissan Motor Manufacturing (UK) Ltd
- Sainsbury’s
- Scottish & Southern Energy plc
- The BOC Group Limited
- Toyota Motor Corporation
5.The government’s economic policy objective is to achieve ‘strong, sustainable and balanced growth that is more evenly shared across the country and between industries’. It set four ambitions in the ‘Plan for Growth’ (PDF 1.7MB), published at Budget 2011:
- to create the most competitive tax system in the G20
- to make the UK the best place in Europe to start, finance and grow a business
- to encourage investment and exports as a route to a more balanced economy
- to create a more educated workforce that is the most flexible in Europe.
Work is underway across government to achieve these ambitions, including progress on more than 250 measures as part of the Growth Review. Developing an Industrial Strategy gives new impetus to this work by providing businesses, investors and the public with more clarity about the long-term direction in which the government wants the economy to travel.