Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what estimate he has made of the (a) carbon footprint of the methane plasma process for producing hydrogen and (b) suitability of that process for Government decarbonisation grants such as the net zero hydrogen fund.

The most common form of converting methane into hydrogen is through steam or thermal reformation. Plasma technology could also be used to convert methane into hydrogen, but this has not yet been proven at commercial scale. This was not one of the hydrogen production routes modelled to support the development of the UK Low Carbon Hydrogen Standard as this was not considered to be amongst the main potential routes for production in the UK pipeline and lacked broadly available emissions data. As set out in the standard, the Government welcomes evidence from stakeholders on emerging technologies and potential production routes that could contribute to the UK’s future net zero energy system.