Recommendation 33

We asked DESNZ if it was aware of the level of uncertainty for industry given that an increasing number of businesses do not know what the government’s position is on heat decarbonisation. DESNZ told us that it needed to “take decisions in the right order at the right time” and, in its view, it remained the case that a decision on hydrogen should be taken in 2026. It told us that there was a risk that taking decisions earlier could result in it becoming locked into a “suboptimal path”.67 In contrast, the NAO and written submissions to our inquiry from Hydrogen UK, Good Energy and Octopus Energy have called for the government to consider bringing forward some aspects of its decision on hydrogen.68