Aviation: Hydrogen
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to her Department's press release entitled Over £7 million to fuel zero-emission flight across the UK, published on 23 July 2026, what assessment her Department has made of the extent to which the funded technologies will reduce reliance on overseas manufacturers and strengthen the domestic aerospace industry.
Answered by Department for Transport
The Government is currently undertaking a review of the 2022 Jet Zero Strategy with a view to publishing an updated strategy in early 2027. This review will consider a range of measures to reduce and mitigate the environmental impacts of aviation including the role of zero emission flight.
The Zero Emission Flight Demonstrator competition is targeted at the deployment of new forms of aircraft rather than the UK’s share of the global aerospace manufacturing market. As such no assessment specific to that issue has been undertaken. The Government, led by the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade has set out in the Modern Industrial Strategy a range of measures to support UK aerospace manufacturing. These include a commitment of up to £2.3 billion of R&D funding over 10 years to the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) Programme.
When launching the competition on 16 February 2026 Innovate UK published the aims and themes which funded projects should address. Further to this an evaluation approach is being established. We aim to publish the final output of the evaluation at the conclusion of the competition.
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