Hydrogen boilers are a waste of time, climate committee to warn Miliband

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Burning hydrogen to heat millions of homes would be a waste of Britain’s stretched resources, the Government’s independent climate advisers are poised to tell ministers.

In the latest “carbon budget” expected this Tuesday, the powerful Climate Change Committee (CCC) will urge Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, to drop proposals for hydrogen to be used as a replacement for natural gas in domestic heating.

The committee is expected to echo long-running concerns about the energy-intensive nature of making hydrogen via electrolysis, arguing that doing so at a large enough scale to supply households would drive up the already vast cost of net zero.

Instead, it is likely to recommend that Mr Miliband prioritises the switch to electrically powered alternatives such as heat pumps.

Ministers have vowed to consult on options for hydrogen heating this year and make a decision on whether to progress it in 2026.

The CCC’s intervention, which is advice only, will be seen as the latest blow to gas network companies, which hope hydrogen heating could extend the lifespan of more than 170,000 miles of pipes across the country that currently supply around 85pc of homes.

Politicians including Boris Johnson have repeatedly praised hydrogen as a potential like-for-like replacement for natural gas because it emits no carbon dioxide when burned.

Gas network operators including Cadent and National Gas, both owned by Australian investment bank Macquarie, have suggested the idea could result in savings by repurposing existing gas pipes rather than installing new infrastructure.

However, experts have warned that hydrogen is costly to make and carries a higher risk of explosions than natural gas because of its higher propensity to leak, which also makes it more difficult to transport and store.

The National Infrastructure Commission has already warned ministers about the sky-high cost of hydrogen heating.

In a 2023 report, the commission said the enormous power requirements of mass-producing hydrogen would result in £385bn of extra costs because of the amount of additional electricity pylons and wind farms required.

The Government has sought to explore the potential of hydrogen for home heating through a series of local trials. Redcar in Yorkshire, Whitby near Ellesmere Port, Aberdeen, Scunthorpe, and two Welsh towns were among the locations being considered for wholesale conversion to hydrogen for heating.

However, ministers was forced to cancel a string of trials following local opposition and concerns about a lack of current supplies.

The Government announced £2bn worth of subsidies for 11 hydrogen production schemes in 2023, agreeing to pay an average price of £241 per megawatt hour (MWh) for the fuel that’s produced.

By comparison, Hinkley Point C, the 3.3-gigawatt nuclear power plant being built in Somerset, received a strike price for its power of £92.50 per MWh, adjusted for inflation.

At the moment, the case for subsidising “green” hydrogen, which is created using renewable electricity, is based on hopes its cost could eventually be driven down.

But critics have argued there is no certainty prices will ever reach levels comparable to alternative sources of clean power.

Despite the doubts, politicians in Scotland have continued to talk up the potential of hydrogen, with John Swinney, the First Minister, opening two houses supplied with the gas in Fife.

Under the Fife scheme, which is run by SGN, several hundred homes in Leven will have their mains supply switched from natural gas to hydrogen, with the company covering the cost of installing new boilers and cooking hobs.

However, the scheme is heavily subsidised and green energy think tank E3G has estimated that if replicated across the UK it would cost £40bn a year – equivalent to £1,800 per household.

“For hydrogen heating to be adopted by consumers, it would need to receive a significant, indefinite subsidy to bring running costs into line with other heating options,” E3G said.
A spokesman for the CCC declined to comment.

The headline should red – “Milliband is a waste of time, the whole country warns the government”

Wind, solar, and hydrogen are all wastes of time and money; this has been known to anyone with more than 4 brain cells for a looong time.

The future is nuclear, and we need gas to get there. We’re trying to run before we can walk and spaffing tens of billions on rubbish that will need replacing in as little as 15 years, all while ironically killing more people than hydrocarbons.

Meanwhile let’s keep chopping down pristine ancient woodland to chip & barge over for Drax to burn: a totally green, carbon neutral & very eco friendly source of energy. The planet will thank us.

There are tens of thousands of miles (maybe more) of existing gas pipes in the ground that would have to be upgraded to enable hydrogen to be safely distributed to people’s properties.

If everything slowly transitioned to electric instead then none of the cost of that upgrading these pipes would be necessary (apart from the ones that have to be done for the safe transport of the current gas).

Of course it will take some significant time to achieve the change, but you have to start sometime, so why make it more complicated than it needs to be.

I’m not really clued up on this, but wouldn’t that be incredibly dangerous?

Just get Rolls Royce to build their small nuclear reactors. Lots of them. For Heavens sake they’ve been making stuff to power our Nuclear Submarines for decades. British design, British built and British jobs. This Government needs to get a bloody grip

They’re not wrong. Heat pumps are the way, even municipal heating if you’re feeling radically ambitious, but you lose the impact if you don’t combine it with *massive* improvements to everyone’s insulation

I’d rather not have Hydrogen getting pumped into my house thanks.

Hydrogen boilers are literally the only thing which make sense.

It’s a trick by the fossil fuel industry to delay progress by advocating for impractical technology that can’t be delivered.

The chemical industry produces large amounts of hydrogen which is used in situ (mostly to make ammonia) and almost all of that production is from methane and generates CO2 (one carbon for every four hydrogens). When that process has been fully replaced by electrolysis, it might be time to look at other uses for electrolytic H2.

Producing hydrogen by electrolysis, pumping it to a dwelling and burning it for heat is an elaborate way to achieve electrical heating with less than 100% efficency. (Resistive heaters are 100% efficent, heat pumps are > 100% efficient).

Hydrogen and CCUS are both largely useless. It’s one of the few things as an Energy sector professional that really annoy me. They’re wasteful distractions from actually building low carbon power and getting the cost down.

Hydrogen is currently made from natural gas. This is obviously not a solution.

Burning gas in a turbine to then power a heat pump gives you more useful heat than burning gas for heat. From an efficiency point they are just objectively better.

The difficulty is that they can be rather expensive. Got mine when I moved into the house so having a bunch of carpet ripped up and floorboards removed to install a new central heating system wasn’t much of an issue, but I can see it would be pretty disruptive if you were already living there.