UK Hydrogen Policy Damaging Energy Security
Just as the world wakes up to the huge potential of natural hydrogen deposits, which could fuel the planet “for hundreds of years,” the UK government has dropped plans to replace home gas boilers with hydrogen alternatives.
The US Geological Survey concluded in April 2023 that there is probably enough accessible hydrogen in the earth’s subsurface to meet total global demand for “hundreds of years”. In May, Française De l’Énergie and researchers from GeoRessources made Europe’s biggest discovery to date, finding 15pc hydrogen content at a depth of 1,100 metres.
Domestic heating accounts for about 17% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, and heating industry lobbyists have been pushing Hydrogen for years, but the UK industry is doing little to train the workforce in the complexities of new heating tech, or to prepare suitable products ready for the switch to hydrogen, originally scheduled by 2030 but now 2035.
Grant Shapps, UK energy minister, has indicated it is “less likely” that hydrogen would be routinely piped into people’s homes, amid growing concerns about cost, safety and perpetuating a reliance on fossil fuels.
However the use of fossil fuels continues to increase globally, and other carbon reduction techniques could be used.
Shapps said: “There was a time when people thought … you will have something that just looks like a gas boiler and we will feed hydrogen into it.”
He added: “It’s not that we won’t do trials. We will. But I think hydrogen will be used for storing energy.” Energy firms have insisted that hydrogen can be safe and engaged in concerted lobbying of both the government and Labour to convince them of its merits.
But the assurances have failed to convince people asked to take part in large-scale trials of the technology.
Meanwhile, there are limited incentives to encourage UK heating engineers to specialise in low flow temperature heating. Dr Richard Lowes, senior associate, Regulatory Assistance Project, said the existing UK heating market had focused largely on combination boilers, as they were easier to install and quicker to fit than lower carbon systems because they need fewer design calculations during specification to ensure effective performance.
Systems such as solar thermal or heat pumps, which operate at lower flow temperatures, also require hot water storage, and heat loss from storage renders many systems useless.
By comparison, the price of boiler installation is much higher in Germany due to a focus by engineers in the country around designing system boilers which include combining hot water storage with functions such as weather compensation and other design considerations, Dr Lowes said. These features are intended to ensure a more efficient operation.
The existing UK installer market has two different types of HVAC engineer – those focused solely on providing and servicing simple gas or oil boilers, and design engineers looking at ensuring specific flow temperatures to increase the levels of condensing and also …