Study contradicts Rees-Mogg over hydrogen for heating

Image source, Reuters

The study casts doubt on the government's claims that hydrogen can be used to heat homes.

There were more than 30 studies that looked at hydrogen and heating.

Hydrogen was less efficient and more expensive than alternatives.

The business secretary told the Commons that hydrogen was a silver bullet.

Hydrogen does not give off CO2 when it burns, leading to hopes that it could be used to decarbonise the economy.

With some adjustments piped through to people's houses to heat them during the winter, hydrogen could be used as a way to store excess renewable power.

Many energy scientists agree with Mr. Rees-Mogg's assessment that hydrogen could be used to store energy on windy or sunny days when renewables are generating more electricity than the grid needs. Shipping, steel production and aviation are some of the specialist industries that will prove hard toelectrify.

The report's author and Europe Director at the Regulatory Assistance Project says that using hydrogen for heating may seem attractive at first glance.

According to all of the independent research on this topic, heating with hydrogen is a lot less efficient and more expensive than alternatives such as heat pumps, district heating and solar thermal.

It is appealing that hydrogen can be made from water and that it is clean when burned. There are big challenges associated with how the hydrogen is made. Most of the world's hydrogen is manufactured using fossil fuels, which is more harmful to the environment than just using methane gas.

Electricity from renewable sources has to be used to lyse water for hydrogen to be considered green. The process is not efficient

Generating electricity from wind or solar, converting it into hydrogen and burning it at home uses more energy than just using the electricity to heat a home with a heat pump

In the UK, heating homes with green hydrogen would use six times more renewable electricity than heat pumps.

He said that they don't have the time or resources to investigate hydrogen's role in home heating.

There was a risk that hydrogen for heating in the future could lead to a delay in the deployment of clean heating technologies that are already available today, according to the report.