taken2often wrote:Gas boilers running on 20% Hydrogen and natural gas with an unbelievable promise to go 100% in due course to keep the Greens happy. This is the only way to utilise the massive pipe grid that exists. It will also soak up all available renewable electricity to make the Hydrogen. The back up generators will also be able to run on pure Hydrogen or a mix.
The basic problem with making hydrogen from electricity is that you lose half the original energy in the process of making and distributing it, compared to losing 5-10% in electricity distribution. So it's always going to have higher running costs than even direct heating with electricity, never mind with the multiplier effect of heat pumps.
The other problem is that there are going to be so many other applications that will be ahead of heating in the queue for hydrogen. For the next decade or so, all the hydrogen that can be produced will be going into chemical plants, fertiliser plants and the like. There will be a niche for hydrogen in domestic heating, but I suspect it won't be more than 10-20%.
Obviously the big attraction is that upfront costs to consumers are potentially much lower, but I think you'll see deals for heatpumps more akin to the iPhone model, where the upfront cost gets amortised over the course of a contract, perhaps with other providers able to take over mid-contract. Or the long-mooted "heating as a service" type contracts.
We'll get a clearer idea by 2026 according to the recent Hydrogen Strategy - the current plan is to have a 300-home trial in Fife in 2023, a "village-size" experiment by 2025, and then a big decision in 2026 on the future of hydrogen in heating, there may be a town-size trial by 2030 - "
we expect overall the demand for low carbon hydrogen for heating by 2030 to be relatively low (<1TWh)". They're suggesting that by 2030 the dedicated hydrogen pipeline system will only be a few 10's of kilometres, with the potential for national distribution by 2050.
pp76-78 talk about the prospects for blending with a decision in late 2023 on whether to start blending with a target of 20% - it seems they're quite keen on the idea just to encourage investment by providing producers with an offtake-of-last-resort, even if the benefits otherwise are pretty marginal.
"
We aim to consult (later in 2021)
on the case for enabling, or requiring, new natural gas boilers to be easily convertible to use hydrogen (‘hydrogen-ready’) by 2026"
But I think most (
***not all***) will end up electric.