Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | JUNE 2021 | 23 Policy & Regulation "The debate seems to be dominated by peo- ple with more polarised views, but if you talk to the vast majority there is a recognition that we need both. "Hydrogen is not a silver bullet, but not all homes are suitable for heat pumps. We know that there is a need for both these technologies." While acknowledging that heat pumps are a more e• cient way of providing heating, hydrogen has "huge bene• ts" as an inter- seasonal storage mechanism. "A mix of heat pumps with some hydrogen is the way to go. Like the Mastercard advert, loads of homes are suitable for heat pumps: for everything else there is hydrogen," she says. "We all think heat pumps should be deployed as fast as humanly possible. Doing hydrogen trials and pilots is not an excuse to take the foot o‚ the pedal, we need both. Let's not close any of these options o‚ ." Foster adds that the injection of hydrogen into the gas network will help to spread the costs of decarbonisation, which otherwise will be felt more sharply by some house- holds than others. "Over 40 years it becomes a manageable sum. If you are decarbonising individual homes o‚ the gas grid, you don't have that socialised option," he says. Greenpeace's Parr dismisses these argu- ments, although he concedes they are "seductive" for policymakers because they keep in operation what would otherwise become stranded assets. "The beguiling thing is that hydrogen holds out the prospect of solving political and institutional di• cul- ties by switching fuels. It is beguiling but it kicks the problem down the line because you will start to have to move to heat pumps and insulation in due course, so you have just created massive stranded assets and put o‚ resolving the problem." How green is hydrogen? The problem with hydrogen-ready boilers and injecting the gas into the grid is that it keeps this polluting form of heating. Green hydrogen, the low-carbon produc- tion process that uses electrolysis to release hydrogen from water, is still very expensive to produce. This means that for years to come, the hydrogen that will be injected into the network will predominantly be the so-called blue type, which is made from breaking down natural gas, and this creates emissions. The only way to minimise emissions from the blue hydrogen production process is through "enormous amounts" of carbon cap- ture and storage, which Greenpeace's Parr doesn't believe will be delivered. He says: "The concern about hydrogen for heating is not driven by an anti-capitalist desire for oil companies to get their come- uppance; it's driven by the fact that the maths don't stack up. "We can't go down the hydrogen heating route because you can't deliver the emissions reductions necessary." He argues that the supply of "green" hydrogen, or eco-hydrogen, will always be limited and will be too valuable a resource to be used for home heating. It should be reserved for areas like industry and long- term power storage where fewer decarboni- sation alternatives exist. "You're going to need hydrogen and quite a lot of it," says Parr. "You can argue that other technologies might be able to do the job but in terms of versatility hydrogen has a lot to o‚ er "It seems that home heating is not the place you would want to put it when we know alternatives exist and can that should be rolled out," he says, citing heat pumps and district heating as two well-established alternatives. Even once the government's planned expansion of o‚ shore wind power has taken place, there may be more resource-e• cient ways of using any spare electricity generated by this intermittent source of power, such as exporting it via interconnectors to the Continent. However, if the whole of northern Europe embraces wind power as enthusiastically as the UK, there could be spare electricity that could be best harnessed for hydrogen pro- duction. "There could be periods when we have more than enough [electricity] for our- selves and if you can't shi— it o‚ shore, not curtailing and using it for hydrogen would be a good use," says Parr. "We are going to be electrifying both transport and heat, so using it for grid bal- ancing would be a good thing." Parr also says that adding it could also help to take the edge o‚ peaks of demand by providing back- up generating capacity for electric district heating systems. However, Foster says it is simply wrong to claim there won't be enough hydrogen to go round. "The same arguments were made about wind power," he says. "As more capacity comes on stream, costs will plunge. Exactly the same will happen with green hydrogen." So far the government has said it wants 600,000 heat pumps installed by 2028 while backing pilot projects for hydrogen home heating, which is due to culminate in a town- wide trial. But the fractious debates could understandably leave policymakers con- fused, says the Ground Source Heat Pump Association's Beanland: "They don't know which side to believe." And the arguments will continue unless the heat and building strategy, which was due to be published nearly a year ago, pro- vides some clearer pointers about the future of home heating. The last word goes to Fos- ter: "There is a vacuum where government policy should be." David Blackman, policy correspondent "With the best will in the world, we may not want the debate to be about molecules versus electrons but it is." Mike Foster, CEO, the Energy and Utilities Alliance

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