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NETWORK / 40 / NOVEMBER 2016 T he idea of converting Britain's gas network to hydrogen to reduce the country's carbon emissions paints an intriguing picture of future energy provision, but we should be careful not to look at it through rose-tinted glasses. The possibility of a hydrogen network has attracted a lot of attention since the July 2016 launch of the H21 Leeds City Gate Project, which is designed to establish the Yorkshire city as a test site in the first step towards a "UK hydrogen conversion strategy." You have to admire the scale of the imagination and ambition behind H21, but what the project proposes is, for much of the UK, significantly flawed. And while H21 is making so much noise, it is crucial that alternative solutions to decarbonisation Could power-to-gas be a more realistic route to decarbonisation than investing in a hydrogen gas grid? Another gas future LOW CARBON GAS of isolating hydrogen from other chemical compounds is not carbon-free. H21 says that hydrogen will have to be extracted by steam methane reforming (SMR). SMR heats methane from natural gas with steam, usually with a catalyst, to produce a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen – a process that requires vast amounts of heat, burns fossil fuel, and creates CO₂. It will also be necessary to build the SMR plants. It's estimated that Leeds alone would need four 250MW SMRs. CCS Because SMR creates CO that is turned into CO₂ by adding oxygen, H21 has proposed deal- ing with this through carbon capture and storage (CCS). This means separating the CO₂ from are not drowned out of policymakers' discussions. I'd like to share my insight into the option of power-to-gas, based on my experience as a director of Viessmann, which has technolgies that are already helping to balance supply and demand in Germany. First, let's examine the flaws in the hydrogen argument. The appeal of hydrogen gas is that it can be burned without producing any CO₂. It's also abundant. There are, however, significant – and in some cases insurmountable – problems with the idea of a nationwide hydrogen gas network. Here are the seven big issues: CO 2 emissions Although hydrogen can be burned without emitting carbon, the proposed process