Hydrogen boiler push to continue despite verdict of UK watchdog
Hydrogen boiler push to continue despite verdict of UK watchdog
Government and gas-focused industry body resist conclusion that heat pumps are ‘only viable’ option for heating UK homes
Government and gas-focused industry body resist conclusion that heat pumps are ‘only viable’ option for heating UK homes
Why not use lecky ? Hydrogen is pretty expensive to produce and to store.
Why not just use electricity.
Hydrogen could be useful for aircraft or off grid situations.
With some nuclear capacity, electric heating makes the most sense. Just let off-peak boilers use that off-peak nuclear electricity.
The problem is, a lot of people want to push 100% renewables.
Solar overproduces in summer and wind has strong days and weak days. Batteries are economically great for short term energy storage (i.e. charging and discharging at least once a day and profiting off of those arbitrages), but they will always be way too expensive for seasonal or multi-day storage. Imagine paying a very cheap $50 for a kWh battery in 2030 and only cycling it 50 times a year. Over a decade, that's an insane 10c per kWh just for the battery, excluding all other generating and financing costs.
The only way out is to have the windmills generate hydrogen on windy days and then push the hydrogen through the old natural gas pipelines.
And you'll have to subsidize it, because economically it will never be very competitive.
The "watchdog" in question is basically the marketing wing of the heat pump industry.
I’m not sure we read the same article!
The “watchdog” is the UK’s National Infrastructure Commission, which is staffed entirely by civil servants, and whose remit covers far more than domestic heating. Not sure I see a link to the heat pump industry.
If anything, the opposite is true - the Energy and Utilities Alliance (who are quoted as being pro-hydrogen) is an industry body comprised of gas companies and boiler manufacturers, some of whom are selling boilers branded as “hydrogen mix ready” despite the UK having little to no infrastructure to distribute hydrogen at scale.