Hydrogen Heating
Hydrogen can be burned in a boiler as an alternative to Calor gas. This would at least require boiler conversion and potential replacement. It should (subject to survey) be possible to use the existing pipes.
This is a potential solution at Lower Mill Estate where there is a private Calor Gas network, which we can investigate.
How It Works
Relatively Inefficient
Where heat pumps are ~300% efficient the creation of hydrogen and burning of it is obviously less than 100% efficent
Utilise existing network
Hydrogen should be able to use the existing pipe network on LME (subject to survey) and some boilers may be upgradable to burn hydrogen. It’s likely new storage tanks would be required.
No Radiator Upgrades
Should work with existing radiator systems
The large-scale viability of hydrogen heating is currently under evaluation by the UK and other governments, with significant cost and GHG emission considerations to be resolved.
Currently, most hydrogen is created by steam reforming of natural gas (methane) and releases a lot of CO2 and methane; this is called grey hydrogen and has little or no GHG reduction benefits.
Blue hydrogen is being developed at scale, this is still produced from methane but promises to capture the escaping methane and CO2 using Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). However, it is not yet clear if and when CCS technology will improve sufficiently in performance and cost to make this work well and if methane leaks can be kept sufficiently low – methane is 80x more potent as a GHG than CO2, therefore even quite modest methane leakage from Blue Hydrogen production can have a huge impact on its total CO2e emissions.
Green hydrogen is also being developed; it uses the electrolysis of water to create hydrogen. If the electricity used is generated sustainably then green hydrogen is net-zero. However, it uses a lot of electricity and is hence relatively expensive compared to using electricity directly for heating. The theory is that one day there will be a lot of cheap excess electricity from renewables at times of peak wind or solar that can be used to generate hydrogen. However, this is likely many years away as we are far from having enough capacity now and for even 100% sustainable at peak output, and even when we do much of the excess will be needed for grid storage. It’s unlikely the capital costs would make it viable to generate hydrogen at LME.
Its main benefit at LME would be if it could give a quick and broad solution to replacing Calor Gas without excessive running costs.