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
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/21/hydrogen-boiler-home-heating-ukOpen linkView original on kbin.social
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.
Nothing is too expensive. The amount of money that is wasted as astronomical. Think some could be put to good use.
Good fo some things for hydrogen or use those extra days to charge Evs and charge all the home batteries.
Plenty things they could charge
I, for one, am not happy with the way energy prices are going.
Wat too expensive for my taste. A quadrupling in a decade for me.
What are you saying? You want more coal ?.
If the goal is just making heat, there's little difference between the two.
Well now no. That's dumb. I can burn humans to make heat. I can burn coal. The point is the least amount of damage to the planet and the things on it ?
Us
Both are zero emissions. Neither of which does much harm to the planet.
Hydrogen can be produced from fossil fuels though. Unfortunately no way to say hydrogen was produced through green means
That's true of electricity too. There's no way of telling fossil fuel from green electricity.
This is true. Which is why you remove fossil fuels from the grid. Why add extra costs and infrastructure for hydrogen. Just use electricity for heating and hydrogen for planes maybe long haul truckers and sea freight
The infrastructure cost for hydrogen is much cheaper than the cost of expanding the grid. We simply start making a lot of green hydrogen and that will displace fossil hydrogen. Even the grid will rely on hydrogen for backup power generation.
The "watchdog" in question is basically the marketing wing of the heat pump industry.
Hydrogen for heating is incredibly stupid and will never happen. The only reason why this option exists is to sell outdated technology.
It is happening. Don't let the competing industries tell you differently.
Show me where it is happening? Like actually and not on paper.
We've already tested the idea. Even in the UK: https://envirotecmagazine.com/2020/11/16/uks-first-hydrogen-heating-demonstration-takes-place-in-northumberland/
We know that it works.
Of course it works. It is just expensive as fuck.
Everything gets cheaper over time. If that's all you can say, then you are admitting that eventually it will be cheap enough for mass deployment.
🤦♂️
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.
The "watchdog" group is an organization founded by Tories, and the lead guy is probably there just because he's tall. It's not a credible organization.
Look at the list of commissioners and their credentials. Many are economists but there are several civil engineers and even an Oxford professor who is a former director of the Environmental Change Institute. Mostly they seem legit.
I’m as happy to go Tory-bashing as most, but let’s at least make our disdain evidence-based.
Look at the guys comment history, he's fucked up about hydrogen lol.
Not everyone is on the same page as the leadership of that group. I'm sure if they did a real poll of all experts there, many will disagree with the leadership.