How many grifters does it take to sell a hydrogen boiler?

I didn't set out to spend my time debunking nonsense use cases for hydrogen. It just sort of happened - perhaps it's my background in thermodynamics and finance, perhaps it's because I don't have a boss to worry about, perhaps I just enjoy it. So, yes, today we're going to talk about heating.

I wrote here about how I really hate bubbles. But there is something I hate even more - and that is grifters. By grifters I mean people lobbying for money for something that they know perfectly well either won't work, or if it does, it would be to the detriment of the very people who have to foot the bill.

For the past few years, increasingly substantial resources have been expended on persuading UK politicians that hydrogen represents the best way to decarbonize our heating systems. There were an estimated 120 hydrogen lobbyists at the UK's Labour and Conservative Party Conferences this month. Now, rumour has it that a consortium of gas producers, gas network distribution companies and the heating sector are about to launch a campaign marketing hydrogen heating to the general public.

Of course no campaign can change the fundamental physics or economics of hydrogen as a heating solution, which absolutely suck. If the goal is to use North Sea wind to heat our homes in winter, the Hydrogen Science Coalition has shown that it would require 5.8 times as many turbines to do so.

And if you think that we should be using blue hydrogen - clean hydrogen made by removing the carbon content from natural gas and storing it, we'll be getting to that too.

The story so far

No independent energy analysts think that hydrogen is going to play much of a role, if any, in space heating.

That is not a hyperbolic statement, it's the conclusion of a peer-reviewed study by Jan Rosenow , Principal and Director of European Programmes at the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP) , which describes itself as?an independent, global, non-governmental organization advancing policy innovation and thought leadership within the energy community.

Rosenow reviewed 32 studies carried out by a wide range of different organizations including universities, research institutes, international consulting companies and intergovernmental organizations such as the International Energy Agency and the IPCC. To make sure he was being fair, he screened out any studies that were carried out by or on behalf of any specific industry including heat pump manufacturers as well as oil and gas companies, utilities and boiler manufacturers. He was at pains to point out that "there are many legitimate current and potential end-uses for green hydrogen from renewable electricity, for example as a feed-stock in industry, for high-temperature processes, in shipping, and for long-term energy storage for electricity production."

But on heating, the reports Rosenow surveyed were unanimous: ""the widespread use of hydrogen for heating is not supported by any of the 32 studies identified in this review. Instead, existing independent research so far suggests that, compared to other alternatives such as heat pumps, solar thermal, and district heating, hydrogen use for domestic heating is less economic, less efficient, more resource intensive, and associated with larger environmental impacts."

On 27 September, the Guardian wrote an article summarising the findings of Rosenow's research - it looked like a small blow had been struck in the daily battle to provide the public with reliable information on energy.

The next day, however, the Guardian published a letter from Professor Gordon E Andrews of the University of Leeds, claiming that the Guardian article "gives an erroneous view of green hydrogen’s role in reaching net zero carbon emission". Professor Andrews claimed that it was "impossible to retrofit the 24m properties heated by gas with heat pumps in a sensible timescale", and that "by repurposing the gas grid for green hydrogen, as detailed by Northern Gas Networks in the Leeds H21 study, all 24m properties connected to the gas grid can be decarbonised". There was, no doubt, much rejoicing in the corridors of Grifterville.

The Guardian published a short response by Rosenow, which addressed some of the fallacies in Professor Andrews's letter. However, it is really worth diving into the sources cited by Professor Andrews in his letter, because to do so is to understand just how bad a decision it would be for our political leaders to go for hydrogen heating in the UK on any non-trivial scale.

Professor Andrews's first source was the 2016 Leeds City Gate H21 report into how heating in the City of Leeds could be switched to hydrogen. The second was an estimated cost of hydrogen from solar power by 2030 of 3p/kWh from the International Energy Agency.

The real takeaway of the Leeds H21 study is the exact opposite of the lesson Professor Andrews would have us draw. Instead of detailing a cheap and easy pathway to decarbonize UK heating by 2050, it details an extremely expensive pathway that would most definitely not get us there.

Ready? Let's go.

One-off cost of switching

The H21 study was a detailed analysis of how you could first switch heating in the City of Leeds to hydrogen, and then roll out the same process in 16 other major cities. It is a good piece of work, though as we shall see makes a lot of assumptions that make hydrogen look good. And no wonder: it was sponsored by two gas distribution network companies, an oilfield services provider and a company providing testing and certification services to the hydrogen sector.

The study estimates the price of switching Leeds to hydrogen heating at ￡2.05 billion (in 2016 money), split into ￡991 million of capital expenditure by the gas network and ￡1053 million of operating costs in the form of labour and appliances. For the illustrative roll-out to another 16 cities, covering about 30% of UK gas users, it comes up with a conversion cost of ￡57 billion.

We can calculate pro-rata what that would mean for the entire 24 million gas-heated homes in the UK - it would give a total of ￡190 billion. You can bet they didn't mention that figure on the hydrogen bus at the party conferences!

But even the ￡190 billion figure would be hopelessly optimistic.

• First, the areas left out by the H21 study would be much harder to switch than the cities they include.
• Second, the H21 figures are based on modelling what it would take to switch a 2,500 home "isolation zone" from natural gas to hydrogen. What this involves is closing and venting the gas main, then converting every gas-burning appliance – boilers, cookers, heaters – in every building. The report concluded that the 2,500-home target would take 939 gas fitters and 125 supervisors five days. And until the last appliance in the last house is done, you can't move that crew on to the next set of 2,500 homes. Not a chance, as we shall see.
• Third, the authors estimated a cost of ￡3,078 per home, pointing out that in 2010 the Isle of Man switched to natural gas at a cost of ￡3500 per home, and hoping for economies of scale. But switching to hydrogen is much harder than switching to natural gas. Hydrogen is a tiny molecule, much more prone to leakage than natural gas, which means every pipe needs to be checked and every leak dealt with - even if it's sealed behind a wall - and that takes time and costs money, a lot of it. Professor Andrews must know this since he is a professor of combustion.
• Fourth, hydrogen also has a much wider flammability range than methane (the main component of natural gas), igniting at concentrations between 4% and 74%, rather than just between of 5% and 15%. This is why regulations for handling hydrogen are so much more stringent than those for handling natural gas, and why a study undertaken for BEIS on the safety implications of hydrogen heating concluded that hydrogen boilers would cause four times as many home explosions as natural gas unless extra investments were made in safety measures (such as making sure every room with a hydrogen appliance or "substantial pipework" has a 10cm by 10cm non-closing vent to the outside within 50cm of the ceiling). Professor Andrews must know this too.
• Fifth, the H21 study only allows ￡1,723 per home for hardware. The authors assumed that half of all homes at the time of the switch already have pure-hydrogen-ready boilers, 40% have pure-hydrogen-ready cookers and 32% have pure-hydrogen-ready heaters. Today, the figure for all these is practically zero. And their allowance is based on the most basic of appliances – the heating and cooking equivalent of NHS Spectacles. If any homeowner wants a bigger oven, or a smarter heater for their front room, the cost would of course be higher.
• Sixth, the study assume that all homes in their 2,500 are happy switching to hydrogen. They don't appear to have a plan for what to do if a homeowner refuses (of which more below).
• Seventh, inflation. Enough said.

Would we have to double the figure of ￡190 billion, were we to want to switch all current gas users to hydrogen heating? You decide. One thing is for sure: it wouldn't be any cheaper than switching 24 million gas-heated homes to heat pumps and district heating. In April 2021 the Climate Change Committee calculated total net investment of between ￡182 billion (￡6,400 per home) and ￡302 billion (￡10,700 per home) for full decarbonization of residential heating by 2050.

2. Ongoing costs

In his letter, Professor Andrews cites the IEA's 3p/kWh cost of hydrogen as though that is what UK home-owners will pay for hydrogen.

But UK homeowners, as Rosenow pointed out in his response to Professor Andrews, will not be buying the world's cheapest solar hydrogen at wholesale prices in the Gulf or North Africa. What they will be buying in the scenario modeled by the H21 team, is hydrogen made from natural gas, with 90% of its CO2 emissions captured via a process called Steam Methane Reforming (SMR) - in other words they will be buying blue hydrogen.

Blue hydrogen is inevitably more expensive than natural gas - after all it requires the removal, storage and monitoring of its carbon content. The Guardian article on Rosenow's research mentioned a report by consultancy Cornwall Insight , estimating that fuel bills would be 70% to 90% higher for hydrogen than for natural gas.

Cornwall Insight's analysis, however, was funded by a renewable energy-linked charity, the MCS Foundation, so perhaps we should we set it aside. Luckily, we have another source - yes, the same H21 study. It cited an annual cost of capturing and storing carbon dioxide from the blue hydrogen made just for Leeds at ￡139 million. Divide this by the 264,000 gas supply points, and that is an average annual cost to homeowners of ￡526, on top of their ￡750 gas bill - almost exactly 70%. You can bet that's another thing they didn't talk about on the hydrogen bus at the party conferences.

You still have to add an increased transport charge to homeowners' bills too, to pay for the capital cost of upgrading the gas distribution networks. The H21 study explores two different scenarios: the Leeds costs charged only to Northern Gas Networks clients, which results in a long-term increase in Transportation Charge of ￡35 (36%); or the Leeds Costs spread across all gas users in the UK, which results in an increase of only ￡5 (4.5%). Professor Andrews, of course, went with the ￡5 (4.5%) figure.

The real figure would be an order of magnitude higher - not just than ￡5, but in fact much higher than ￡35. [I am grateful to Peter Dunsby for pointing out an omission in my original article here].

Neither Professor Andrews nor the H21 report explain why all gas users in the UK should pay to switch Leeds to hydrogen. In fact, they don't even explain why all 2.6 million NGN gas consumers should pay for the upgrade to deliver hydrogen to the 264,000 homes in the H21 study. In any large-scale roll-out of hydrogen heating, each home will have to bear its own share of the costs of upgrading the transport network, there can be no substantial cross-subsidization.

The H21 Study did not model a scenario in which the 264,000 homes pay for their own network upgrade to carry 100% hydrogen. But we can estimate what the annual Transport Cost would be by multiplying the cost if it is spread over 2.6 million NGN customers by 2,600,000/264,000 or nearly ten times. It comes to an eye-watering ￡345 per year - and even that is only after a few years of an much higher front-loading price spike.

So now we have a full picture of the long-term cost increase per home of hydrogen heating:

• Average gas bill (remember, this was 2016): ￡750
• Expected additional cost of hydrogen: ￡526
• Expected additional annual Transport Cost: ￡345
• Average hydrogen bill ￡1621
• Total expected increase: ￡871 or 121%

Please note: this is all based on the industry's own data.

Please note too: It also does not include any of the costs of upgrading the home itself, which as we saw H21 dramatically underestimated, and it does not include the spike of front-loaded transport costs that H21 assumes reaches ￡300 per year, even if cross-subsidized across ten times more households than could be the case in a large-scale roll-out.

What about emissions?

As we have seen, the H21 study was not based on green hydrogen made with renewables, but on blue hydrogen. When the authors calculated the impact on the whole of the heating value chain (known to climate wonks as Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions) of the switch to hydrogen, they came up with a reduction of 59%.

A 59% reduction is certainly a big improvement on unabated natural gas. When the H21 report was written in 2016, the UK’s goal was for an 80% emission reduction by 2050, so it might have seemed like enough - as long as electricity and transport made deeper cuts. Now, however, the UK's goal is 100% - enshrined in law and popular with the public. Reducing emissions from heating by 59% is simply not consistent with Net Zero. There are not enough offsets that could be purchased at any reasonable price to account for the remaining 41% unabated emissions.

We have also learned much more since 2016 about fugitive emissions – leaks during the extraction, transportation and processing of gas – since that report was written. Methane is such a powerful greenhouse gas – 84 times worse over 20 years than CO2 – that the biggest impact of our current heating system may actually be from gas leaks, rather than from gas being burned. Hydrogen itself has a global warming potential 11 times that of CO2 per tonne lost to the atmosphere.

But it gets worse. The Leeds H21 report claims that Steam Methane Reforming technology is "proven and in use around the world”. Six years later, however, the reality is that there is not one Steam Methane Reforming project continuously capturing 90% of CO2: data from the Quest project in Alberta - one of the very few plants in operation - show that it generally captured between 60% and just over 80%. So I'm afraid that the 59% whole-system reduction figure is fictitious; for real SMR projects it would be below 50%. Go this route, and the UK can kiss Net Zero goodbye.

A few final things that don't get mentioned on the hydrogen bus

Remember that enforced 5-day period without heating or cooking, while you and 2499 of your neighbours have to change every appliance and find an fix all those tiny gas leaks you don't know you have? I said there is not a chance of getting all 2,500 homes done and dusted in five days.

What happens when homeowners realise that the goal of this very disruptive process is to make them dependent on fossil-based hydrogen forever, rendering Net Zero unachievable? If you think they will meekly allow that army of gas fitters and managers into their homes, you have not been paying attention to the rising tide of direct climate action. We are going to see #HydrogenRefuseniks on a grand scale (thanks to Janet Wood for that great term).

And then there is air quality. While Professor Andrews appears to have no publication record in energy systems, he is an expert on combustion. He might usefully have informed Guardian readers of the impact on air quality of tens of millions of hydrogen boilers, each inevitably emitting NOx pollution in our towns and cities.

Of course, the authors of H21 could produce an updated report, replacing the use of Steam Methane Reforming to produce blue hydrogen with Autothermal Reforming, which offers capture rates nearer to 100%. I am on the record stating that we have to learn to love blue hydrogen - but we have to do it right, and that means over 95% CO2 capture and under 0.2% fugitive methane emissions, because otherwise it blocks the route to Net Zero. I've laid out the rationale here.

The H21 study could also be redone, replacing the use of blue hydrogen altogether with green hydrogen (from renewable energy) and pink hydrogen (from nuclear power). After all, in the years since 2016 we have also learned that we can have offshore wind power for around ￡40/MWh, or 4p per kWh. Pink hydrogen that looks unlikely to be competitive with green hydrogen, based on all recent experience building GW-scale nuclear power and the rumoured costs for Sizewell C. You could even do the calculations based on hydrogen from Small Modular Reactors (also SMRs, but not to be confused with Steam Methane Reforming), though we'll be lucky to see one working before 2030, and they won't produce 1% of global electricity any time before 2040.

If you use green or pink hydrogen, you are back to physics and economics. Even hydrogen made with 4p/kWh power would cost homeowners multiples of that once you have electrolysed it, compressed it, transported it and added a retail margin. Second, as we have seen, heating with green or pink hydrogen would require six times the number of turbines or nuclear power stations respectively. And third, it is going to be challenging enough to generate enough clean electricity to decarbonise the UK's power and transport sectors by 2050, without the vast additional demand that green or pink hydrogen for heating would create.

Summary

In summary, switching the UK’s heating to hydrogen would be no easier or cheaper than switching it to heat pumps; it would commit homeowners to higher fuel costs forever; if it used blue hydrogen made via the Steam Methane Reforming process it would be incompatible with Net Zero; and it would create a legacy of toxic NOx pollution in our homes and residential areas.

None of this is to say that switching millions of homes to heat pumps will be trivial. It won't, though the scare stories about how you'll have to switch to underfloor heating, re-insulate your home, change all the pipework and radiators, etc, are for most homes a load of tosh. What I resent, though, is being told by an industry that can't even install condensing boilers so that they condense that it will be easy to switch homes 2,500 at a time to hydrogen.

So, the next time you hear someone promoting hydrogen boilers, step in with some facts. We have no time for grifting on the road to net zero.

Coda - we need a hydrogen vs heat pumps shoot-out

Given that the case for hydrogen heating is so devastatingly bad, should we be spending any time and money on running a trial programme? Many who are concerned about the speed of action on climate change and about wasting taxpayers' money say no. I take the opposite view: we should absolutely be running trials.

It is quite clear that the grifters won't stop grifting until their proposals are shown up for what they are - unworkable, and they will find fertile ground among the millions of people who don't have the knowledge to call BS, and rather like the idea of "keeping the boiler, changing the gas". We are in a war, not of science, but of narratives. The science has spoken: 32 independent studies all say hydrogen will be marginal in heating. If this were a boxing match the referee would step in and stop the fight. Sadly, more science won't help. If 32 studies don't persuade you, 33 studies won't either, or 50 studies or 200. The only thing that is going to cut through is running trials and getting data. Nothing teaches like failure.

So, for all that we know the outcome, we need to run at least one big trial. But it must be a realistic trial. The H100 project, swapping 300 homes in Scotland to hydrogen, which has run into problems, is not a trial of retrofitting the existing gas network. They are building a new gas network to serve those homes. Pointless! The really difficult thing about decarbonising UK heating via hydrogen is switching over thousands of homes connected to a single gas main at the same time. And the trial must be designed to get data as quickly as possible, so that it doesn't take a decade before policy-makers feel confident enough to rebuff the grifters, ditch the hydrogen heating nonsense, and get on with the technologies that really can decarbonize heating.

So come on, let's have a shootout, heat pumps vs hydrogen. Lets see who gets there first and how much it costs. But it must cover at least 10,000 homes homes of each, and it must deliver results within three years . I'll bet some of my own money on the result; the grifters, no doubt, will bet some of yours!

Edited 18 Oct to correct data on Steam Methane Reforming (thanks Paul Martin!), to add the #HydrogenHeatPumpShootout coda, and to steal the wonderful #HydrogenRefuseniks word from Janet Wood (thanks Janet!).