Hydrogen pushed

The debate over hydrogen rumbles on. In a new report, the UK Energy Networks Association say that ‘without hydrogen, there will be no Net Zero’ and that ‘without gas pipeline infrastructure, we risk increasing the cost of the transition to clean energy’. As maybe you might expect from ENA, as a gas pipe lobbyist, it looks to ‘a balanced decarbonisation solution that includes a significant role for hydrogen transformation, alongside biogases & electrification’. It says there is ‘good evidence to suggest that this balanced approach is the most cost-effective way to decarbonise.’ 

The ENA’s report ‘A hydrogen vision of the UK’, notes that UK’s gas network consists of ‘over 280,000 km of pipes, enough to travel around the world seven times’. It says that around 75% of the old iron gas distribution pipes have been replaced, so that the gas networks ‘stand in a strong position to transition to new, low carbon gases’, with the development of the hydrogen economy being seen as a way to ‘increase system resilience, and prepare for rapid scale up in the 2030s in line with the Hydrogen Strategy & Sixth Carbon Budget’. The Government’s target is for 10 GW of low carbon hydrogen production by 2030, with at least 5 GW of this being green, from electrolytic production. 

To that end, the ENA says that ‘Government targets for offshore wind will see a huge increase in fixed and floating offshore wind around our coasts. There will be times when the electricity generated from our wind resources outstrips demand. Wind developers understand that green hydrogen production is an opportunity to avoid curtailment, which cost UK consumers over £500m in 2022 from onshore windfarms alone. This is why SGN is conducting a study to assess the potential volume of green hydrogen production in Scotland from existing curtailed renewable energy developments and from planned assets’. But it also says that ‘developers of new nuclear - at gigawatt and small modular scale- are exploring how to integrate hydrogen into their sites, where heat from nuclear plants offers high efficiency production’, with so-called pink hydrogen production being an option.  

However, for now, the main option is seen as being blue hydrogen, produced from fossil gas with Carbon Capture and Storage  to reduce the resultant CO2. Zero carbon Green hydrogen made electrolytically  using renewable power will, it says, only been develop significantly from 2035, although by 2045 blue hydrogen use would be halved. ENA do not give a final breakdown of blue versus green in 2050, but they do look to their being 354 TWh of hydrogen used in the 2050 energy system, about half of current UK fossil gas use for heating,  And they says  that, on their plan, in 2050 ,17 million homes would be supplied by hydrogen and 14m by electric alternatives, with 60-70% of all gas users being fed with hydrogen. 

Some of that would it seems still be blue, with some emissions. But the ENA claim that hydrogen networks would help push renewables and thus green hydrogen: ‘due to the extensive capacity of the UK’s gas networks, greater levels of investment into new renewable projects could be unlocked if producers have access to pipelines to carry their hydrogen to a consumer. As a result, networks are commonly seen as enabling partners in new energy and industrial decarbonisation projects across the UK’.  

Of course, heat pumps would also need renewables for zero carbon operation, delivered by wire. Though the gas/pipe lobby would no doubt see that as an issue- more power links would be needed if gas was replaced by electricity as the main heating vector.  But then again, heat pumps are much more efficient, so less power would be needed to run them, and, although they will need fitting, they will win out overall.  Round and round we go! 

Meantime, we do have gas pipes, and, as an interim option, the ENA looks to blending 20% hydrogen into the gas grid, which it says ‘will reduce carbon emissions by the equivalent of 2.5 million cars a year, without consumers have to make any changes to the appliances they use or how they use them’.  Well maybe. But that particular pipe dream, and indeed the whole idea, might come up against a problem that the gas grid might not be as easy to repurpose as they hope: evidently that’s being looked at. 

Further doubts about hydrogen for heating have also emerged from the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP), in terms of the economics. The RAP study says that the use of hydrogen made with grid electricity and an alkaline electrolyser would push the retail heating price to around £0.19/kWh by 2030, compared to about £0.05/kWh for fossil gas. By 2050, this would only have dipped to around £0.18/kWh, it found.  Green hydrogen made using a dedicated offshore wind farm would be slightly cheaper, at around £0.12/kW by 2030 and  £0.10/kWh by 2050, but still twice as expensive as fossil gas, and similar in price to blue hydrogen made via fossil gas and carbon capture and storage. So it didn’t look too good: as Hydrogen Insight reported, one the RAP study authors said  ‘It seems increasingly likely that the mass use of hydrogen for heating is a disaster in the making. The fundamental physicals means that, compared to electrification it is an inefficient and costly option.’

What about other uses? Well,  a source at the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero evidently recently told Hydrogen Insight that ‘the government is currently exploring the need and case for market intervention for hydrogen to power,’ and ‘views hydrogen as an important component of our future power system to provide flexible low carbon generation capacity as we integrate more renewables.’  For example, some of the UK’s 42GW fleet of fossil gas-fired plants could convert to using hydrogen to provide power to balance the grid. ‘Hydrogen to power could be a large source of firm and flexible low-carbon generation that is capable of extended duration running to compliment intermittent renewables.’ It added ‘It also provides an additional route for the decarbonisation of existing unabated combustion generation.’ 

Using  hydrogen this way, possibly in the interim admixed with fossil gas, is an interesting idea. But where would the hydrogen come from – fossil gas SMR with CCS, or renewable powered electrolysis? We are still stuck with the issue of emissions with blue hydrogen or low conversion efficiency with electrolysis for green hydrogen.  Though the later may not matter if we have lots of spare green power to use to make hydrogen during low demand times for use when power demand is higher. Assuming we can store it securely and cheaply. Using occasional surpluses of green power avoids curtailment losses, although electrolysers are best run continuously- their conversion efficiency falls when they start and stop. There are always swings and roundabouts with hydrogen….So it still has an uncertain future, as my next post will show.