The hydrogen economy is underway, and it remains an open question in which direction it will go. Clean hydrogen can serve multiple purposes in our future society and the green transition, but heating should not be one.
By Morten Helveg Petersen, Vice-chair of the European parliament’s Committee on Industry, Research and Energy
Published in Hot Cool, edition no. 6/2022 | ISSN 0904 9681 |
The hydrogen economy is underway, and it remains an open question in which direction it will go. Clean hydrogen can serve multiple purposes in our future society and the green transition, but heating should not be one.
First and foremost, we need to utilize hydrogen where it makes the most sense in the carbon calculation and where electrification is not an option. In these times of energy crisis and -scarcity, we need to utilize our clean energy as effectively as possible; this calls for direct electrification. But as things appear at this point, that would be areas like aviation fuel for long-haul flights, certain forms of heavy transportation, as a replacement for artificial fertilizers, perhaps as a means to decarbonize steel, and other areas where no zero-carbon alternatives exist.
On the other hand, domestic heating already indulges in numerous alternative options, all of which offer better energy efficiency than hydrogen. Heat pumps would beat hydrogen boilers by miles in energy efficiency, even more so would district heating, a technology with the potential to cover 50 percent of Europe’s heating demand, according to new research.
Unfortunately, the European Commission has not yet acknowledged the full potential of district heating. Still, district heating is potentially the most energy-efficient technology, with particular synergy effects when integrating district heating with hydrogen production, utilizing the surplus heat from the Power-to-X productions.
On the other hand, using wind power to generate hydrogen, only to then use the hydrogen for domestic heating, represents a massive energy loss that we simply cannot afford. If we are talking about blue hydrogen, we are already off the zero-carbon track, although the case can be made for hydrogen boilers as a transition technology.
The question is, why would we go down that road? The choices we make now define the path to a carbon-neutral economy. Investing in hydrogen infrastructure, which currently would be blue hydrogen, for domestic heating is investing in fossil fuel infrastructure, even if it is low carbon.
The point of importance is that there are proven alternatives on the market, which are green from the outset, and provide consumers much more certainty that their investment will provide cheap, green energy in the long run.
The current push for hydrogen in domestic heating, which, amongst others, the UK government seems keen on, is wildly misplaced. We are amid an energy crisis, the keyword of which is energy savings. Using green hydrogen to heat buildings via boilers would be almost six times less energy efficient than heat pumps powered by renewable energy and require a 150% increase in primary energy generation, according to a 2021 study by the London Energy Transformation Initiative. The same study concluded that blue hydrogen would result in only 58 percent of the energy in natural gas being used for heating buildings.
Because of such numbers, it goes without saying that hydrogen for domestic heating rings all the wrong bells in the current situation. For climate and consumers, investments are much better placed in proven, green technologies.
“Getting the hydrogen economy right” was published in Hot Cool, edition no. 6/2022
