The Climate Change Act commits our Government to reducing the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions by at least 80% of 1990 levels. Pretty challenging stuff. And it’s got to happen by 2050.
One initiative that could deliver on this promise is de-carbonising the gas grid by replacing natural gas with hydrogen. Unlike gas – or methane – hydrogen has no carbon element in it. When it’s burned, it creates just water and heat. A neat, cost-effective solution that can be distributed through the existing gas network.
We’ve already told you how QEM solutions are currently working with NGN in the Leeds-based H21 pilot project, but there are other questions to consider too.
Put simply, how do people feel about using hydrogen in their homes? Will their living rooms stay toastie? What will their cooker tops look like? Will their fry-ups taste the same? Questions like these get down to the people stuff behind the big shiny enterprise.
The £25m Hydrogen for Heat Programme, commissioned by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), is asking just these questions. The Arup-led consortium includes hydrogen specialists Kiwa Gastec, and they’ll be working together until March 2021. To run through the whole ‘real-people’ experience, they’ll be converting a small village or estate to hydrogen for cooking and heating.
The consortium will explore the nitty-gritty of the hydrogen ‘experience’ for users. And they’ll oversee the design and manufacture of new appliances like fires, cookers and boilers, for both domestic and commercial use. But perhaps most crucially, they’ll be asking us punters how we feel about using hydrogen at home. This feedback will be central to everyone’s understanding of just how feasible hydrogen is as the solution we all hope for.
From the huge question of climate change, to normal folks and their Sunday fry. Hydrogen might just work for everyone.
