Government mulling ‘hydrogen-ready’ boiler mandate by 2026

All new gas boilers in homes may have to be convertible to hydrogen by 2026, the government has revealed.

In its Hydrogen Strategy, the full details of which were released on Tuesday (17 August), the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) said it is aiming to consult later this year on steps to help commercialisation of the fuel for home heating.

These will include exploring the case for enabling, or requiring, new natural gas boilers to be easily convertible to use hydrogen or “hydrogen-ready” by 2026.

This is also the date, the strategy added, by when the government will be able to make strategic decisions on the role of hydrogen for heat and whether to proceed with plans to trial the conversion of a whole town to the low carbon fuel.

The decision on whether to proceed with the UK’s first ‘hydrogen town’, which was first announced in the prime minister’s 10-point green recovery plan last year, will be based on ongoing local trials and other research.

Overall, the strategy calculated that heat for buildings could become a “very significant” source of future demand for hydrogen, totalling up to 45TWh by 2035.

However, trials to establish whether hydrogen can be safely blended with natural gas at distribution and transmission network pressures is not due to conclude in 2023, it explained.

The strategy said the government is reviewing standards with a view to enabling the existing gas network to have access to a wider range of gases.

It will be carrying out a call for evidence on the future of the gas system later this year, which will examine the implications of a potential increased use of hydrogen.

The strategy also said there could be “tens of kilometres” of hydrogen pipelines by the late 2020s with the expansion of hydrogen production supplying end-users either within cluster regions or more broadly.

By the mid-2030s, hydrogen networks could serve multiple end use applications, extending to “tens to hundreds” of kilometres.

The strategy included a pledge that the government will ensure that an appropriate legislative framework is put in place to incentivise investment in such infrastructure, adding that wider decisions on heat and on the future of the existing gas grid will have a “significant impact” on the size and design of hydrogen networks.

It said the government will carry out a a review of systemic hydrogen network and storage requirements in the 2020s and beyond.

And it said that the government’s target of 5GW of production capacity by 2030 is “stretching but deliverable”.

The document also defended the government’s decision to pursue a “twin track” strategy of pursuing both ‘green’ hydrogen, which is produced by electrolysis from water, and ‘blue’ hydrogen created via carbon capture enabled methane reformation.

It said that while green and blue hydrogen may be cost competitive with one another by 2025, pursuing both options will enable the UK to achieve greater scale of production during the upcoming decade.

By 2050, according to BEIS modelling, between 250 and 460TWh of hydrogen could be needed across the economy, delivering up to a third of final energy consumption

Tony Ballance, chief strategy & regulation officer at Cadent, said that while the government’s hydrogen strategy was a “great first step” in promoting the use of the gas, the UK has opportunities to go further and faster.

He said moves to blend the fuel into the existing gas system should be aligned with a mandate to introduce ‘hydrogen-ready’ boilers from 2025.

• Discover the practical next steps for a hydrogen rollout at the Utility Week Hydrogen Forum, 17 November 2021. Click here to find out more.