Hydrogen v heat pumps debate is holding us back

As well as presenting a confusing message to the public, the division between the proponents of electrification and green gas risks giving government a licence to delay on decarbonisation of heat. This is the view of Madeleine Gabriel, of innovation agency, Nesta, who highlights some of the more positive steps that could be taken to address the home heating conundrum.

We live in polarised times, in which there is seemingly little room for nuance, compromise or shades of grey in public discourse.

The first years of the 21st century saw division between those who thought climate change was “real” and man-made and those who dismissed it as a myth.

Now, a much narrower polarisation is in danger of engulfing the debate over how to heat our homes in a greener and more sustainable way.

I’m talking of course about the increasingly noisy ‘hydrogen versus heat pumps’ wrangle.

Battle of the boilers

As Utility Week documented so effectively recently, this battle of the boilers has become a bitter dividing line, with both sides making their case passionately while casting doubt on the ability of the ‘opposing’ technology to deliver a greener future.

The backdrop to this growing rancour is the UK’s government’s Heat and Buildings Strategy.

Due to be published soon, the strategy will set out in detail how the government intends to decarbonise domestic heating over the coming years and decades – a key pillar of the net zero agenda.

It’s a big ask. According to Energy Systems Catapult, the average household needs to bring its heating-related emissions down from roughly 2,745 kg of CO2 per year today to just 138 kg per year by 2050.

That means upgrading the vast majority of our 29 million or so existing homes. We’ll need tens of thousands of skilled tradespeople, and widespread behaviour change amongst consumers.

No licence to go slow

My concern is that the hydrogen v heat pumps debate is holding us back, firstly because it risks giving the public the misleading impression that it will be ok to wait for hydrogen to simply replace natural gas without having to do anything.

Second, it gives policymakers a licence to go slow, when we need swift action. We can’t just hold off on decarbonising heat, waiting for more certainty on technologies.

Kick this into the long grass and there’s a real risk we’ll get to the end of the 2020s and have made as little progress as we did in the 2010s.

Quick wins, data and design

We do not need to know how every single home in the UK will be decarbonised before we start to act.

Instead we need to look at where we can make quicker progress. Which homes are already suitable for heat pumps? How might we get early adopters on board more quickly?

At the same time, we need much more granular data and evidence to inform decisions – both for policymakers and consumers.

We need far better data on things like how efficiently heat pumps operate in real life in the UK, how insulated homes really need to be to get a good level of comfort from a heat pump, and how often they need repairing and replacing.

Finally, a lot of the problems that are often reported with heat pumps and other renewable heating systems are not fundamental to the technology, but arise from the way systems have been designed and installed, the way they are used in practice, and the wider policy and regulatory environment (in particular, the cost of electricity vs gas).

All these things are fixable and many could be solved with relatively small innovations, such as working out how best to improve heat pump controls and better explain to consumers how they work.

What works and what doesn’t

We need far more experimentation and much better sharing of evidence of what works in improving consumers’ experience of getting and using renewable heating.

We think this flexible, fluid and iterative approach, based on experimentation and learning, is the key to making some much-needed quick progress on decarbonising heat.

Small-scale trials and pilot schemes, backed up by rigorous testing and evaluation, will allow lessons to be learnt quickly around what works and what doesn’t.

Innovation stimulation

At Nesta we want to play a key role in the transition to a greener future by designing, testing and scaling solutions to significantly accelerate change.

That’s why we’ve made reducing household emissions one of our three strategic focus areas between now and 2030.

By 2030, we would like to help the UK cut emissions from homes by 28 per cent compared with 2019 levels, in line with the Climate Change Committee’s ‘tailwinds’ scenario which would see household emissions hit zero by 2048.

As part of this, we’re keen to engage with energy suppliers and the energy sector more broadly in an effort to help bring new ideas, solutions and models to market.

By stimulating innovation and providing the space for new ideas to flourish, there is the opportunity to deliver the sustainable future that we all want to see.