GETTING THE HYDROGEN ECONOMY RIGHT
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
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 ener- gy in the long run. The current push for hydrogen in domestic heating, which, amongst others, the UK government seems keen on, is wild- ly misplaced. We are amid an energy crisis, the keyword of which is energy savings. Using green hydrogen to heat build- ings 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 hydro- gen for domestic heating rings all the wrong bells in the cur- rent situation. For climate and consumers, investments are much better placed in proven, green technologies.
First and foremost, we need to utilize hydrogen where it makes the most sense in the carbon calculation and where electrifica- tion is not an option. In these times of energy crisis and -scar- city, we need to utilize our clean energy as effectively as possi- ble; 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 nu- merous 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 dis- trict heating, a technology with the potential to cover 50 per- cent of Europe’s heating demand, according to new research. Unfortunately, the European Commission has not yet acknowl- edged the full potential of district heating. Still, district heating is potentially the most energy-efficient technology, with par- ticular synergy effects when integrating district heating with hydrogen production, utilizing the surplus heat from the Pow- er-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-car- bon track, although the case can be made for hydrogen boilers as a transition technology.
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