BBC article on the transition to zero carbon for home heating.

My understanding is that there is movement away from hydrogen, certainly for all hydrogen boilers which Worcester Bosch were developing two years ago. Hydrogen is not cheap to make at present. Cheapest way, and it is still expensive, is using natural gas - nuff said!

We need something different from gas and the obvious answer is generate more electricity, make it cheaper and yet Ofgem have now permitted an increase in customers’ prices.

The best solution is make builders build homes that are 100% self efficient. This is possible today at not much more than the normal build cost. About £1500 more I believe. But if your fuel bill is normally around £1200 who would not go for that?

Heat pumps are not wonderful for existing properties. You will not get your capital cost back. The “air” heat pumps have limitations in cooler temperatures.  They are not cheap - at present, that may change.

Similalry with solar panels- no capital cost recovery. Not wonderful in many areas of the UK. Wonderful in Australia! My brother out there makes a profit from his. Similarly solar thermal panels.

I see solutions to the issue:

1. Reduce the price of electricity even if it means a subsidy whilst we improve generating capability.
2. Possibly massive ground heat pumps underground, out of sight in fields, serving individual areas.
3. Home heat pumps that are more efficient and cheaper and which generate electricity not just warm water.
4. More efficient solar and thermal panels.
5. Cheaper and better home storage batteries.
6. Wind power - but take care with ruining the countryside and killing bird life.
7. Mini nuclear plants serving areas. Ideally a brick of waste nuclear fuel for every house to generate power. I guess the latter won’t happen!
8. Half a million hamsters in wheels generating power.

….but @woz you are right, electricity cost must come down, it is the only power we need for the future. It drives everything, including the “send” button on this post.

Only just above the hamsters at present!

Hydrogen is absolutely great as it’s clean and there is an abundance of it about, H2O! It’s the extraction cost that needs to come down dramatically. In time it probably will but we don’t then have hydrogen pumped to us. That seems crackers and the infrastructure not there. It can be used to power clean electricity generating stations.

Covid produce new inventions as the need was suddenly there, perhaps this may happen with hydrogen.

But I suspect nobody is going to convert existing boilers to hydrogen nor will we see it piped around the country.. We need to breed morehamsters and make more hamster wheels.

I don’t think they are so sure about the 10% and it does not make sense. You have to make the hydrogen to do that - currently from natural gas. They also don’t know if the current infrastructure can actually take 10% hydrogen without it leaking. Seems a pointless exercise. Better to employ minds on a complete rethink on the best way to provide fuel to heat homes. We already have the fuel. Every house is already connected. It’s the bill for usage that is currently the killer.

@25 quid I bought a Devola Eco 2.4kw Wi-Fi Panel Heater (convection and radiance) for our conservatory last October. It heats up quickly and no noise at all. There was one problem. When it is switched on for the first time it don’t half smell bad! My wife was certain I had broken wind! I had some work to do in my garage so took in there and let it burn its smell away. It did. All is good. But the garage stank for a while!

If the powers that be could apply just a modicum of brain power it’s a no brainier to forget about gas as the fuel source for domestic heating unless it is used to power a generating station. But will they think that far ahead or even use the old grey matter or will they allow themselves to be influenced by those with a vested interest in what we have now - the boiler makers, the central heating installers, the gas suppliers? I suspect the latter. At least if an electric boiler became viable it will keep some of the industry content. If electricity was cheaper though I am sure most will not want a boiler anymore.

Whey hey! Up here in the North east too, mint! 👍

@G4RHL not sure I agree entirely (I do agree the hydrogen production should be from renewables)

The transition from wet to dry could take upwards of 40 - 50 years and is unaffordable for most but the very few wealthy people unless the government pay (they won’t) AND it involves ripping peoples houses apart; (for new builds it makes sense) The old wet copper should be recycled but it won’t be because lets face it what advantage does that give the customer other than ripping the house apart to get it. There will be a high carbon cost because of all the extra cabling (copper and plastic) required to carry the dry electricity.

However if renewable  energy was used to produce the hydrogen, even if some of it came from methane, it could be viable. in the short to medium term, but large scale low carbon hydrogen is probably over 20 years away.

All my own guesswork above apart from the link below

https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/low-carbon-energy-programme/hydrogen-production

 @G4RHL 

hi Richard I see your point but I was thinking about the tons of pipework left behind, at a minimum the ends would need to be removed/capped  as would any pipework which was there due to solid floors etc. All of the boiler electrics would need to be made safe, thermostats removed and plastered over, or re-used to a central control unit etc. etc. 

So yes you could just drain the system, take off the rads and rip the boiler out, but it would leave a mess. 

I absolutely agree that this isn’t going to happen unless the price per kWh drops, or UK will go from 10% of the population being in fuel poverty to many times that amount. 

I think the only carbon neutral future is highly insulated houses, to the Passiv House standard. If you have such a house you don’t even need a heat pump because your every day activities (watching TV , exercise bike etc) are enough to heat the house. We need a national program of destroy and rebuild. It sounds extreme, but climate change is extreme. And doing this would fix the problem once and for all (as far as heating buildings is concerned.) Of course we should have raised the standard for new build years ago. It was in the Con-Lib coalition government manifesto but was dropped, shamefully. Does it sound impossible? Remember once before we knocked down much of the housing stock and rebuilt (in the 50s and 60s slum clearances.) We could do it again. 

At the moment the incentives are not in place and planning control makes it difficult. Politicians get a focus! In the mean time, I have been very impressed with the effectiveness of internal insulation (50mm foam plus plasterboard). My walls are pre-1900 rubble filled walls so cavity insulation is not possible. It has made the rooms way warmer. But his is not nearly as good as new build to Passiv House standard.

@mikeavison 

as the old saying goes when asking for directions

“I wouldn’t start from here if I was you”

you aren’t efficient enough so lets rip the house apart won’t go down well...(I agree with you but most people have other more pressing issues)

so 2 options,

either electricity prices have to fall (this won’t encourage efficiency but will allow a period of migration)

or electricity prices rise so people have no choice but to insulate as ongoing energy costs will be untenable.

guess which?

(notwithstanding the possibility of Hydrogen conversion)

I think you are too pessimistic Woz. Of course I am not saying people will do this by themselves. But given the right incentives I think it could work. It will be highly disruptive, but we are up against the biggest impending catastrophe that human civilisation has ever encountered, so inconvenience - bring it on! No-one has worked out the maths yet but I am pretty confident that it is do-able. We already had a pilot project, the photo-voltaic installation. Future energy savings were used (in some plans) to finance the up front capital cost by involving private sector financial services. That needs to be replicated on a huge scale for insulating houses. The task is enormous but the future energy savings are enormous too, we “just” need to get one to pay for the other. There is also a ton of preparatory work to do. We have such a diverse housing stock and I don’t think we have developed the most cost effective and least disruptive means of insulating the different housing styles. We need templates for each wall construction etc and for flats vs houses etc. We need new innovative methods to those ends. We have surprised ourselves how quickly we developed covid vaccines and scaled up to mass production and delivery. I hope that serves as a confidence builder for this much greater task ahead. 

@mikeavison @G4RHL 

I don’t think I’m overly pessimistic at all, I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it, I’m saying it’s going to be very very hard to achieve. Yes of course the standards need to be improved, but it isn’t not going to be achieved because the housing stock is diverse, that’s the easy part, it’s people and their financial situations (especially post the start of covid) that are diverse, it simply isn’t going to happen without a either a big stick or a very big carrot. That isn’t pessimistic it’s realistic. I wish it wasn’t so..

@G4RHL the last sentence quoted above supports my point (but proves nothing...)