The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) today urged Boris Johnson to pause the poorly designed green home heating policies before they collapse into a humiliating fiasco.
In recent days the government’s intention to ban gas boilers and force households to switch to very expensive and less-effective Heat Pumps has produced a wave of well-founded public concern at the impracticality and cost.
It is now being reported that some homeowners may be able to continue to use natural gas for home heating – provided that they install new dual-fuel boilers so that they can burn hydrogen.
This scheme is a misunderstanding of existing government policy, which plans that as many homes as possible would have to install both heat pumps and hydrogen-capable boilers.
This is because heat pumps are expected by the government to underperform in very cold weather, compelling households to resort to electric bar fires (or similar resistive heating) resulting in a gigantic 100 GW spike in the electricity system (as predicted by the Committee on Climate Change).
Holding sufficient electricity generation to meet this spike for only a few hours a year would be utterly unaffordable. Therefore, the government is planning for householders to install a hydrogen boiler as a backup to a heat pump.
Having two expensive systems, heat pumps and hydrogen boilers, instead of one cheap and reliable natural gas system is obviously uneconomic and unwise. Nevertheless, that is what civil servants currently plan to enforce.
Dr. John Constable, GWPF’s energy editor and author of Hydrogen: The once and future fuel?, which explains the role of hydrogen in propping up heat pumps, said:
“It is now clear to all that the UK civil service plans for green heat are a ludicrously expensive and unsustainable pipe dream.
“The Prime Minister needs to put a stop to this rush into an inevitable political fiasco and allow households to make their own decisions about what heating system is cheapest and works best for them. Home heating is far too important to get wrong.”
Meanwhile the Drax power station burns “biomass” most of which is from felling areas of forest. About 50% apparently is shipped from the US where about an equivalent to an 18 mile square is felled annually. Drax is then paid over £2 million daily in subsidies for “green” energy!
Most have seen a demonstration in science class of making hydrogen by the hydrolysis of water. Yet, the reality is the best way to make hydrogen on the industrial scale is from natural gas. The whole idea of replacing boilers is to get consumers to stop using natural gas. Go figure.
I assume the hydrogen system for homes would be similar to that of hydrogen powered cars. These store hydrogen at 10,000 psi (68,948 kPa). What could go wrong?
I try to be accurate in my posts so though I shouldn’t rely on memory for the storage pressure of hydrogen. I looked it up and it is 5,000 to 10,000 psi. I sure wouldn’t feel comfortable with such a tank sitting by my house.
I don’t know how they plan to manufacture and deliver hydrogen. If they insist on proceding, hydrogen could be added to the existing natural gas infrastructure and the dangers of handling pure hydrogen would be alleviated. It’s a pipe dream, I know.
Hydrogen. Lovely stuff , flashpoint just over 60 degrees , flame clear / invisible , no smell , The slightest leak catches fire , and causes explosions if it flashes into the pipe.
If they have banned Gas Boilers over this false threat of Global Warming/Climate Change but its going t o be t he People who will feel the brunt of the fool moves on the Politicians and Buricrats
Would it be possible to add hydrogen to the natural gas supply? It would be simpler than the dual fuel system in every house.
Who said we are losing our power of choice? Today, you can choose to die from pharma gene altering injections, die from starvation when gates eliminates the sun, die from the failure of green energy and freeze to death, or die from going insane listening to liberals, progressives and socialists.
There’s no chaos in China, because they know how to follow the science of energy production … https://newtube.app/user/RAOB/kf3DIEm