Heating with hydrogen could double consumer bills, report warns.
Burning hydrogen instead of gas to heat homes and water could double consumer energy bills, at a time when consumers are already facing record-high gas prices, a new report has warned.
As cheap fossil gas becomes scarce, some hope that hydrogen fuel will one day step in to fill the gap with a clean-burning alternative. Proponents of hydrogen heating, argue that existing gas boilers can be repurposed at low cost and reduce the financial burden of the transition to low-carbon heating.
Yet, with energy prices going sky-high, switching to hydrogen-based heating risks doubling consumer bills, warns a new report commissioned by Global Witness, an international NGO.
Even by 2050, households could spend an estimated average of 12.5 cents per kilowatt-hours (kWh) while average gas prices at the end of 2021 were but 6.7 cents per kWh, according to the report produced by the energy market consultancy Element Energy.
Jonathan Noronha-Gant, senior gas campaigner at Global Witness, said:
The last thing that the tens of millions of people across Europe who will face energy poverty this winter need to hear is that their bills are going to go up again.
“MEPs and national governments must close the door on hydrogen heating, which is an unaffordable pipe dream,” he added.
Scientists have long sought to debunk claims about the merits of hydrogen heating.
Jan Rosenow, director of the Regulatory Assistance Project, an energy and climate think-tank, said:
Heating with hydrogen is inefficient and more costly compared to the alternatives such as heat pumps, district heating and solar thermal.
“There are use cases where hydrogen is essential,” he told EURACTIV in reference to sectors like chemicals, shipping or fertilisers, which have little alternative. But all independent analyses show that heating is not one of them,” said Rosenow, who has reviewed more than a dozen independent studies on the merits of hydrogen heating.
The infrastructure bill
Supporters of hydrogen as a heating fuel say it can be used as a drop-in replacement for gas in home boilers, with only minor tweaks to appliances and grid infrastructure.
Hydrogen boilers and hydrogen fuel “can run in the existing gas supply grid and reach consumers easily. They don’t require new infrastructure, and therefore they can be implemented right away,” explained London-based gas lobby group Gasify.
But according to Global Witness, the bill for hydrogen infrastructure for gas consumers could reach €240 billion over 40 years of use.
The question of who should pick up this bill was subject to intense lobbying by the gas industry.
In its December 2021 gas and hydrogen package proposal, the European Commission left the door open for so-called “cross subsidisation” where hydrogen infrastructure costs could be partly paid for by consumers, Global Witness warned.
The NGO said in a statement:
Minutes from meetings obtained under freedom of information requests show that German and Belgian TSOs [transmission system operators], as well as the EU’s main gas infrastructure lobby group Gas Infrastructure Europe, lobbied the European Commission to pass on costs to consumers.
The industry argues that it wants to avoid a free-rider effect, where future market entrants benefit from infrastructure built and financed by their competitors.
“Cross-subsidisation between users of different networks should be avoided, since it is not likely that all gas network users will become hydrogen networks users, or at least not at the same time,” European regulators ACER and CEER cautioned.
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Heating with hydrogen could double consumer bills, report warns, September 5, 2022