Yet elements still lives on with equally daft plans to power trains with hydrogen, to fuel cars with hydrogen, to fly planes with hydrogen. Just another eco-pipe dream that appealed to those people who thought that because hydrogen burns to leave water that it had to be a solution.

Of course, the NIC's ideas for universal heat pumps don't solve the problem of where the electricity will come from, especially in winter anti-cyclonic conditions, nor where we'll find the trillion odd quid needed.

Switching a home from gas to heat pump and generating the additional electricity using gas results in a net reduction in gas use. If you want a better solution that works when Europe has several days in a row with almost no wind: import nuclear from France. There have been accusations that France subsidizes its nuclear electricity. If true that would mean French tax payers would be subsidizing UK heating.

I think if most of Europe was asking for French leccy we might be asked to pay a smidgeon* more than the subsidised price paid by the French public.

*Arm,leg & kidney

"import nuclear from France"

That is true for now, but I see you're totally unfamiliar with the challenges France faces with its ageing nuclear fleet, the inordinate costs for replacing them with EPRs which are currently the only option on offer, and the fact that Germany is no longer the swing generator in Europe.

France has about 56 nuclear power plants. Fifteen are end of life by or before 2035, with a good few soon after and even though the French government has made positive noises about more, only one new one is under construction. Moreover, because Germany and a number of other EU countries have forsaken nuclear, any French surplus power will have to be bid for in the open market, and in the scenario that we need this, most of Northern Europe will want it. As we can't forecast weather ahead with much accuracy, buying this power would be in the spot market, and the cost would be eye watering. Unfortunately the higher cost won't magically create more available power, so there will be lots of losers. And you need to allow for the fact that France and other EU countries will be following the same policies of electrifciation of road transport, and retiring the gas heating systems for the circa 11 million homes currently ehated by gas.

Even when France does build replacement nuclear, why would they make the same mistake as before, of trying to meet their national peak demand from wholly inflexible nuclear power? If I were them, looking at the eleven year delays and three fold cost over-runs at Flamanville, I'd seek to make the new EPR fleet more reliable (so less downtime and planned service outages, at the expense of more development time) and I wouldn't build the fleet to serve peak load. All of which means that France's historic surplus of power generation is likely to decline.

We cannot rely for entirely expected energy demand in the UK to be made up for by interconnectors using magically available spare capacity elsewhere. I really don't understand people who think like Mr Micawber that "something will turn up" when we're talking energy shortages, but this seems popular with people who don't understand weather patterns, seasonal and diurnal energy demand, and energy transport and distribution systems, and it seems they're making the executive policy decisions in most governments.

13 years ago , the tories propped up by the liberals had to make a decision.

The problem being our aging nuclear power stations, do we start the process of replacing them with new ones, and increase the number thus reducing our CO2 output.

The decision was made

"Naww fuck that ,they take 13 yrs to build, it wont pay off in the term of our government,and we'd have to convince the population too. lets kick the can down the road for some other government to make the call. Maybe we could grind up american forests into woodchips, transport it 3000 miles by bulk carrier, then burn it and claim thats CO2 neutral"

Politicos won't care enough to commit serious spending until the long term problems become short term permanent problems, maybe something like the lights going out on cold nights BEFORE the next election is due.

Ten year lead times on national infrastructure are no good, they want to announce the spend now and cut the ribbon next week to loud applause.

The heating capacity of heat pumps isn't sufficient for many poorly insulated 19th and early 20th century British homes. You'd need additional electrical resistance heating or supplemental natural gas heating to compensate.

Also, heat pumps take up valuable space and make continuous irritating low frequency noises. IMHO only new, highly insulated homes should have heat pumps. For older homes we should just upgrade the electrical network and use resistance heating. New nuclear plants and a huge investment in the power distribution network should therefore be top priority.

BTW I personally had the same idea as Johnson since there's already a well developed gas distribution network and hydrogen gas can be made to flow through those pipes. Gas heaters can also be modified to bun hydrogen gas relatively easily. Maybe we were both wrong but I don't think it was (or is) a bad idea.

"Maybe we were both wrong but I don't think it was (or is) a bad idea."

I believe it was a bad idea. Hydrogen is really small, and therefore leaks. This means potentially none of the existing infrastructure is suitable.

Not that heat pumps are the answer, unless you've got a very modern well insulated house.

Yes, I know. But I also know it can be made to work by retrofitting the joints.

We had a problem after fitting a gas cooker. We have bottled gas, so nice bulky propane. A manufacturing fault in a join led to a small leak. Hard to find and the first time our plumber had ever seen such a problem.

If there are tiny faults that allow something as big as propane to leak,how many more are there that will allow hydrogen to leak?

Hydrogen doesn't even need faults to leak, which is why all the pipes and all equipment would have to be replaced. Fortunately, however, there's no way of producing and storing the hydrogen required.

Easy to say, but harder to actually do.

You are talking about retro fitting hundreds of millions of joints. And is that even enough? How much is that all going to cost? And how do they stand up over time? How long would it take to get through that amount of work?

Get it wrong, and you've got lots of houses becoming Hindenbergs. That's quite some risk.

Replacing the joints would not be nearly enough. Hydrogen will leak through solid steel. It's really bizarre how incredibly slippery it is. You would need to replace all the pipes.

It is also explosive in a much wider range of concentrations than any other gas. So leaks would be a lot more dangerous.

People look at the energy per interaction and say it's good, but the low density, high pressure and extreme cryogenics needed for liquification mean it's a bad fuel for most uses.

Burning hydrogen in common applications is a stupid idea.

Hydrogen is a very difficult gas to control. One of the problems of creating high quality vacuum chambers is that hydrogen migrates into steel, and, then out again:

"Hydrogen is the predominant residual gas at very low pressures in SS [Stainless Steel] vacuum systems,"*

As many pipes are now plastic or copper, much softer than stainless steel, it would be interesting to find out how robust they would be at supplying hydrogen gas. My own 'gas tap'** has seized up due to the normal effects of ordinary heating gas, although the one on the gas meter does still work. (One of my friends is a plumber / gas fitter. He came round and serviced the boiler, checked the pressure in the system, put it all back together again and amazingly IT STILL WORKS!)

*from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233997565_Outgassing_of_Hydrogen_from_Stainless_Steel_Vacuum_Chamber#:~:text=Hydrogen%20outgassing%20is%20a%20major,their%20inner%20surface.%20...

** JOKE ALERT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1dvAxA9ib0

"BTW I personally had the same idea as Johnson since there's already a well developed gas distribution network and hydrogen gas can be made to flow through those pipes. Gas heaters can also be modified to bun hydrogen gas relatively easily. Maybe we were both wrong but I don't think it was (or is) a bad idea."

Well, not all gas is the same, and hydrogen's a blighter - the small molecules escape far more easily than nice bulky CH4 (natural gas, methane), so the gas tightness of the existing network is nowhere near good enough. It embrittles steel, and if hot can embrittle copper, so that's a complication that's difficult to allow for in existing networks and any combustion arrangements. Its flame velocity is far higher than methane, so it needs completely different burners. It has a higher combustion temperature so NOx levels are likely to be worse than for methane. And whilst less likely to create explosive atmospheres, they could occur with a gas leak in a moderately air-tight propertly, but the because of the higher flame velocity the resulting explosion will tend to be far more destructive.

So actually there's lots of challenges to overcome - and they could be, but at a very high cost, and at the end of that you'd still have the problem of where you'd get the required volume of hydrogen.

Let's assume we had some source of low cost high volume hydrogen: The logical thing is to process that into methane for heating, into synthetic paraffin for aviation, or propane or synthetic petrol for automotive. Virtually no network or end use device changes would be needed. Unfortunately the great energy conversion has little planning or thought behind it.

It's easy - you just crack existing hydrocarbons. OK, so it's incredibly energy intensive but will keep the greenies happy.

The only real source of "green hydrogen" is by cracking existing natural gas down to hydrogen, for which you'd burn more methane to get the power to do it.

This is a semi camouflaged method of hiding an intention of "remain reliant upon gas indefinitely" and if this was obvious to me I assume that it was equally as obvious to everybody else who looked at it.

The only green hydrogen is splitting water with nuke/wind/hydro generated power.

No, CO2 can catalytically reduced to CO forms hydrocarbons with hydrogen at the right temperature and pressure. This has potentially much higher yields than electrolysis. But there are also some Perovskites that will reduce CO2 to C + O2 in the right conditions.

Yes, methane is probably a better solution.

Ah yes - because the heat from a heat pump leaves the house faster than the heat from a boiler.

If you have leaky and/or poorly insulated buildings then you'll just need a larger heat pump, but the energy saving will actually be larger (since you would have thrown an enormous amount of gas at it).

Of course the better solution is to insulate and eliminate draughts, and then to install a smaller heat pump.

Boilers take up valuable space, usually *inside* space, which is at more of a premium than roof/alley/wall space for a heat pump.

They also make very annoying noises when running, because they are a machine... and that's what machines do.

You need insulation as the maximum heat power delivery to the interior is so much lower than with a gas boiler:

* The available head power is lower.

* The temperature of the produced heat is lower restricting the rate at which the heat is delivered into rooms.

So, you only get a house that is not bitterly cold in winter by thoroughly insulating it.

You can get heat pumps which will output north of 16kW of heat... if you're losing more than that then you have a serious issue, or a *very* large house (at which point a pair of pumps might be a reasonably option) or you should actually install windows and doors rather than just leaving gaping holes in your property.

A flow temp of 50 degrees will require non microbore pipework to your radiators, but assuming a 20 degree room temperature then you've still got a better thermal gradient radiator-room than room-external with an outside temp of negative 10 - which is not at all common across the vast majority of the UK.

Under what conditions can they produce 16 kW? They can only extract energy from where it is and there isn't a lot in air < 4°C.

Lovely. I take it that your ok with telling the people running the UK's conservation areas that their existing rules (causing most of the problem as that's where the older houses are) are being torn up and we no longer need to keep to heritage materials etc and can do what we want to insulate, and we can put a heat pump on the external walls then? If I insulated my house by putting in external wall insulation, knocking my chimney down and putting in a heat pump on an external wall then at the moment then the council will take me to court and force me to remove the insulation, reinstate the chimney and remove the external heat pump. If I do none of these things and instead burn [smokeless] coal through the chimney i'm forced to retain and maintain then it costs roughly half of the gas heating cost. Guess what we tend to do? Answers on a postcard.

Also; Electricity costs 27 pence per kWh. Gas costs 7 pence per kWh.

Even if electric heating via heat pump is 3 times more energy efficient then 7p*3=21p, and electricity is currently 27p per kWh, so a heat pump still has a run cost of being a third more expensive, after you get saddled with a huge bill for buying and installing it.

This [and colder houses after installing them] is why heat pumps have all the popularity of a migraine.

When most of the electricity generation comes from gas you are never going to make electricity delivered to the house cheaper than gas burned in the home.

Yes - we need to make changes to conservation areas in order to conserve the planet.

There are plenty of ways to make adjustments which you haven't mentioned, but the objection to having a car parked in front of the house has generally been overruled - having a heat pump around is far less of an obtrusive change to an area.

"even if" you car got 10mpg.... Getting a scop in excess of three shouldn't be aspirational, that would be the bare minimum you should be aiming for. Over 4 is good, 3.5 should be standard.

Taking your values of 7p and 27p, and assuming (optimistically) a 90% efficient boiler a SCOP of 3.5 would be about the breakeven point in terms of opex - You also omit the (small) saving from not having a gas standing charge.

Of course not everything has to be a financial "investment"... What's the ROI on that new kitchen?

The heating capacity of heat pumps isn't sufficient for many poorly insulated 19th and early 20th century British homes. You'd need additional electrical resistance heating or supplemental natural gas heating to compensate.

If that's the case, how come my late Victorian (1896) house is perfectly comfortable with a heat pump?

Also, heat pumps take up valuable space and make continuous irritating low frequency noises.

Nope, no irritating noises (and it wouldn't be continuous anyway). A properly installed heat pump should be on anti-vibration feet. Yes, if you're standing next to it, it makes fan noise when working, but you don't have the windows open when you need heating so don't hear it in the house.

IMHO only new, highly insulated homes should have heat pumps. For older homes we should just upgrade the electrical network and use resistance heating. New nuclear plants and a huge investment in the power distribution network should therefore be top priority.

Agreed on the grid needing upgrading, but resistance heating gives 1 kW of heating per 1 kW of electricity, a heat pump will give 2-3 kW heat per kW of electricity under the worst conditions likely in the UK. Even if your house leaks like a sieve you'll be warmer with a heat pump. "Fabric first" is a daft idea.

BTW I personally had the same idea as Johnson since there's already a well developed gas distribution network and hydrogen gas can be made to flow through those pipes. Gas heaters can also be modified to bun hydrogen gas relatively easily. Maybe we were both wrong but I don't think it was (or is) a bad idea.

It's a bloody awful idea when you get into the details. Johnson's qualified in bullshitting with a minor in Classics, and doesn't know his arse from a hole in the ground about anything technical.

Don't bring facts into this discussion - people don't want facts, they already have their prejudice and ignorance.

It was a clear example of magical thinking to look good while kicking the can down the road. All the science says that hydrogen is useless for anything but transforming at the point of use. Add to this the enormous problem of how do you produce all that hydrogen. This is why ammonia is being touted both as the way to transport hydrogen over distance, and even as a fuel source: apparently Toyota has an ammonia engine ready for cars.

Air-sourced heat pumps are a bad idea for anywhere that gets cold and doesn't have oodles of cheap energy. Yields decline quickly as the temperature drop because water vapour in the air is the main source of energy for pumps. Ground-sourced heat pumps are a much better option for northern Europe, but only then where plots are large enough. Where possible this can be combined with solarthermal heating and solarelectric for power. This could make a lot more residential properties self-sufficient. But it's pretty useless for cities.

I'm still hoping that we'll learn from nature and develop closed-loop e-fuel systems for individual or district use. These will use the abundant energy in the summer to produce hydrocarbons that can be used in the winter. Any excess can be sold off, but it has to be at market prices. But I'm open to alternatives that follow the same principle: make hay while the sun shines.

They were supposed to be in production this year (manufacturing micro-wave boilers as a direct plugin for gas combis) but have disappeared from view.

Anyone?

Using microwaves to heat water is less efficient than just using resistance heating. It adds unnecessary complexity, and will be less reliable than just using a hot element to heat water. In short, it's a clever idea, but not a very good one. Using microwaves to heat food can be more efficient, because the heat goes straight into the food and you waste less of the heat warming up your kitchen. You don't lose the waste heat in a well insulated immersion heater setup.

There was also Ceres Power in Horsham West Sussex, who were developing a gas micropower generation system and using the waste heat for hot water and heating.

Heat pumps are only the solution if you radically improve the heat efficiency of our homes.

For many of the existing homes, even ones built as recently as the turn of the century, this cannot be done to a suitable standard at a reasonable cost.

Generating more than about 10kW from an air-source heat pump is difficult and increasingly costly the more power you need (and occupy a large amount of space, and use quite a lot of electricity), and as most gas boilers put out 20-30kW of heat, even the largest common heat pump rated at 16kW will leave a larger house cold.

I know that the building industry is relishing knocking down all the inefficient properties, and replacing them with hermetically sealed shoeboxes with lifetimes of 25 years or less for us all to live in, but that is just not going to happen in the timespan we're talking about.

But heat pumps effectively "steal" energy from the public environment and concentrate it for your own private use

I don't understand why the Conservatives would be so attached to them

I do wonder how the push for heat pumps is going to interact with the incredible number of houses you Brits have which can't be changed because they're designated as historical.

I guess you're going to find out how they dressed when the houses were built; i.e. put on another sweater, if you can afford it.

If not, well how much will the environmental lords care about another peasant who died of hypothermia?

Thanks to a cunning plan called "UK house prices" we have managed to avoid the problem of peasants living in listed buildings in conservation areas

"The project was started under Theresa May..." - so why is this Johnson's mad plan?

The enthusiastic leap to heat pumps doesn't look to be any more sensible - the latest government report suggests that we'll need tens of billions per year of subsidies to make people switch. In which case, it's clearly not "cheaper" nor particularly efficient.

If the National Infrastructure Commision's report is to be believed, the current plan to switch to heat pumps will add around £1500 per year to our tax/bills. Why is it we only call the previous attempts at solving this "mad", when the new plans are no less insane? It's not really journalism to single out disgraced former PMs (we've got plenty of them) for criticism when current policy is so shoddy.

It's easy to blame BoJo, he's really not well liked. A lot of people hate him with a passion.

OTOH, it was Theresa May who signed us up for legal Net Zero commitments, with little scrutiny. That's going to be one eye-wateringly massive bill that someone is going to have to pick up. Might even top the lockdowns / Furlough as one of the worst single decisions a government has ever made in the history of everything.

Still, the worst thing she ever did was walk through a corn field (oh, and impoverish the whole country for a couple of generations, unless we reverse it)

I think you are confusing a government signing up for a commitment and actually spending the money to implement it.

Who do you think is paying for all those wind turbines and solar farms (the subsidies)? And why do you think our energy bills have gone up so much, whereas countries which haven't "invested" in these technologies haven't gone up in the same way. So, they are actually spending the money to implement it already.

We're already paying, but it's small fish compared to what is coming to meet Net Zero.

If you think that getting to Net Zero is expensive, wait until you see the bill for not getting there...

Please show your working on this. It's just an arbitrary target. What difference would it make it we get there in 2070 or 2080 instead of 2050? What technologies will be available by then?

I've seen some modelling on this, and "the bill" is actually a small percentage difference in economic growth.

...as long as 50% of it is going straight out through the windows and roof because the house is so badly insulated. Which most British houses are.

And yet we have an ageing population.

The obvious solution is to have grannies knitting house cosies.

Whatever happened to those sausage dog draft excluders? Do doors now fit? Another traditional industry ruined by modern technology

Precisely. Our house is an old terrace. Very common in London. We had a loft extension 20 odd years ago with improved roof insulation as part of the requirements.We've had external insulation added to the front and back walls from the coffers of a poorly organised subsidy scheme, because, knowing it was going to be a fiasco I got my application in within minutes of the scheme opening. And it was still difficult to get it arranged btw .

But none-the-less the house is not all that energy efficient. Our double glazing is almost 30 years old now. There are all sorts of small gaps and draughts in the house. The front door, though safely within a double glazed porch area and having a draught excluder on the bottom and foam strips on the frame fits where it wants to.

Ours is probably a reasonably heat efficient home compared to many around, but it's still no where near good enough

Waste digesters produce methane, this can be used as well, keeps getting forgotten about, for a small number of users would work fine.

Already part of the government's renewable gas ambitions, with some treated for injection to the gas transmission system, although in reality most of it (from landfill and sewage slidges) has been captured and used for many decades. I was part of a project to generate renewable power from landfill sites thirty years ago, and sewage plants have captured and re-used digestor gases for sixty or more years, and there's few unexploited sources that would add up to much.

Correct me if I'm wrong but as I recall from chemistry many years ago H2 is a very small molecule and tends to leak very easily, escaping through surfaces/pipes/joins that it finds to be somewhat porous compared to larger molecules like CH4. Could hydrogen even be safely transported along old pipes buried in the roads intended to carry methane?

Could hydrogen even be safely transported along old pipes...

No.

Hydrogen used to be ~50% of traditional "coal gas*". How much was lost back then? Are modern gas pipes leakier?