The UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) has expressed its opposition to the proposal to mandate hydrogen-ready boilers. The UKGBC believes that this approach comes with considerable risk and negligible opportunities, and instead supports a phase-out of all gas boilers driven by a clearly signalled end to all sales of gas boilers by 2030. The UKGBC has also called for the 2025 Future Homes and Buildings Standard to not permit any type of gas boiler to be installed or gas connection to be made. The use of hydrogen for heating would require a transparent and science-based approach to production options. The UKGBC’s Whole Life Carbon Roadmap to Decarbonise the Built Environment report concluded that there is limited rationale for the use of hydrogen to heat buildings. The House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee also concluded that low carbon hydrogen will have a limited role in replacing natural gas in heating homes.
The Risks and Negligible Opportunities of Making Boilers ‘Hydrogen Ready’ According to UKGBC
The UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) has expressed concern over the proposal to make boilers ‘hydrogen ready’. This approach entails making new domestic-scale gas boilers capable of being converted to run on pure hydrogen in the future if the gas network is converted.
The UK government aims to make strategic decisions about the role of hydrogen in heating buildings by 2026. As part of this goal, the government has proposed that all new domestic-scale gas boilers sold from 2026 onwards be ‘hydrogen-ready’.
However, the UKGBC has stated its disagreement with this proposal. In 2021, the UKGBC published the Whole Life Carbon Roadmap to Decarbonise the Built Environment, a report that concluded that there is limited rationale for the use of hydrogen to heat buildings. The report was based on a year’s worth of collaboration between over 100 UKGBC member and industry organisations.
The House of Commons Science and Technology Select Committee has also concluded that low carbon hydrogen will have a limited role in replacing natural gas in heating homes. The report found that hydrogen is many times more expensive and inefficient than heat pumps and heat networks.
According to the UKGBC Roadmap, the only possible case for heating homes with hydrogen would be in the close vicinity of some industrial clusters and not until 2040. The UKGBC instead supports the phase-out of all gas boilers driven by a clearly signalled end to all sales of gas boilers by 2030.
The UKGBC has also called for the 2025 Future Homes and Buildings Standard to not permit any type of gas boiler to be installed or gas connection to be made.
The use of hydrogen would require a transparent and science-based approach to the options available for production. Green hydrogen would require a significant increase in dedicated off-shore wind electricity. Blue hydrogen using fossil fuels would rely on carbon capture use and storage, an immature and expensive technology that cannot be considered reliably low carbon and in line with the UK’s climate commitments.
Overall, the UKGBC believes that the policy to make boilers ‘hydrogen ready’ represents a slow, inefficient, and costly path to decarbonisation. The latest IPCC report highlights the urgency of limiting global warming to 1.5C, and delaying the phase-out of gas boilers could lead to missed opportunities and inflated costs.
UKGBC Urges Government to Avoid Mandating Hydrogen-Ready Boilers
The UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) has stated its opposition to the proposal to mandate hydrogen-ready boilers. The UKGBC argues that there is considerable risk and negligible opportunities associated with this approach. They encourage the government to wait until it has made a strategic decision about the role of hydrogen in heating before making any such mandates. This news comes amidst developments shaping the hydrogen market. For the latest updates, check out Hydrogen Central’s Business Development and Hydrogen Boiler sections.
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