My prediction is that in 2050 in the UK and hopefully worldwide, there will be two sort of large scale Gas Networks delivering energy for heating: a non-fossil synthetic / bio-methane (with up to 20% Hydrogen) and a fully 100% hydrogen Network be it from fossil fuels with Carbon Capture and Storage (Blue Hydrogen) or from electrolysis from Green electricity.
To get there we need to grow market for bio-methane using the existing Gas Networks. The Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) helps this. Changes to regulation and billing will help also.
Tag: Hydrogen
Future of the Gas grid
For me it has gone beyond if going for some form of Hydrogen Strategy vs decommission the Gas Grid in entirety, and onto the debates within the various aspects of Hydrogen Strategy around some of challenges within those. For example hopes to use deblending Hydrogen from (with over 20% vol) blended mix with Natural Gas at offtakes from National Transmission have not been thought through enough and are a distraction, given the energy losses of deblending and the need then required for storage at offtakes given the cycling of demand downstream, unless deblending will load follow and need to be sized for peak. Instead it better to commit to building a (parallel) Hydrogen Transmission System, and once all conversion complete the existing National Gas Transmission can be fully converted to 100% Hydrogen providing additional Linepack (Diurnal daily) Storage (Salt caverns used for seasonal storage).
The key challenge around 100% hydrogen conversion is switching customers over with being off gas for a period (so can only carried out during the in summer), this period will be massively reduced for those that allready have a Hydrogen Ready boiler, which hopefully will be mandated soon. Hopefully with long lead up along with that Mandate mean many boilers will already be Hydrogen Ready, reducing the amount of work required in people homes. Of course conversion was done before with switch from Towns Gas to Natural Gas but utilization and end user expectations are much higher nowadays. But it is the amount of work in people homes required with associated customer issues that will slow effective scaled up of any electric based alternatives also.
Any advance of one will help the other though, if Hydrogen in homes is not going to be ruled out all together. I think the chance for alternative of very high levels of insulation with Heat Pumps to undermine case for Hydrogen conversion has passed with Zero Carbon new build Homes 2016 being canceled. If Heat Pumps are not being used in new builds at scale now, than we need to crack on with preparing for 100% gas grid conversion.
I was at one point was convinced by books such as Without the Hot Air by the late David Mackay that Heat Pumps were way to go. But it has not quite gone way expected. There is a lot of inertia tied up with the companies, workforce structures, tenants and home owners around home heating, as well as failure of policy.
I myself tend to see bio-methane injection in gas grid as short term distraction too, given they won’t scale up to be the full solution required. It does provide benefits of a Greenhouse Gas reduction in short term, in same way as up to 20% vol hydrogen blending (preferably generated from off peak surplus Renewables). But at the moment bio-methane suffer poor value at small scale with overheads of injection into Gas Network (monitoring, adding smell, and for now adding Propane to keep energy density (Cv) & associcated Wobbe Index within limits etc), and limited capacity for injection away from peak. Although some of these limitation can be overcome to a certain degree. There have been moves afoot in Germany to have an additional pipeline network to gather Green Gases together from separate generation sites to have economy of scale of injection into higher pressure tiers of Gas Network.
Although I am happy to debate many aspects of energy supply with those interested, I have up till now wished to avoid myself out there to be a full on public advocate of pushing forward with investment in switching to using Hydrogen as energy carrier, and don’t wish promote use of hydrogen taking away from investment being increased for retrofitting homes, especially as I see as all supporting each other and all paying for themselves over time.
In the back and forth argument there are too many strawmen attacked from each side. The Hydrogen advocates often point to winter energy peak in gas being six times electric, and so would require unrealistic expansion of electric grid and storage. The switch to electric based on the use of heat pumps needs to be based on reducing heating requirements massively by full retrofit with high level of insulation but this comes with it own problems, if to be achieved 100% by 2050 or before. Even more limited upgrading of homes under Warmfront, various social housing upgrades to various Standards and recently ECO did not produce results expected, and are lessons being learnt? Often they don’t deliver what originally hoped. I have several personal experiences that inform this view, but that is maybe for another blog post.
Electric advocates point to lower energy density of hydrogen but as far as distribution by pipeline goes the lower viscosity goes a long way to make up for this and reinforcement of network will be small part of switch.
I am convinced at moment that aiming to convert the existing valuable Gas Networks that to 100% Hydrogen is worth pursuing over decommisioning all of them. And will continue to support doing this in most environmental beneficial and cost effective way.
Also see my previous post on this blog at:
https://j12.org/blog/2020/07/18/decarbonise-heat-at-scale/
with links like Gas Goes Green
also listen to Podcast from SGN:
https://sgn.co.uk/news/weve-launched-our-first-podcast-series-exploring-future-uks-energy-system
Decarbonise Heat at Scale
Policy is critical. But it is probably more important to push policy forward with clarity, momentum and critical mass than some of the technology choices within that policy. In fact it makes sense to diversity of approaches to learn as efforts scaled up and shift based on feedback of what works best. If you don’t have overarching cross sector transfers such as Carbon Tax then measures to decarbonise within sectors by customer cost base such as Gas separate from Electric supply helps pushes decarbonisation across sectors by pushing up costs evenly. i.e. a move to hydrogen in gas transortation and supply with additional cost pushing up price of gas from what would be otherwise makes decarbonising electric as well as energy efficiency measures more competitive and visa versa. Banning new connections to Natural Gas Network in 2025 in UK will spur both switch to Heat Pumps as well as make case for conversion of Gas supply to 100% Hydrogen. It is frustrating that the Modelling that investments, renewals & maintenance in Gas Transportation Networks is based on can not be switched to based on Hydrogen until a clear UK wide Hydrogen Strategy. So when assets replaced sized and specified for Hydrogen, and made ready to support conversion area by area later. For example makes sense to add in Valves when a it is on Gas Main replaced that will be used for area isolation as part of conversion than has to dig up road again at great cost to isolate later. Even bigger is need to grow supply chain of Hydrogen ready boilers.
Investment will pay for itself over time and costs saved later pay for investment now.
And ever my posts are going to mostly links of interest:
Future Energy Scenarios (National Grid ESO) as summerised in article on Carbon Brief website.
NW Hydrogen Alliance100% Hydrogen conversion to help delivering Net Zero.
HyNet as reported on by The Chemical Engineer.
Delivering Net Zero with Heat Pumps.
All Hands to the Pump from IPPR (reported by Business Green).
Embedded Greenhouse Gas emissions
Supplying process heat with low carbon emissions to industry is required to avert climate change. One of most credible viable pathways to this is converting Natural Gas into Hydrogen for transport to industry through pipes but also ability to store in salt caverns. Carbon Dioxide that is a by product but rather than releasing Carbon … Continue reading “Embedded Greenhouse Gas emissions”
Supplying process heat with low carbon emissions to industry is required to avert climate change. One of most credible viable pathways to this is converting Natural Gas into Hydrogen for transport to industry through pipes but also ability to store in salt caverns. Carbon Dioxide that is a by product but rather than releasing Carbon Dioxide to atmosphere capturing the Carbon Dioxide and storing it underground.
This change would increase accounted for costs of energy of industry along the line as would any decarbonisation strategy, but it is quite reasonable for the transition costs to be seen as investment, that is paid back with reduced social costs. It is vital that costs of climate change are (relatively) incorporated into energy use and thus embedded in goods, with any green house emissions. If there is a mis-match between how countries treat these costs it would be reasonable strategy to subsidise these costs to ensure exports still competitive in short term. And a complimentary option is to apply a Carbon Sales Tax where carbon costs not passed through energy costs which would act like tariffs on imports for the embedded emissions within the imported goods, and even services, from countries that did not have equivilant investment in low carbon emission energy. The revenue needs to be recycled to support those affected by costs in form of universal income and/or services, as well as measures supporting translation such as investment in energy saving / decarbonisation. But in medium term if UK had first mover advantage with low carbon emission hydrogen supplied to industry then exports from that industry such as steel and glass and those made with from these such as cars could command a low embedded emission premium, as treaties evolve to take embedded carbon emissions, allowing costs to recovered.
An advantage of moving first to capture carbon dioxide from converting methane to hydrogen is you can do this at a steady state all year round with being able to store large amounts of hydrogen in salt caverns for then supplying the winter heating peak demand as well as industry. With a relatively steady supply of Carbon Dioxide to store this means more efficient sizing of carbon capture and storage, over the sizing just for electric production which would have to be sized for the peak electric and then not used to full outside of that peak time, with vast range of fluctuation. It is critical that we start scaling up rapidly the development of carbon capture and storage. A commitment to convert the gas networks to hydrogen is the best driver for this, underwriting the investment.
Over time you would add in other hydrogen sources than just from Nature Gas (Methane) such as electrolysis using off peak electric surpluses with mass role out of intermittent renewable electric sources such as wind turbines. But at first the best way to scale up is by converting natural gas which leverages the already large amount of valuable assets for supplying natural gas.
For more about converting the existing Gas Distribution Networks to Hydrogen see: https://h21.green/
Also see:
Very challenging but credible welcome paths via Labour into the future for reducing impact of heating on climate change in the UK
Some extracts from the Labour Party 2019 Manifesto that I myself find particularly of interest: “Energy use in buildings accounts for 56% of the UK’s total emissions, making it the single most polluting sector. We will develop the recommendations of our ‘30 by 2030’ report to put the UK on track for a net-zero-carbon energy … Continue reading “Very challenging but credible welcome paths via Labour into the future for reducing impact of heating on climate change in the UK”
Some extracts from the Labour Party 2019 Manifesto that I myself find particularly of interest:
“Energy use in buildings accounts for 56% of the UK’s total emissions, making it the single most polluting sector. We will develop the recommendations of our ‘30 by 2030’ report to put the UK on track for a net-zero-carbon energy system within the 2030s – and go faster if credible pathways can be found. We will deliver nearly 90% of electricity and 50% of heat from renewable and low-carbon sources by 2030.”
“As part of heat decarbonisation, we will roll out technologies like heat pumps, solar hot water and hydrogen, and invest in district heat networks using waste heat.” (my emphasis)
“We will support energy workers through transition and guarantee them retraining and a new, unionised job on equivalent terms and conditions.”
“We will provide a strategy to safeguard the people, jobs and skills that depend on the offshore oil and gas industry.”