August 17, 2021

expert reaction to the government’s hydrogen strategy

The government have released the UK’s first-ever hydrogen strategy.

Dr Kedar Pandya, Director for Cross-Council Programmes at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation, said:

“The UK is internationally recognised for hydrogen research and innovation, and it will play a key role in delivering Government’s strategy.  Decades of investment have developed our understanding of production, storage and integration technologies.

“Convergence of UK academic strength, policy need, technology maturity and business readiness in the UK means we are very well placed to realise its potential as an alternative fuel source as part of a Net Zero energy system. 

“The latest IPCC report has reaffirmed the need for vital work to meet our net zero commitments and EPSRC will be launching further investment in hydrogen production and integration to better understand our options across the whole hydrogen value chain.”

Prof Nilay Shah OBE FREng, Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London and Vice-Chair of the National Engineering Policy Centre’s net zero project, says:

“We welcome the strategy overall; we see hydrogen playing an important role in getting to net zero but there are urgent innovation issues to address. A twin track approach makes sense because blue hydrogen can be made at scale and help establish whole value chains quickly and effectively while giving green hydrogen systems time to scale up. The UK has an active research base, and small and large companies with leading edge technology in this field – and the strategy provides an opportunity to take a leading international position.”

Prof Rob Gross, Director of the UK Energy Research Centre and Professor of Energy Policy and Technology at Imperial College, said:

“Hydrogen has the potential to be incredibly useful. It could literally reach the sectors other options can’t, in industry and aviation. But we won’t be able to use it everywhere all at once. The sheer volume of energy needed in single sectors, like domestic heating or transport, is immense. Considering the miniscule amount of hydrogen we use for energy today the challenge is huge. So hydrogen won’t be a quick fix or a universal panacea. As well as figuring out how to make lots of clean hydrogen much more cheaply we will also need to decide where to use it first, and importantly, where we can manage without it. The strategy makes a start on all of that but there is a long, long way to go”.

Dr Eike Thaysen, Technical Research Associate at the School of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh, has provided the following answers to some background questions about hydrogen:

Is hydrogen safe?

“The technological advances over the past decades were huge and have made the use of hydrogen as an energy source in vehicles safe. In other sectors such as domestic heating initial risk assessments evaluated that the risk of using hydrogen in homes is not any greater than for natural gas, but a full safety assessment, including for the of blending of hydrogen into the existing gas network, is still outstanding.”

Is it green and will it help us get to net zero? 

“Hydrogen is green when produced from the splitting of water with electricity derived from renewable energy sources such as wind or solar power. When produced by its current main production pathway, the reaction of steam with methane, however, carbon monoxide and/or carbon dioxide are produced (blue hydrogen). Hence, in order to decrease our carbon emissions, blue hydrogen production must be combined with carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS). Both green hydrogen and blue hydrogen combined with CCUS will be essential to help us to get to net zero.”

What are the main benefits/drawbacks of hydrogen? 

“The main benefit of hydrogen is that it provides a way of storing surplus renewable (zero carbon) energy during periods of renewable energy oversupply, thereby fueling increased use of zero carbon energy sources and helping the transition to a net zero society.

“The main drawbacks of hydrogen are its small molecule size and flammability requiring specialized leak-tight enclosures. Also, its low energy density (a third the energy density of natural gas) requires large storage capacities.”

Prof Jon Gluyas, Director of the Durham Energy Institute, said:

“Molecular hydrogen does occur within the shallow parts of the Earth’s crust. Such ‘gold’ hydrogen may yet to be proven to occur in commercially attractive quantities. Researchers at Durham and Oxford universities are currently working to develop an exploration strategy for gold hydrogen.”

Dr Jan Rosenow, Director of European Programmes at the Regulatory Assistance Project, and Honorary Research Associate at the University of Oxford, said:

“The hydrogen strategy rightly identifies hydrogen as a key ingredient for the energy transition especially in areas such as power, industry and parts of the transport sector. But, as the strategy admits, there won’t be significant quantities of low carbon hydrogen for some time. We need to use it where there are few alternatives and not as a like-for-like replacement of gas.”

“The hydrogen strategy confirms what we have known all along: hydrogen for heating our homes will not play a significant role before 2030. The government’s strategy shows that less than 0.2% of all homes are expected to use hydrogen to keep warm in the next decade. This means that for reducing emissions this decade hydrogen will play only a very marginal role. But we cannot wait until 2030 before bringing down emissions from heating. The urgency of the climate crisis requires bold policy action now.”

Declared interests

Dr Jan Rosenow: “no interests to declare.”

Dr Eike Thaysen: “no interests to declare.”

None others received.