Hydrogen is better suited to storing energy than heating homes, UK Energy Secretary Grant Shapps said, adding to hints that a proposed hydrogen levy on household bills could be scrapped.
With the UK in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, plans to impose a levy on household energy bills to fund the hydrogen industry have drawn criticism, particularly as some point out that the fuel will not is a serious option for decarbonizing domestic heating. short term.
A hydrogen levy is currently going through Parliament as part of the government’s proposed energy bill. Last month The Telegraph reported, citing Shapps, that he did not support charging households to fund the government’s Net Zero campaign.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Shapps said he is “not sure home heating” is the place for hydrogen and believes it should be used for energy storage and industry weighing and transport.
The plan to replace boilers with something people don’t want is “fundamentally unpopular” in parts of the UK, he added.
In 2021, Britain unveiled a hydrogen strategy focused on using the fuel in short-term industrial processes, with the potential to extend to home heating in the future. While some in the industry say hydrogen can be an alternative to natural gas, critics see it as less efficient and more expensive than electric heat and potentially difficult to pump into homes safely at scale.
Hydrogen, however, has been touted as a way to store excess energy produced by offshore wind farms and solar farms for future use. It can also be done with low-carbon technologies, increasing its appeal to governments trying to get off coal. Shapps, for example, aims to produce enough hydrogen by 2030 to power London for a year.
–With the help of Ellen Milligan.
