Why are we talking about hydrogen boilers?
Hydrogen is an incredibly inefficient way to heat your home compared with heat pumps. Heat pumps move about 4 times as much energy in the form of heat as the electrical energy they consume. With hydrogen boilers the heat is created from chemical energy rather than moved and so there's no such upscaling. In fact it's worse than that since the hydrogen has to be created in the first place and if you're creating it from renewable electricity about a third is wasted. Despite the horrendous waste, hydrogen boilers may have a role. Heat pumps require an insulated hot water tank and many houses, especially in the UK, will not have space for an airing cupboard. So perhaps the solution will be to install heat pumps where-ever possible and then use the much-less efficient hydrogen boilers to mop up the rest. The risk, however, is that the government's enthusiasm for Hydrogen will slow down the decarbonisation of our heating sector. We are in a deadly ra...