Homes may have gas cut off if they refuse to take part in hydrogen trial

[OnlinePoker]

Homeowners who refuse to take part in a hydrogen energy trial will be forcibly cut off by gas network operators, under Government plans to test green heating alternatives.

Residents in one village will begin the pilot scheme by 2025 to help the Government assess whether hydrogen gas can be used as a low-carbon alternative for heating homes across the country.

Ministers insisted the powers to enter people's homes and switch off their gas would only be used as a "last resort" if the homeowners had refused to engage with any other options.

A consultation, which ended this week, suggests the Government will seek powers to allow gas distribution networks to enter homes if their owners do not wish to take part in the trial, in order to safely switch them off from the gas grid.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2021/10/02/village-homeowners-may-have-gas-forcibly-cut-refuse-take-part/

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I'm really curious where all this low carbon hydrogen is supposed to come from as, according to the article, they would need to replace gas in 85% of British homes. It also says the homeowners would have to replace all gas using appliances to make it safe to use hydrogen. That is a massive amount of material going for scrap.

[Otto_Harper]

1. The use of hydrogen as a means of both stretching natural gas supplies and exploiting wind energy

has been under review and research for more than a decade. It is not a simple thing to just go and replace all of the natural gas in a pipeline with hydrogen and you're done. A rather extensive report on just this subject was issued by a US Govt lab in 2013. Here's just a tiny bit f what it says:

Hydrogen is being pursued as a sustainable energy carrier for fuel cell electric vehicles (FCEVs)
and as a means of storing renewable energy at utility scale. Hydrogen can also be used as a fuel
in stationary fuel cell systems for buildings, backup power, or distributed generation. Blending
hydrogen into the existing natural gas pipeline network has been proposed as a means of
increasing the output of renewable energy systems such as large wind farms. If implemented
with relatively low concentrations, less than 5%–15% hydrogen by volume, this strategy of
storing and delivering renewable energy to markets appears to be viable without significantly
increasing risks associated with utilization of the gas blend in end-use devices (such as
household appliances), overall public safety, or the durability and integrity of the existing natural
gas pipeline network. However, the appropriate blend concentration may vary significantly
between pipeline network systems and natural gas compositions and must therefore be assessed
on a case-by-case basis. Any introduction of a hydrogen blend concentration would require
extensive study, testing, and modifications to existing pipeline monitoring and maintenance
practices (e.g., integrity management systems). Additional cost would be incurred as a result, and
this cost must be weighed against the benefit of providing a more sustainable and low-carbon gas
product to consumers.

[link:https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/51995.pdf|

[NNadir]

2. The majority of the world's hydrogen is made from natural gas with a thermodynamic penalty.

Hydrogen wastes the energy in natural gas, but is essential for producing ammonia for fertilizers.

Less than 2% of the world's hydrogen is produced by electrolysis, and then only as a side product for the production of chlorine.

The "wind to hydrogen" scam is as old as the hills. There used to be a lot of threads here in E&E with a couple of giggly airheads hyping the Utsira "wind to hydrogen" pilot that ran for a few years to power 10 homes on a Norwegian Island before being shut down to provide "lessons learned."

The real lesson that I took, if no one else did, is that wind energy has proved useless for displacing fossil fuels, remains trivial, and - as we're seeing in Europe now - unreliable and leads to very expensive price hikes for energy that disproportionately effect the poor. Wind can't even provide electricity in a meaningful and reliable way, and it's not going to produce much hydrogen.

[eppur_se_muova]

3. H2 is the "leakingest" substance in the world; indeed, the worst possible.

The idea of running this into people's homes is hair-raisingly frightening.