UK government prepares for a hydrogen-ready boilers ban
December 26, 2023The government will also be adding gas units to its list that will be banned in new builds.
As a result of a delay in consultations for gas- and hydrogen-ready boilers to be installed in new constructions in England as of 2025, those units could be banned and heat pumps may become the new standard.
The UK government has now formally supported plans for banning these types of heating systems.
The proposals to stop hydrogen-ready boilers could mean that as the UK pushes forward to make all new homes “net zero ready” as of 2025, heat pumps could become the new standard for home heating and cooling.
The consultation prohibits homebuilders from using any fossil fuel heating system, including gas, H2-ready boilers, and hybrid heat pumps, after discovering that there was “no practical way to allow the installation of fossil fuel boilers while also delivering significant carbon savings.”
The government has placed net zero standards at the very core of its intentions to meet a legally binding net zero emissions target by 2050. That said, consultation regarding the heating systems faced massive delays due to the rising controversy connecting the government and the homebuilding sector.
The consultation for hydrogen-ready boilers and other systems had been scheduled for last March.
The hydrogen-ready boilers consultation was delayed to the summer and was pushed along again to the point that it wouldn’t be touched until the end of the year. The plans for the heating system regulations are now expected to be finalized by March 2024.
Environmental groups are accusing the government of delaying the new standards to allow homebuilders to save billions of pounds while simultaneously driving up construction costs. The hydrogen-ready boilers controversy thickened when The Guardian newspaper published a report in which it had found that at least 10 percent of Conservative party donations received since 2010 – around £40 million in total donations – were made from property development companies, real estate investors and others linked with the construction industry.
Heat pumps instead of H2
“Making heat pumps the default heating source for all new homes and banning gas and hydrogen boilers is absolutely the right step for the climate and for households’ energy bills,” said MCS Foundation director David Cowdrey. MCS Foundation provides home energy installer accreditation.
“Allowing fossil fuel or hydrogen heating in new homes would have locked in high bills and high carbon emissions for a generation. It is a huge relief that we are escaping that possibility and that the government has recognised the conclusive evidence that heat pumps and heat networks are the only viable option for getting our homes to net zero and ensuring low bills for people in new-build homes.”
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Heat pumps are incredibly inefficient in most circumstances, and greatly increases emissions. Hydrogen can have no emissions at all, if the hydrogen is generated from the best sources. This is totally backwards from what makes sense.
Here we go again politicians knowing really nothing.
Good luck with heat pumps you will freeze to death guaranteed. Heat pumps are not efficient just like solar and wind so dump those politicians before the weather changes HAHA
Huge mistake. Hydrogen is vastly cleaner than any other storage means. Solar and wind require a huge storage means. And the alternative to hydrogen is mostly lithium batteries, which are awful for the environment. Hydrogen is the ideal energy storage media.
Banning H2 boilers makes no sense. Green H2 emits no polution. Why ban that?
Heat pumps are run electrically, from polluting sources, and from central electricity generation stations, most all government owned and or controlled. You will receive as much winter period heating as the government desires for you, and only when the government wants it to happen.
I lived in a Communist country through one winter. You won’t like it!
At last the UK Government has resisted pressure from fossil gas suppliers to allow new homes to be fitted with inefficient gas boilers; the problem of gas boilers in existing homes and large buildings still remains, and these also need to be retro-fitted with heat pumps, but that is a massive task that will take time and vast expense, so a transition away from fossil methane gas heating by boilers in good condition could be helped by injecting more and more biomethane into the gas grid to give us more time.
Biomethane is a valuable untapped source of fossil-free energy and can be produced by processing all organic waste such as food waste and sewage in anaerobic digesters to produce biomethane that does not add to atmospheric carbon.