Home heating accounts for a large portion of greenhouse gas emissions. To reduce it, there is consideration of switching from the use of natural gas to hydrogen.
The entire world is committed to reducing carbon emissions with the goal of reaching zero by 2050. Much of this work also involves imagining a new home heating system. Currently, the gas used to make our homes warmer is responsible for much of the global greenhouse gas emissions. One scenario for making the system greener is to switch from using natural gas to hydrogen. According to some experts, hydrogen is abundant in nature and could power the next generation of appliances cleanly and efficiently.
The Hydrogen Heating Hypothesis
The interest in hydrogen, according to Robert Sansom of the Institution of Engineering and Technology’s Energy Policy Panel, stems from the fact that consumers would not notice a difference because they would continue to use a boiler similar to the one currently in use with natural gas. Sansom is the lead author of a study called Transitioning to Hydrogen that assessed the risks and engineering uncertainties associated with switching from our gas grid to hydrogen.
The Study on Transitioning from Natural Gas to Hydrogen
The analysis found that reusing the gas grid for hydrogen is possible, but not easy because there is no blueprint for such a conversion. Interest in hydrogen as a means of heating homes began in 2016 with a report called H2, conducted by Northern Gas Networks, the gas distributor for the north of England. The study had examined whether it was technically feasible and economically viable to convert the city of Leeds to 100% hydrogen instead of natural gas, drawing parallels with how the gas industry converted from city gas to natural gas in the 1960s and 1970s.
Now, many companies are already developing new appliances that can run on hydrogen, and by 2030 the gas industry will replace about 90% of metal pipes with yellow polyethylene, which is more suitable for hydrogen. However, there are still several questions about adopting such a solution that concern costs and also the method of extraction that may not be entirely green. For this reason, the idea of hydrogen to heat homes, for the moment, still remains one of the possible hypotheses to make the world more sustainable.
The fight against climate change is vast and some scholars even think that we have reached a point of no return. Other studies, however, have found that global warming can alter human behavior and that some animals are changing shape due to higher temperatures.
Stefania Bernardini