There has been much discussion about the future of heat, with many different heating solutions from heat pumps to hydrogen-powered boilers poised to replace natural gas once the technology is mature enough to be affordable and existing boilers age too much for an emergency gas engineer to save them.
However, it must be noted that the UK is exceptionally in the process of choosing the successor
to gas heating, and there is little agreement as to how the homes of the future will be kept warm and when hydrogen will be phased in, if ever.
Perhaps the most illustrative depiction of this chaos can be found with the introduction and subsequent abandonment of a Hydrogen Levy to energy bills that was intended to be used to fund research into hydrogen production and the infrastructure required to make the transition.
The proposal, initially suggested in December 2022, was incredibly unpopular and seen as the worst solution at the worst possible time.
The former part of the problem was that it was a universal levy attached to energy bills that was set to start in 2025, a year before the government decided on the role hydrogen played.
This meant that, theoretically, people could be taxed for hydrogen even if it would take years or even decades to reach their area.
Much more significantly, during a time when a wide variety of cost pressures were affecting the British public, raising energy bills was seen as a particularly imprudent decision, eventually leading to the proposal being dropped in favour of other funding options.
It has also fuelled the debate about where hydrogen’s place is in the energy hierarchy and whether homes will be heated with converted gas boilers fuelled by hydrogen gas, heat pumps or a combination of the two systems, with industrial premises using hydrogen as the most credible and affordable option.