The UK government’s
climate-trashing plans to use hydrogen for home heating are starting to come up
against resistance by communities.
Residents of Whitby on Merseyside – one of two sites the government is considering making an experimental “hydrogen village” – protested last week about the tide of greenwash from Cadent Gas in support of the plan.
The villagers demonstrated in
the freezing cold at Cadent’s Hydrogen Experience Centre, against the proposal
to turn their homes over to hydrogen heating without proper consultation.
Louise Gittins, leader of
Cheshire West and Chester council, told the crowd: “I don’t want anyone forced
into doing this. I’ll take what you’ve said on board.”
Cadent, which owns the local
gas distribution network, plans to convert
2000 Whitby households to hydrogen for heating – despite opposition to such
uses by engineers and energy researchers. They say that fitting electric heat
pumps, and retrofitting insulation, is more energy-efficient, and contributes
far more effectively and rapidly to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
The government supports
hydrogen for home heating – in line with energy companies’ wishes, and against
the advice of engineers and scientists in numerous reports. It will decide next year
which residents to use as guinea pigs for its “hydrogen village” experiment;
its two options are in Whitby and Redcar, north Yorkshire.
The government has also funded
studies for Northern Gas Networks’ H21 project, which would convert more than
15 million homes from gas to hydrogen. And just this week it has launched a consultation about
offering “hydrogen-ready” boilers to homes – which would damage more effective,
electricity-based routes to decarbonisation.
The
Whitby residents, distrustful of one-sided information from Cadent, organised
a virtual public meeting with researchers
Jan Rosenow, Tom Baxter and Paul Martin of the Hydrogen
Science Coalition. It’s well worth watching.
The Whitby protest was also
supported by the HyNOT campaign group, set up to
challenge HyNET, a government-backed array of industrial
projects in the north west.
HyNET centres on plans to
capture and store carbon from the Stanlow oil refinery – relying on the oil
industry’s problematic carbon capture and storage technology,
in which politicians are putting vastly inflated hopes.
Campaigners argue that the
project is a survival strategy for oil and gas companies.
Catherine Watson Green of HyNOT
said the group was formed by climate activists in the North West and North
Wales, “to question the whole ethos of hydrogen, made from gas, as an answer to
climate problems. Hydrogen is being used as an excuse to carry on
business-as-usual, for the gas industry to carry on.
“We are against hydrogen being
used for processes where it is unsuitable and wasteful. The fact that HyNET are
even considering using hydrogen in homes – which is so clearly wasteful of
energy – just shows that we have a point.”
Unease about the government’s
and energy companies’ intentions is not limited to Merseyside.
In Fife, Scotland, the gas
network company SGN had this month failed to get 300
households to sign up to participate in a hydrogen heating experiment – despite
offering them £1000 each to do so.
In Aberdeen, a community campaign has been mounted
against proposals to concrete over St Fittick’s Park and turn it over to an “energy transition zone” for hydrogen and other
oil-industry-connected technologies.
Hopefully, ways can be found to
join up such local campaigns with each other, and with the broader movement in
favour of a rapid transition away from fossil fuels, and against new oil and
gas investment.
On Saturday I suggested some
policy points around which campaigns could unify, at an on-line meeting organised
by the climate justice campaign group Scot.E3:
■ A moratorium on
hydrogen for home heating and transport;
■ A moratorium on
hydrogen import plans that plunder the global south;
■ More, faster funding
for insulation, heat pumps and training for engineers;
■ Demand investment in
public transport and non-car transport modes (as opposed to investment in
hydrogen for transportation);
■ Use life cycle
emissions standards to combat greenwash; and
■ The labour movement and
communities could develop holistic post-fossil-fuel strategies that treat
energy as a service, not a commodity.
Those are just my suggestions,
to be improved upon by others. (The meeting was about “Hydrogen: the technofix
that undermines climate action”. There is a video of my talk here, and the slides are here.)
It’s a great start that communities,
climate campaigners and researchers are working together on this, against the
oil and gas industry and its facilitators in government.
As things stand, though, much
of the trade union hierarchy and the Labour Party – e.g. in councils, both in Yorkshire
and in Cheshire – are on the fossil fuel companies’ side.
Unite, for example, last year
issued a Plan for Jobs that
includes wildly inaccurate assertions that carbon capture and storage cuts the
cost of UK decarbonisation by more than half, and that using it in the North
Sea would “create 68,000 jobs by 2050”.
These wild claims for CCS, and
the failure to look at alternatives, mirror closely what the oil companies are
saying. Unite members will find reasons to challenge this approach e.g.
in a report on
hydrogen and the associated technologies, including CCS, published by Trade
Unions for Energy Democracy in April.
Here is an overview of UK
government hydrogen policy, and some suggestions for further reading. SP, 16 December 2022.
□
UK government hydrogen
policy: the main points
■ The government’s Energy Security Strategy (April
2022) raised the target for hydrogen output stated in the Hydrogen Strategy, from
5 gigawatts (GW) to 10 GW. (Ministers claim that half of this hydrogen would be
“green” (from renewables); so presumably half would be “blue”?)
■ Two carbon capture and
storage “clusters” have been approved: HyNET and the East Coast Cluster. The
latter cluster aims to capture carbon from Drax power station – where Biofuelwatch and others are combating
greenwashing claims – and from industry on Teesside.
■ The H21 project,
sponsored by Equinor, Cadent and Northern Gas Networks, is part of the
strategy. It aims to convert 15.7 million homes, starting in Yorkshire and the
north east, from gas to hydrogen by 2050. Initial reports were funded by the
taxpayer (£15.8 million in 2017-19); a Front End Engineering & Design study
would cost £250 million. Friends of the Earth, who advocate a programme of
insulation and heat pumps instead, point out that to do it with “green”
hydrogen would need more than six times UK current wind capacity; to do it with
“blue” hydrogen would need 60 carbon capture and storage plants, as big as the
current biggest in the world. This project shows the extent to which hydrogen
is a survival strategy for oil and gas companies, in my view.
■ A decision next year on
a test “hydrogen village”.
■ Ministers NEVER talk
about decarbonising current “grey” hydrogen production, from which carbon dioxide goes straight
into the atmosphere.
■ Centrica, which plays a
leading part in the hydrogen lobby, is in partnership with Ryze Hydrogen. Jo Bamford, Ryze
Hydrogen CEO, is son of Anthony Bamford, a big Tory donor and JCB boss
□
More to watch and read
about hydrogen
□ Virtual meeting with residents of Whitby Hydrogen Village –
video. Researchers Tom Baxter, Paul Martin and Jan Rosenow discuss the impacts of
using 100% hydrogen in home heating, 9 November
□ Hydrogen: the technofix that undermines climate action –
video. Talk by Simon Pirani at a Scot.E3 virtual meeting, 10 December.
(Slides here.)
□ For first-class technical
explanations, see blog posts by David Cebon, University of Cambridge, on the
pros and cons of using hydrogen for powering lorries, heating buildings and electricity storage, and one bringing together the
arguments.
□ The hydrogen hoax – People & Nature
□ Global Witness report on hydrogen
heating, September 2022
□ Leigh Collins of Recharge
News, the energy business news site, comments on industry lobbying in
the UK parliament, July 2021.
https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2022/12/16/communities-question-hydrogen-hype/
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