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The UK plans on phasing out new fossil-fuel-fired boilers in
favor of new heat pumps, biomass boilers, and, perhaps,
hydrogen-enabled boilers to heat the country's buildings as it
reaches for net zero.
This week, Boris Johnson's government said the UK would be
tackling carbon in the buildings sector with a promise of £3.9
billion ($5.4 billion) in funding, of which £450 million in grants
will go towards replacing natural gas-fired boilers in homes and
small businesses ahead of phasing out their sale in 2035.
It will instead rely upon air- or ground-source heat pumps and
biomass boilers, as laid out in the Heat and Buildings Strategy
released on 18 October. However, industrial bodies have criticized the low level of
funding available.
In addition, it plans to "end new connections to the gas grid"
as new buildings will use heat pumps and heat networks. In a 2020
white paper, the government set
out how local authorities will introduce network "zoning" in
England by 2025 to heat new buildings.
This is an early step in the government's plan to "gradually,
but completely, [move] away from burning fossil fuels for heating."
The plan builds on Prime Minister Johnson's 2020 Ten Point Plan pledging that
the government would install 600,000 heat pumps every year by 2028,
reinforced by a new energy efficiency standard and
an energy efficiency target connected to mortgages. Under the
heating strategy published this week, heating systems will be
replaced rather than more insulation added, to do the heavy lifting
of saving on fuel and emissions.
Greening buildings in the UK has been a tough nut to crack. The
UK's 2020 Green Homes Grant, a £1.5-billion scheme offering up to
£10,000 to install insulation or low-carbon heating, closed after
six months after suppliers complained about too much red tape. The
government similarly abandoned a 2012 scheme called the Green
Deal.
While the heating strategy was delayed after being expected in
May and then in July 2021, it has arrived in time for the UK to
play host to Paris Agreement parties at the UN's Conference of
Parties in November.
"Recent volatile gas prices across the world have demonstrated
the need for the UK to…. reduce [its] reliance on fossils fuels
such as using gas boilers," the government said as it justified the
strategy.
Despite the pressing need to replace gas, green heating
technologies are still not widely and cheaply available. "The
answer to soaring gas prices lies in renewable heating, a
technology that is ready to replace gas boilers but only affordable
in eight EU countries," according to environmental NGO
coalition Cool Products.
Certain EU countries have taken the lead on greener heating.
Sweden, Finland, Denmark, France, Austria, Belgium, and the
Netherlands have pledged to phase out all types of fossil-fuel
heating systems, with Denmark banning fossil fuel-fired boilers and
gas heating in new buildings in 2013. Swedish heating is nearly
fully decarbonized. A total of 13 countries have already laid out a
strategy to decarbonize heating in their EU-mandated National
Energy and Climate Plans, Cool Products found.
Heat pumps face cost hurdle
The UK plans to roll out heat pumps for some buildings in 2024
when regulations will require commercial buildings that aren't
connected to the gas grid to use heat pumps, and then the same
rules will apply to residencies and on-grid commercial buildings
two years later.
IHS Markit Senior Director, Gas, Power, and Energy Futures
Deborah Mann praised support for electric heat pumps and research
into the potential of combined fuel/electric hybrid heat pumps.
"This will help to expand experience and familiarity with heat
pumps, speed up their adoption, and drive their cost down, as well
as offering whole-system flexibility if given the correct price
signals," she said.
"It is encouraging that hybrid heat pump systems are being given
serious consideration in this strategy. The [energy
efficiency-focused] approach has often been difficult and expensive
to achieve in practice with so many of the UK's old buildings, and
hybrid systems can allow heat pumps to be installed in
less-than-ideal buildings, giving confidence that households will
be adequately heated," said Mann.
But the UK lacks a domestic market for the supply of heat pumps,
which are more abundant in Germany and the Nordic countries.
Not only this, but the cost of installing a heat pump can be at
least three times higher than a boiler in places like Denmark, and
doing so may require costly renovation of buildings, for example,
to add radiators. Many buildings are not currently able to use heat
pumps. Air source heat pumps require temperatures that are not much
below freezing to efficiently operate. They work best in buildings
with enough energy efficiency and internal fuse limit electrical
connections, according to the strategy.
Addressing cost issues, the strategy provides a £60-million Heat
Pump Ready innovation program, part of a £1-billion Net Zero
Innovation Portfolio fund announced in March, "to make clean heat
systems smaller and easier to install and cheaper to run." This is
how the government plans on working with industry to ensure heat
pumps become "as cheap to buy and run as fossil fuel boilers" by
2030.
The government's fund this week partnered on matching funding
with Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Catalyst financing program to
obtain £200 million of private sector development cash for green
hydrogen, among other things.
The government also plans to make electric heat pumps cheaper to
run by shifting more green taxes from electricity bills to gas
bills, it said.
But these cost hurdles mean heat pumps are not necessarily a "no
regrets" option. "Heat pumps will not always be cheaper to run,
[and] unless electricity is made cheaper … they will not always
make a building warmer, at least not without the need for other
changes, such as installing bigger radiators, and will not always
lead to a more effective heating system—improving insulation
has to be done first to achieve that," Ran Boydell, the
architecture and sustainable development consultant behind
architecture firm Ecohus, told Net-Zero Business Daily.
However, "the purpose of this strategy is to help meet our
net-zero target and tackle climate change, not to reduce consumer
energy bills," said Boydell.
The government found that in all future heat
scenarios—including in the case that hydrogen is used for
heating some buildings—it must roll out 600,000 hydronic heat
pump installations per year minimum by 2028 to be on track to
deliver net zero.
Another issue for the planned rollout is that many heat pumps
use refrigerant hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which are potent GHGs;
the UK has urged manufacturers to use alternative refrigerants.
Hydrogen boilers progress slowly
The UK pushed back until 2026 a decision on whether to require
residences to install hybrid boilers— capable of running not
just on gas, but also hydrogen—as it conducts related tests,
consultations, and ramps up its hydrogen production.
This is another technology that remains expensive, but
manufacturers Baxi, Worcester Bosch, and Vaillant recently agreed
to ensure new boilers capable of converting to hydrogen would cost
no more than the equivalent systems running on gas. Each boiler
currently costs about £100 more than a gas-fired boiler.
But to run hydrogen-fired boilers, hydrogen production in the UK
also needs to move beyond its infancy, helped along by this week's
pledge to mobilize between £20 billion and £30 billion in public
and private investment as part of the UK's Net-Zero Strategy.
The delay to a roll-out of hydrogen-enabled boilers is not
necessary, Mann said. "A partial solution adopted early is likely
to be better than waiting longer for a perfect solution," she
added.
The UK gave itself until 2023 to decide on a proposal to start
blending up to 20% hydrogen into the existing gas network, which it
says will deliver up to a 7% emissions reduction. If the UK does go
down the hydrogen-enabled boiler route, then once hydrogen
production reaches a higher level, streets or districts could
switch to hydrogen in an hour, and earlier bans on boilers not
equipped for hydrogen would prevent the need for rushed
retrofitting, Mann said.
Hesitancy on heating with hydrogen followed a 2018 report from
the UK's arms-length advisor on climate targets, the Committee on
Climate Change (CCC), that found using 100% hydrogen in gas grids
for heating is "impractical" given the expense of retrofitting gas
networks. It noted that the lower-cost option of blending small
amounts of hydrogen with gas in existing grids "provided some
benefits in the transition phase."
Funding slammed as "insufficient"
Critics have argued that the £5,000 grants to install heat pumps
are too small and will be available to too few to hit net-zero
targets, and mentioned the German government's warning that the
refrigerants in heat pumps were a public health risk.
"The new voucher scheme will only be available to 90,000
households, a mere drop in the ocean compared to the numbers needed
if the government wants to hit its already wildly optimistic
net-zero targets," wrote Matt Olney of energy market consultancy
Dyball Associates in a blog.
Agreeing with this idea, heat pump trade body Energy and
Utilities Alliance said the funding was "insufficient for the scale
of the challenge we face." CEO Mike Foster said: "The £5,000 grant
only pays half the cost of a heat pump, so those in fuel poverty
will see no warmth from the government's generosity; instead, it is
middle-class bung for people who were probably going to fit a heat
pump anyway."
Even the Ground Source Heat Pump Association said in a statement
that the strategy seemed like history repeating itself, with the
funds available "too little, too late" and demanded "a much greater
sense of urgency."
Government-backed energy efficiency initiative Energy Savings
Trust said the plan was "a good start but we still need more
clarity about the detail."
Property agent trade body Propertymark's Policy and Campaigns
Manager Timothy Douglas slammed the strategy, saying it had "missed
a vital opportunity." He said that £3.9 billion for buildings is a
substantial investment, but only a fraction would go towards
privately owned and rented homes.
Posted 22 October 2021 by Cristina Brooks, Senior Journalist, Climate and Sustainability