Laurence Fox @LozzaFox China is building coal power stations at an unprecedented rate, whilst you are about to impoverish the most vulnerable in society (again)
Also, the clue is the word “global” in global warming.
I'm not surprised by the data in the Header. Ms Patel is a right wing populist lacking the je ne sais quoi needed to really excel in that space. Home Sec is her peak (imo) and in itself represents considerable career over-achievement by a person of quite limited ability. Speaking of right wing populists, I've just been reading about that Eric Zemmour in France, ex TV shock jock, sort of a French cross between Piers Morgan and Tucker Carlson, now a Trumpiste candidate for president. A joke candidate then? I'm afraid not. There are big vibrant rallies in the provinces and a surging enthusiasm amongst folk who are discontented with their lot and blame foreigners and woke liberals for it. Which they are right to do, according to this Zemmour character. He tells them that, oui oui, foreigners and woke liberals are indeed to blame for the lot with which they are discontented. They love him for it, apparently, cheering him to the rafters. They say he’s “not like normal politicians” (natch) and - oh no please spare us - he TELLS IT LIKE IT IS. I do wish some politician would one day be brave enough to tell the sort of people who lap this up how it really is. They'd have my vote, left or right. Anyway, off to betfair to check, and the worst is duly confirmed. He’s clear favourite after Macron. Mon dieu.
I have often set out my view that Brexit and Trump were just the soft version of darker things to come. It seems likely that Zemmour will have a decent run. He is no idiot, looks like an intellectual Trump. At one point there was talk of an english translation of his book (the suicide of france) but it seems like it never materialised.
A British Zemmour? Hard to see where it will emerge from. I did think Priti Patel could fill this role, but her moment has passed. Lee Anderson, Ben Bradley?
More likely, the tory acquiescence with the woke under the direction of Carrie Symonds will result in this arriving from outside the current main political parties.
Not good developments, but a fate we seem to be uncontrollably sleepwalking in to.
Yes the Conservative embrace of soft socialism and wokery have been a disaster.
This Brexit/BritNat iteration of the Tory Party has embraced wokery? That would be a democratic outrage. As soon as all the "trad values" Leavers whose support they rely on become aware of it, it's curtains. Betting volte face - lump on that Lab majority!
People who voted for the Tories but now think the government is too woke, are not about to help Labour.
So, who’s the next Farage?
We're going with Piers Morgan. And it would help Labour if lots of Con voters split off to him. If Morgan picked up, say, 15%, mainly from the Cons, the FPTP impact would be a shift of seats from them to the main opposition, which is Labour. Morgan might win a seat himself, in a village or town where he as an individual really resonates, but that would probably be it. We've seen this movie before.
Does anyone actually like Piers Morgan though? I know this is inconceivable to many, but people liked Farage. He was seen as someone you could have a pint with. I don't think Morgan has the same appeal. People watch him out of horrified fascination. Even people who agree with him find him dislikeable. Also, he was nanny-in-chief during the pandemic. No restrictions were restrictive enough for Piers. I'd say that sits uneasily with the natural territory of the burn-the-woke party.
Yep, that's his Achilles heel, his personality. His pub aura isn't 'have a pint with' it's more 'oh god, he's in, no don't look!'
This seems to imply that might like a drink with Nige?
It's his USP, isn't it. Even I might have done - just a swift half mind - before he showed his true colours with all the Trumpery in recent times. I'd steer well clear now on every level. I think Johnson picks up most of this fruity right wing support these days tbh. Probably not an issue for the Cons as long as he's there.
Thanks for that. I'll make an effort to try and come back on that, but it will be 4pm or so.
We do install heat pumps, although we would never recommend them, and in order to get any heat into the radiators the pipework has to be changed, 15mm pipework simply does not provide enough flow to heat the radiators. By far the best use of an ASHP is underfloor heating as this operates at a lower temperature, but as most houses in this country have concrete floors downstairs, its very hard to retrofit.
Also we have the question of flats.
Is it still copper piping with push fit elbows and tees ?
Mine is about 10mm !!
We much prefer soldered copper, we have had a couple of nasty incidents with push fit pipework, it can hold the pressure for 9 months and then suddenly blow, always when the owner is out for the evening.
I can concur. A friend had a pushfit failure on some temporary bathroom plumbing, and the downstairs became a whole house paddling pool...
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Industry experts with an agenda to push their industry. I'm sure you would have believed the tobacco industry experts 40 years ago too.
Or Facebook today ...
Speak for yourself. I used to work for a boiler company in an engineering role and still speak to them. Don’t assume everyone gets their info from Facebook, even if you do.
I think you missed the point of my post.
It was as valuable a contribution as Big Poochie D.
As someone who used to design heat pump systems - I don’t like them.
I don’t really like anything that requires an expensive and unreliable gas safe qualified heating engineer to repair or service them.
The future is cheap renewable electricity and direct electric heating in my opinion. Much simpler and much less waste.
Less waste? Installing sufficient generating capacity to meet peak heating demand on a cold, still January evening?
Not viable.
Of course it’s viable. You just need masses of redundancy and adequate energy storage.
It’s slightly futurology but at the end of the day if you have a air source heat pump and traditional rads you’re basically going to be running at near direct electricity anyway on a cold January morning.
I don't want to 'spoil' it, but the way the entire arc is concluded is massively unsatisfying.
There are also certain plain stupid/illogical moments. Two characters set off for the capital first, but arrive after the army. Anyone who's into military history will know that an army is much, much slower than one or two travellers deliberately making haste.
Edited extra bit: probably unnecessary but edited to obscure two character names in case anyone's watching and doesn't know if X and Y survive.
In all the Net Zero carbon talk, I rarely hear anyone mention energy storage - certainly compared to all the talk about renewable energy.
Surely without an absolutely enormous ramp up of storage, most of our renewable energy is next to useless in reducing our reliance on other forms of power.
As someone who used to design heat pump systems - I don’t like them.
I don’t really like anything that requires an expensive and unreliable gas safe qualified heating engineer to repair or service them.
The future is cheap renewable electricity and direct electric heating in my opinion. Much simpler and much less waste.
While I bow to your greater knowledge, isn't one of the advantages of heat pumps that the majority of the heat comes from the air/ground, so that for say 1kW of electricity, you get 3 or 4 kW of heat? For all electric heating its one to one.
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Will that be industry experts with or without an agenda?
Any time a so called expert speaks the first question you should stop and ask yourself is "who are they and what is their agenda?"
If their agenda is to ensure hydrogen is in the mix in the future because that's their business model then that makes them an actor in this, not an independent expert.
Hydrogen may have some use as an industrial fuel, but for domestic heating it's likely to be marginal or a non event.
I expect that around 80% of homes that currently have a natural gas supply will end up being switched to a hydrogen supply.
Thanks for that. I'll make an effort to try and come back on that, but it will be 4pm or so.
We do install heat pumps, although we would never recommend them, and in order to get any heat into the radiators the pipework has to be changed, 15mm pipework simply does not provide enough flow to heat the radiators. By far the best use of an ASHP is underfloor heating as this operates at a lower temperature, but as most houses in this country have concrete floors downstairs, its very hard to retrofit.
Also we have the question of flats.
Is it still copper piping with push fit elbows and tees ?
Mine is about 10mm !!
We much prefer soldered copper, we have had a couple of nasty incidents with push fit pipework, it can hold the pressure for 9 months and then suddenly blow, always when the owner is out for the evening.
I can concur. A friend had a pushfit failure on some temporary bathroom plumbing, and the downstairs became a whole house paddling pool...
The push fit manufacturers always blame chemicals in the water which weakens their grip over time. We actually refuse jobs now with push fit stuff. Our insurance is high enough already.
As someone who used to design heat pump systems - I don’t like them.
I don’t really like anything that requires an expensive and unreliable gas safe qualified heating engineer to repair or service them.
The future is cheap renewable electricity and direct electric heating in my opinion. Much simpler and much less waste.
If you were building a new home from scratch today, what kind of heating system would you install?
Better than building regs insulation, thick south facing glazing to make the most of solar gain, and a wood burning biomass boiler for the small heat demand.
I wouldn’t do a passivhaus with mechanical heat recovery from a ventilation system for the same reason as I don’t like heat pumps - expensive to maintain, plenty of moving parts to go wrong.
And then the final season happened. While quality did decline after the fourth, it became a nosedive for the last seven episodes. *sighs*
I still hope the rumours of Amazon aping the frisky time stuff with their LOTR series proves false. Apparently they're going to have Lenny Henry as a hobbit. (In the Second Age. Before the Shire exists and the hobbits are still to the east...).
Was Game of Thrones final season so bad?
I think the first couple of episodes were well done. The battle against the White Walkers worked and the aftermath of the burning pyres of those who fell in the battle ... That worked.
It was the ending that was rushed and failed. I can understand what Martin was thinking and in text showing more the perspective in what she was thinking I think it could have worked as a tragedy. But on screen, I don't think it did.
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Industry experts with an agenda to push their industry. I'm sure you would have believed the tobacco industry experts 40 years ago too.
Or Facebook today ...
Indeed. I always find it interesting to be told about basic chemistry and materials science by "industry experts". I imagine it's what the doctors fighting the tobacco companies felt like (though to a much lesser degree for me, of course).
The basic problem, and we see this in healthcare too, is that you cannot over the long-term rely on an industry to police itself, for numerous reasons. Some include:
1. code of silence to protect the industry's rep (e.g. RC church, most hospitals and police forces) 2. self-interested selection of materials to be presented publicly and hiding of detrimental data (e.g. tobacco, opioid drug producers, Facebook) 3. overly optimistic assessment of one's own effectiveness in self-policing (Facebook, again) 4. blind spots - simply not seeing what you are doing wrong, including not benchmarking against outsiders. We see this in life sciences research all the time. Scientists come to the field with saintly intentions of saving the world, and are completely blind to the fact that some of the things are want to do are very, very dangerous or could very easily be misused by someone not so saintly.
These lack of booster shots is beginning to cut through. R5L done a big feature on it. Anyone know if this is due to shortages or incompetence?
Incompetence. We’ve got more than enough doses.
Complacency seems to have set in now Covid isn't the top news agenda item any more.
It is so obvious, we all know the winter could be bad, we should have prepped for this, mass media campaign, which the government is now starting this week, instead of two months ago.
Coupled with the blunder of not vaccinating kids during the summer, the powers that be have screwed this up.
Back to the 5 Live phone-in. Head teacher off school with Covid. Still no vaccination done at his school, nor any word as to an indication of any timeframe. Still banging on about vaccine success, mind.
There are no legal restrictions (barring a few related to quarantine and so the fear has subsided.
The fear probably never needed to be ramped up to 11 before. Which is a shame because many will have lasting mental health effects from it.
I know people in their twenties reluctant to socialise, won't go on public transport etc, in fear of a virus that will likely barely affect them. And which they're vaccinated against to boot.
I know of 5 or 6 people who have caught covid since vaccination. They've spent between 0 and 4 days in bed. Sounds increasingly like a bad cold now, to me.
My early 40's, double jabbed, colleague had a rough few days, with a very high temp and was borderline needing hospital (sats down to 90%, temp touching 40 deg C) but pulled through by the next day after having been advised to stay at home a it longer. So yes, nasty, but he's through it now.
We have set ourselves up to perpetuate the fear. The reporting of cases daily, and deaths, keeps it going. Some will say that we shouldn't stop, as it will look like we are hiding things. Our local news (BBC) is down to one update a week, and that provoked complaints. but ultimately we don't report deaths from heart disease daily, or from cancer or dementia. We are transitioning to an endemic disease with most protected to an extent by vaccination or prior illness. We have opened society and most people are enjoying life.
Keep vaccinating and live our lives.
But we appear to be doing the second and letting the first drift. The point that kicked this off is that increasingly we aren't vaccinating. The kids and the boosters don't seem to be going smoothly.
As someone who used to design heat pump systems - I don’t like them.
I don’t really like anything that requires an expensive and unreliable gas safe qualified heating engineer to repair or service them.
The future is cheap renewable electricity and direct electric heating in my opinion. Much simpler and much less waste.
If you were building a new home from scratch today, what kind of heating system would you install?
Better than building regs insulation, thick south facing glazing to make the most of solar gain, and a wood burning biomass boiler for the small heat demand.
I wouldn’t do a passivhaus with mechanical heat recovery from a ventilation system for the same reason as I don’t like heat pumps - expensive to maintain, plenty of moving parts to go wrong.
As someone who used to design heat pump systems - I don’t like them.
I don’t really like anything that requires an expensive and unreliable gas safe qualified heating engineer to repair or service them.
The future is cheap renewable electricity and direct electric heating in my opinion. Much simpler and much less waste.
While I bow to your greater knowledge, isn't one of the advantages of heat pumps that the majority of the heat comes from the air/ground, so that for say 1kW of electricity, you get 3 or 4 kW of heat? For all electric heating its one to one.
Yeah, but you’re paying hundreds of pounds+ every year for servicing, you’re at the mercy of refrigerant leaks and/or damage, and when you need it most - in the depths of winter - you’ll be getting the lowest CoP, potentially with direct electric top up anyway.
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Will that be industry experts with or without an agenda?
Any time a so called expert speaks the first question you should stop and ask yourself is "who are they and what is their agenda?"
If their agenda is to ensure hydrogen is in the mix in the future because that's their business model then that makes them an actor in this, not an independent expert.
Hydrogen may have some use as an industrial fuel, but for domestic heating it's likely to be marginal or a non event.
I expect that around 80% of homes that currently have a natural gas supply will end up being switched to a hydrogen supply.
Kind of puts in perspective your previous post, if you knew he has used the words "brutal killing" in a different statement. Just perhaps desperately searching for reasons to moan because you don't like him and little to do with what he says or doesn't say.
I just posted was Fox said, I knew Khan had subsequently used ‘horrific killing’ because I read the following tweets.
But the photo of the two quotes is going around on what’sapp, with predictable responses
I follow Khan on FB and the amount of vitriol posted under every comment he makes, however innocuous, is quite astonishing. Judging from the thumbnail profile pictures attached, it often seems to come from older white gentlemen who like Union Jacks. For a fairly average centre left politician with no power over the lives of most people in the UK he certainly seems to stir some deep passions.
Yeah one of my mates posted it on our WhatsApp and everyone weighed in on him.
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Will that be industry experts with or without an agenda?
Any time a so called expert speaks the first question you should stop and ask yourself is "who are they and what is their agenda?"
If their agenda is to ensure hydrogen is in the mix in the future because that's their business model then that makes them an actor in this, not an independent expert.
Hydrogen may have some use as an industrial fuel, but for domestic heating it's likely to be marginal or a non event.
I expect that around 80% of homes that currently have a natural gas supply will end up being switched to a hydrogen supply.
So neither marginal nor a non-event.
You still haven't explained where it's going to come from.
As someone who used to design heat pump systems - I don’t like them.
I don’t really like anything that requires an expensive and unreliable gas safe qualified heating engineer to repair or service them.
The future is cheap renewable electricity and direct electric heating in my opinion. Much simpler and much less waste.
If you were building a new home from scratch today, what kind of heating system would you install?
Better than building regs insulation, thick south facing glazing to make the most of solar gain, and a wood burning biomass boiler for the small heat demand.
I wouldn’t do a passivhaus with mechanical heat recovery from a ventilation system for the same reason as I don’t like heat pumps - expensive to maintain, plenty of moving parts to go wrong.
Just an aside, are you feeling better
Not really, but still managed to bill 5 hours today so far
Thank you for your concern though. Looking forward to bedtime.
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Industry experts with an agenda to push their industry. I'm sure you would have believed the tobacco industry experts 40 years ago too.
Or Facebook today ...
Indeed. I always find it interesting to be told about basic chemistry and materials science by "industry experts". I imagine it's what the doctors fighting the tobacco companies felt like (though to a much lesser degree for me, of course).
The basic problem, and we see this in healthcare too, is that you cannot over the long-term rely on an industry to police itself, for numerous reasons. Some include:
1. code of silence to protect the industry's rep (e.g. RC church, most hospitals and police forces) 2. self-interested selection of materials to be presented publicly and hiding of detrimental data (e.g. tobacco, opioid drug producers, Facebook) 3. overly optimistic assessment of one's own effectiveness in self-policing (Facebook, again) 4. blind spots - simply not seeing what you are doing wrong, including not benchmarking against outsiders. We see this in life sciences research all the time. Scientists come to the field with saintly intentions of saving the world, and are completely blind to the fact that some of the things are want to do are very, very dangerous or could very easily be misused by someone not so saintly.
On point 4, the Wuhan Lab and it's associates seem to have fallen into this. It's the whole thing about stopping and thinking whether you should do something just because it's possible.
Kind of puts in perspective your previous post, if you knew he has used the words "brutal killing" in a different statement. Just perhaps desperately searching for reasons to moan because you don't like him and little to do with what he says or doesn't say.
I just posted was Fox said, I knew Khan had subsequently used ‘horrific killing’ because I read the following tweets.
But the photo of the two quotes is going around on what’sapp, with predictable responses
I follow Khan on FB and the amount of vitriol posted under every comment he makes, however innocuous, is quite astonishing. Judging from the thumbnail profile pictures attached, it often seems to come from older white gentlemen who like Union Jacks. For a fairly average centre left politician with no power over the lives of most people in the UK he certainly seems to stir some deep passions.
Mmm, many seem simply livid with him. I guess it’s the lack of progress in London on various things that are very close to their hearts. Must be that.
As someone who used to design heat pump systems - I don’t like them.
I don’t really like anything that requires an expensive and unreliable gas safe qualified heating engineer to repair or service them.
The future is cheap renewable electricity and direct electric heating in my opinion. Much simpler and much less waste.
If you were building a new home from scratch today, what kind of heating system would you install?
Better than building regs insulation, thick south facing glazing to make the most of solar gain, and a wood burning biomass boiler for the small heat demand.
I wouldn’t do a passivhaus with mechanical heat recovery from a ventilation system for the same reason as I don’t like heat pumps - expensive to maintain, plenty of moving parts to go wrong.
Just an aside, are you feeling better
Not really, but still managed to bill 5 hours today so far
Thank you for your concern though. Looking forward to bedtime.
One of the biggest mistakes D&D made when making GoT was scrapping the Young Griff plotline from the books. I think much of what went wrong with the later seasons (such as Dany's character suddenly turning mad for no apparent reason, the Dorne storyline being a joke) happened because it got cut.
It is almost like Khan is a qualified solicitor who knows the temperate and non prejudicial language to be used.
No, I’m afraid you’re wrong. He uses “it appears” with “was another attempt to divide us”. “Horrific killing” is stated as fact
You need to go to Specsavers.
'it appears that the horrific killing'
No sorry, afraid you are wrong. I can read written English perfectly well. He wasn’t saying ‘it appears TO BE a horrific killing’ he’s saying ‘it appears that this horrific killing is attempting to divide us’
The ‘appears’ relates to the ‘another attempt to divide us’, not to the nature of the killing
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Will that be industry experts with or without an agenda?
Any time a so called expert speaks the first question you should stop and ask yourself is "who are they and what is their agenda?"
If their agenda is to ensure hydrogen is in the mix in the future because that's their business model then that makes them an actor in this, not an independent expert.
Hydrogen may have some use as an industrial fuel, but for domestic heating it's likely to be marginal or a non event.
I expect that around 80% of homes that currently have a natural gas supply will end up being switched to a hydrogen supply.
So neither marginal nor a non-event.
You still haven't explained where it's going to come from.
In the short to medium term, blue hydrogen will be the primary source of decarbonised hydrogen. Natural gas reforming with carbon capture. Expect to see plants built as part of the clusters announced today.
Longer term, the cost of green hydrogen will come down and become the preferred source - for example as part of integrated offshore wind/electrolysis plants with the hydrogen piped to shore.
Thanks for that. I'll make an effort to try and come back on that, but it will be 4pm or so.
We do install heat pumps, although we would never recommend them, and in order to get any heat into the radiators the pipework has to be changed, 15mm pipework simply does not provide enough flow to heat the radiators. By far the best use of an ASHP is underfloor heating as this operates at a lower temperature, but as most houses in this country have concrete floors downstairs, its very hard to retrofit.
Also we have the question of flats.
Is it still copper piping with push fit elbows and tees ?
Mine is about 10mm !!
We much prefer soldered copper, we have had a couple of nasty incidents with push fit pipework, it can hold the pressure for 9 months and then suddenly blow, always when the owner is out for the evening.
I can concur. A friend had a pushfit failure on some temporary bathroom plumbing, and the downstairs became a whole house paddling pool...
The push fit manufacturers always blame chemicals in the water which weakens their grip over time. We actually refuse jobs now with push fit stuff. Our insurance is high enough already.
Is it the seal that goes or does the moulding distort over time ?
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Industry experts with an agenda to push their industry. I'm sure you would have believed the tobacco industry experts 40 years ago too.
Or Facebook today ...
Speak for yourself. I used to work for a boiler company in an engineering role and still speak to them. Don’t assume everyone gets their info from Facebook, even if you do.
I think you missed the point of my post.
It was as valuable a contribution as Big Poochie D.
It was a needless sly dig.
Perhaps overly brief, but not sly. See my longer response to Max.
You may think your industry is different and better than others. But I sincerely doubt it.
As someone who used to design heat pump systems - I don’t like them.
I don’t really like anything that requires an expensive and unreliable gas safe qualified heating engineer to repair or service them.
The future is cheap renewable electricity and direct electric heating in my opinion. Much simpler and much less waste.
Less waste? Installing sufficient generating capacity to meet peak heating demand on a cold, still January evening?
Not viable.
Of course it’s viable. You just need masses of redundancy and adequate energy storage.
It’s slightly futurology but at the end of the day if you have a air source heat pump and traditional rads you’re basically going to be running at near direct electricity anyway on a cold January morning.
OK, yes, so technically viable. Not economically viable compared to the alternatives. Seasonal storage of hydrogen molecules is a lot easier than seasonal storage of electrons.
Kind of puts in perspective your previous post, if you knew he has used the words "brutal killing" in a different statement. Just perhaps desperately searching for reasons to moan because you don't like him and little to do with what he says or doesn't say.
I just posted was Fox said, I knew Khan had subsequently used ‘horrific killing’ because I read the following tweets.
But the photo of the two quotes is going around on what’sapp, with predictable responses
I follow Khan on FB and the amount of vitriol posted under every comment he makes, however innocuous, is quite astonishing. Judging from the thumbnail profile pictures attached, it often seems to come from older white gentlemen who like Union Jacks. For a fairly average centre left politician with no power over the lives of most people in the UK he certainly seems to stir some deep passions.
Yeah one of my mates posted it on our WhatsApp and everyone weighed in on him.
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Will that be industry experts with or without an agenda?
Any time a so called expert speaks the first question you should stop and ask yourself is "who are they and what is their agenda?"
If their agenda is to ensure hydrogen is in the mix in the future because that's their business model then that makes them an actor in this, not an independent expert.
Hydrogen may have some use as an industrial fuel, but for domestic heating it's likely to be marginal or a non event.
I expect that around 80% of homes that currently have a natural gas supply will end up being switched to a hydrogen supply.
So neither marginal nor a non-event.
You still haven't explained where it's going to come from.
In the short to medium term, blue hydrogen will be the primary source of decarbonised hydrogen. Natural gas reforming with carbon capture. Expect to see plants built as part of the clusters announced today.
Longer term, the cost of green hydrogen will come down and become the preferred source - for example as part of integrated offshore wind/electrolysis plants with the hydrogen piped to shore.
So we're going to burn gas for energy to turn other gas into hydrogen? Even if we say gas prices fall in the medium term how is that even close to economically viable? That's without addressing the CO2 storage costs, the cost of upgrading the existing natural gas storage distribution network to accept hydrogen. Who's investing all of this money?
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Will that be industry experts with or without an agenda?
Any time a so called expert speaks the first question you should stop and ask yourself is "who are they and what is their agenda?"
If their agenda is to ensure hydrogen is in the mix in the future because that's their business model then that makes them an actor in this, not an independent expert.
Hydrogen may have some use as an industrial fuel, but for domestic heating it's likely to be marginal or a non event.
I expect that around 80% of homes that currently have a natural gas supply will end up being switched to a hydrogen supply.
So neither marginal nor a non-event.
That seems extremely unlikely.
We'll have to check back on this thread in 2050...
I think the most relevant announcement today is to mandate building societies and lenders to require a level of green compliance as a condition of a mortgage
This will have the effect of encouraging home owners to invest in their property if they hope to market it, and of course it would form part of any survey report providing a platform for the seller and buyer to negotiate a deal which in effect shares the greening costs of our housing stock without the need for government intervention
It is almost like Khan is a qualified solicitor who knows the temperate and non prejudicial language to be used.
No, I’m afraid you’re wrong. He uses “it appears” with “was another attempt to divide us”. “Horrific killing” is stated as fact
You need to go to Specsavers.
'it appears that the horrific killing'
No sorry, afraid you are wrong. I can read written English perfectly well. He wasn’t saying ‘it appears TO BE a horrific killing’ he’s saying ‘it appears that this horrific killing is attempting to divide us’
The ‘appears’ relates to the ‘another attempt to divide us’, not to the nature of the killing
You don't even know how to use apostrophes, I think I'll pass on your ability to parse the English language.
Scotland, despite greater restrictions than England still not going down:
I thought you liked the ONS infection survey figures? Latest ONS infection survey,
England 1-in-60 Scotland 1-in-80
The week before was England 1-in-70 Scotland 1-in-60
I like both metrics - but few pay attention to the ONS data - and the "England is a mess because not enough restrictions" crowd ignore similar/worse data in parts of the UK with more restrictions.
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Will that be industry experts with or without an agenda?
Any time a so called expert speaks the first question you should stop and ask yourself is "who are they and what is their agenda?"
If their agenda is to ensure hydrogen is in the mix in the future because that's their business model then that makes them an actor in this, not an independent expert.
Hydrogen may have some use as an industrial fuel, but for domestic heating it's likely to be marginal or a non event.
I expect that around 80% of homes that currently have a natural gas supply will end up being switched to a hydrogen supply.
So neither marginal nor a non-event.
You still haven't explained where it's going to come from.
In the short to medium term, blue hydrogen will be the primary source of decarbonised hydrogen. Natural gas reforming with carbon capture. Expect to see plants built as part of the clusters announced today.
Longer term, the cost of green hydrogen will come down and become the preferred source - for example as part of integrated offshore wind/electrolysis plants with the hydrogen piped to shore.
So we're going to burn gas for energy to turn other gas into hydrogen? Even if we say gas prices fall in the medium term how is that even close to economically viable? That's without addressing the CO2 storage costs, the cost of upgrading the existing natural gas storage distribution network to accept hydrogen. Who's investing all of this money?
The Queen has a busy schedule over the coming weeks so her response, through her Private Secretary, to @OldieMagazine struck just the right cord when she said 'You [are as old] as you feel'. In other words thank you but no thank you - there must be someone more worthy for the award
And then the final season happened. While quality did decline after the fourth, it became a nosedive for the last seven episodes. *sighs*
I still hope the rumours of Amazon aping the frisky time stuff with their LOTR series proves false. Apparently they're going to have Lenny Henry as a hobbit. (In the Second Age. Before the Shire exists and the hobbits are still to the east...).
Was Game of Thrones final season so bad?
I think the first couple of episodes were well done. The battle against the White Walkers worked and the aftermath of the burning pyres of those who fell in the battle ... That worked.
It was the ending that was rushed and failed. I can understand what Martin was thinking and in text showing more the perspective in what she was thinking I think it could have worked as a tragedy. But on screen, I don't think it did.
The trouble was, history doesn't come to an end all at once like that. You can end one story line with a death or a wedding, but other stuff continues. Aristotle knew what he was on about when he said a play needs unity of action.
Mr. Flagg, interesting view. I'm not so taken with that particular storyline, as yet, but I do agree that Dorne just withering wasn't great.
It seems the root cause was the showrunners getting bored and wanting to move on. But they were in such a hurry they did a half-arsed job. Anyway, must be off.
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Industry experts with an agenda to push their industry. I'm sure you would have believed the tobacco industry experts 40 years ago too.
Or Facebook today ...
Speak for yourself. I used to work for a boiler company in an engineering role and still speak to them. Don’t assume everyone gets their info from Facebook, even if you do.
I think you missed the point of my post.
It was as valuable a contribution as Big Poochie D.
It was a needless sly dig.
Perhaps overly brief, but not sly. See my longer response to Max.
You may think your industry is different and better than others. But I sincerely doubt it.
It’s not my industry, it’s my former industry and all I’m mentioned was the current network is about 80% hydrogen enabled. I don’t get Max’s hostility or your snide dig. I have no horse in this race. I am just interested in the technology. Max isn’t a expert, he deals in pensions.
It is almost like Khan is a qualified solicitor who knows the temperate and non prejudicial language to be used.
No, I’m afraid you’re wrong. He uses “it appears” with “was another attempt to divide us”. “Horrific killing” is stated as fact
You need to go to Specsavers.
'it appears that the horrific killing'
No sorry, afraid you are wrong. I can read written English perfectly well. He wasn’t saying ‘it appears TO BE a horrific killing’ he’s saying ‘it appears that this horrific killing is attempting to divide us’
The ‘appears’ relates to the ‘another attempt to divide us’, not to the nature of the killing
huh?
"It appears that the horrific killing of Sir David Amess was another attempt to divide us."
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Will that be industry experts with or without an agenda?
Any time a so called expert speaks the first question you should stop and ask yourself is "who are they and what is their agenda?"
If their agenda is to ensure hydrogen is in the mix in the future because that's their business model then that makes them an actor in this, not an independent expert.
Hydrogen may have some use as an industrial fuel, but for domestic heating it's likely to be marginal or a non event.
I expect that around 80% of homes that currently have a natural gas supply will end up being switched to a hydrogen supply.
So neither marginal nor a non-event.
You still haven't explained where it's going to come from.
In the short to medium term, blue hydrogen will be the primary source of decarbonised hydrogen. Natural gas reforming with carbon capture. Expect to see plants built as part of the clusters announced today.
Longer term, the cost of green hydrogen will come down and become the preferred source - for example as part of integrated offshore wind/electrolysis plants with the hydrogen piped to shore.
So we're going to burn gas for energy to turn other gas into hydrogen? Even if we say gas prices fall in the medium term how is that even close to economically viable? That's without addressing the CO2 storage costs, the cost of upgrading the existing natural gas storage distribution network to accept hydrogen. Who's investing all of this money?
It is economically viable when you internalise the negative externalities associated with CO2 emissions. A high enough carbon tax, and blue hydrogen is a lower cost option than just burning the natural gas.
As with other low carbon technologies, the government will give it a kick start through public sector funding. Co-funding CAPEX, support per tonne of decarbonised hydrogen produced, support for the costs of CO2 transport and storage.
Either the taxpayer pays, business pays, the consumer pays or the planet is buggered. Our choice.
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Will that be industry experts with or without an agenda?
Any time a so called expert speaks the first question you should stop and ask yourself is "who are they and what is their agenda?"
If their agenda is to ensure hydrogen is in the mix in the future because that's their business model then that makes them an actor in this, not an independent expert.
Hydrogen may have some use as an industrial fuel, but for domestic heating it's likely to be marginal or a non event.
I expect that around 80% of homes that currently have a natural gas supply will end up being switched to a hydrogen supply.
So neither marginal nor a non-event.
You still haven't explained where it's going to come from.
In the short to medium term, blue hydrogen will be the primary source of decarbonised hydrogen. Natural gas reforming with carbon capture. Expect to see plants built as part of the clusters announced today.
Longer term, the cost of green hydrogen will come down and become the preferred source - for example as part of integrated offshore wind/electrolysis plants with the hydrogen piped to shore.
So we're going to burn gas for energy to turn other gas into hydrogen? Even if we say gas prices fall in the medium term how is that even close to economically viable? That's without addressing the CO2 storage costs, the cost of upgrading the existing natural gas storage distribution network to accept hydrogen. Who's investing all of this money?
Hydrogen doesn't make a lot of economic sense.
Charge £150/tonne of CO2 emitted and things change.
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Industry experts with an agenda to push their industry. I'm sure you would have believed the tobacco industry experts 40 years ago too.
Or Facebook today ...
Speak for yourself. I used to work for a boiler company in an engineering role and still speak to them. Don’t assume everyone gets their info from Facebook, even if you do.
I think you missed the point of my post.
It was as valuable a contribution as Big Poochie D.
It was a needless sly dig.
Perhaps overly brief, but not sly. See my longer response to Max.
You may think your industry is different and better than others. But I sincerely doubt it.
It’s not my industry, it’s my former industry and all I’m mentioned was the current network is about 80% hydrogen enabled. I don’t get Max’s hostility or your snide dig. I have no horse in this race. I am just interested in the technology. Max isn’t a expert, he deals in pensions.
I have a master's degree in chemistry and, unless my company has changed my job description without telling me, I don't work in pensions.
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Will that be industry experts with or without an agenda?
Any time a so called expert speaks the first question you should stop and ask yourself is "who are they and what is their agenda?"
If their agenda is to ensure hydrogen is in the mix in the future because that's their business model then that makes them an actor in this, not an independent expert.
Hydrogen may have some use as an industrial fuel, but for domestic heating it's likely to be marginal or a non event.
I expect that around 80% of homes that currently have a natural gas supply will end up being switched to a hydrogen supply.
So neither marginal nor a non-event.
You still haven't explained where it's going to come from.
In the short to medium term, blue hydrogen will be the primary source of decarbonised hydrogen. Natural gas reforming with carbon capture. Expect to see plants built as part of the clusters announced today.
Longer term, the cost of green hydrogen will come down and become the preferred source - for example as part of integrated offshore wind/electrolysis plants with the hydrogen piped to shore.
So we're going to burn gas for energy to turn other gas into hydrogen? Even if we say gas prices fall in the medium term how is that even close to economically viable? That's without addressing the CO2 storage costs, the cost of upgrading the existing natural gas storage distribution network to accept hydrogen. Who's investing all of this money?
Hydrogen doesn't make a lot of economic sense.
Charge £150/tonne of CO2 emitted and things change.
Statement by Donald J Trump, 45th President of the USA, on the death of Colin Powell.
'Wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously, so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media. Hope that happens to me someday. He was a classic RINO, if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans. He made plenty of mistakes, but anyway, may he rest in peace!'
"Ben Bradshaw @BenPBradshaw With #Covid19UK soaring, highest death rate in Europe & #NHS on its knees, it’s time for Govt to bring back masks, distancing, ventilation,home working & a European style green pass, which have kept rates so low on Continent. Booster & teens jabs also need rocket booster."
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Industry experts with an agenda to push their industry. I'm sure you would have believed the tobacco industry experts 40 years ago too.
Or Facebook today ...
Speak for yourself. I used to work for a boiler company in an engineering role and still speak to them. Don’t assume everyone gets their info from Facebook, even if you do.
I think you missed the point of my post.
It was as valuable a contribution as Big Poochie D.
It was a needless sly dig.
Perhaps overly brief, but not sly. See my longer response to Max.
You may think your industry is different and better than others. But I sincerely doubt it.
It’s not my industry, it’s my former industry and all I’m mentioned was the current network is about 80% hydrogen enabled. I don’t get Max’s hostility or your snide dig. I have no horse in this race. I am just interested in the technology. Max isn’t a expert, he deals in pensions.
I have a master's degree in chemistry and, unless my company has changed my job description without telling me, I don't work in pensions.
Must confuse you for someone else. 😂😂😂 still you don’t know my background or knowledge when you made snide digs at me, and some idiotic reference to the tobacco lobbyists in the seventies.
It is almost like Khan is a qualified solicitor who knows the temperate and non prejudicial language to be used.
No, I’m afraid you’re wrong. He uses “it appears” with “was another attempt to divide us”. “Horrific killing” is stated as fact
You need to go to Specsavers.
'it appears that the horrific killing'
No sorry, afraid you are wrong. I can read written English perfectly well. He wasn’t saying ‘it appears TO BE a horrific killing’ he’s saying ‘it appears that this horrific killing is attempting to divide us’
The ‘appears’ relates to the ‘another attempt to divide us’, not to the nature of the killing
You don't even know how to use apostrophes, I think I'll pass on your ability to parse the English language.
Haha, sorry you catch you out.
But he meant ‘it appears to be an attempt to divide us’ not ‘it appears to be a horrific killing’, let’s leave it at that
Old jobs revamped as new jobs are new jobs. And needed new jobs.
Part of the issue with the death of coal mining was the lack of new jobs for people to go into wasn't it?
If the death of gas has ready made new jobs for gas engineers to go into rather than being unemployed then I'd think the gas engineers would be glad for that.
It's not like we have millions of unemployed and no vacancies as it stands.
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Will that be industry experts with or without an agenda?
Any time a so called expert speaks the first question you should stop and ask yourself is "who are they and what is their agenda?"
If their agenda is to ensure hydrogen is in the mix in the future because that's their business model then that makes them an actor in this, not an independent expert.
Hydrogen may have some use as an industrial fuel, but for domestic heating it's likely to be marginal or a non event.
I expect that around 80% of homes that currently have a natural gas supply will end up being switched to a hydrogen supply.
So neither marginal nor a non-event.
You still haven't explained where it's going to come from.
In the short to medium term, blue hydrogen will be the primary source of decarbonised hydrogen. Natural gas reforming with carbon capture. Expect to see plants built as part of the clusters announced today.
Longer term, the cost of green hydrogen will come down and become the preferred source - for example as part of integrated offshore wind/electrolysis plants with the hydrogen piped to shore.
So we're going to burn gas for energy to turn other gas into hydrogen? Even if we say gas prices fall in the medium term how is that even close to economically viable? That's without addressing the CO2 storage costs, the cost of upgrading the existing natural gas storage distribution network to accept hydrogen. Who's investing all of this money?
It is economically viable when you internalise the negative externalities associated with CO2 emissions. A high enough carbon tax, and blue hydrogen is a lower cost option than just burning the natural gas.
As with other low carbon technologies, the government will give it a kick start through public sector funding. Co-funding CAPEX, support per tonne of decarbonised hydrogen produced, support for the costs of CO2 transport and storage.
Either the taxpayer pays, business pays, the consumer pays or the planet is buggered. Our choice.
But hydrogen is still competing with renewable electricity and electric water heating. It doesn't exist in isolation. With a high CO2 tax like that hydrogen would lose to electric. The automotive industry has already realised this, it won't be long until water heating goes the same way.
Why, if I had £1bn to invest in green energy, would I look at hydrogen instead of offshore wind plus compressed air batteries? The cost of the latter is lower and it doesn't rely on nice Mr Putin keeping the pipelines open.
It is almost like Khan is a qualified solicitor who knows the temperate and non prejudicial language to be used.
No, I’m afraid you’re wrong. He uses “it appears” with “was another attempt to divide us”. “Horrific killing” is stated as fact
You need to go to Specsavers.
'it appears that the horrific killing'
No sorry, afraid you are wrong. I can read written English perfectly well. He wasn’t saying ‘it appears TO BE a horrific killing’ he’s saying ‘it appears that this horrific killing is attempting to divide us’
The ‘appears’ relates to the ‘another attempt to divide us’, not to the nature of the killing
huh?
"It appears that the horrific killing of Sir David Amess was another attempt to divide us."
Statement by Donald J Trump, 45th President of the USA, on the death of Colin Powell.
'Wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously, so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media. Hope that happens to me someday. He was a classic RINO, if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans. He made plenty of mistakes, but anyway, may he rest in peace!'
Laurence Fox @LozzaFox China is building coal power stations at an unprecedented rate, whilst you are about to impoverish the most vulnerable in society (again)
Also, the clue is the word “global” in global warming.
Statement by Donald J Trump, 45th President of the USA, on the death of Colin Powell.
'Wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously, so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media. Hope that happens to me someday. He was a classic RINO, if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans. He made plenty of mistakes, but anyway, may he rest in peace!'
Interesting to see Corbynites and Trump and his fans all slagging off Powell though on twitter, suggests he did something right if they were his enemies!
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Industry experts with an agenda to push their industry. I'm sure you would have believed the tobacco industry experts 40 years ago too.
Or Facebook today ...
Speak for yourself. I used to work for a boiler company in an engineering role and still speak to them. Don’t assume everyone gets their info from Facebook, even if you do.
I think you missed the point of my post.
It was as valuable a contribution as Big Poochie D.
It was a needless sly dig.
Perhaps overly brief, but not sly. See my longer response to Max.
You may think your industry is different and better than others. But I sincerely doubt it.
It’s not my industry, it’s my former industry and all I’m mentioned was the current network is about 80% hydrogen enabled. I don’t get Max’s hostility or your snide dig. I have no horse in this race. I am just interested in the technology. Max isn’t a expert, he deals in pensions.
I have a master's degree in chemistry and, unless my company has changed my job description without telling me, I don't work in pensions.
Must confuse you for someone else. 😂😂😂 still you don’t know my background or knowledge when you made snide digs at me, and some idiotic reference to the tobacco lobbyists in the seventies.
I think you're being a little too sensitive and taking this too personally. My comment was in relation to industries in general, not your specific remarks. I'll let Max respond for himself about his remarks.
Statement by Donald J Trump, 45th President of the USA, on the death of Colin Powell.
'Wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously, so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media. Hope that happens to me someday. He was a classic RINO, if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans. He made plenty of mistakes, but anyway, may he rest in peace!'
"A lot of people are saying that Colin Powell would have beaten sleazy Bill Clinton to the Presidency had he decided to run. He surely would have had the second largest inauguration crowds in history, after me."
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Will that be industry experts with or without an agenda?
Any time a so called expert speaks the first question you should stop and ask yourself is "who are they and what is their agenda?"
If their agenda is to ensure hydrogen is in the mix in the future because that's their business model then that makes them an actor in this, not an independent expert.
Hydrogen may have some use as an industrial fuel, but for domestic heating it's likely to be marginal or a non event.
I expect that around 80% of homes that currently have a natural gas supply will end up being switched to a hydrogen supply.
So neither marginal nor a non-event.
You still haven't explained where it's going to come from.
In the short to medium term, blue hydrogen will be the primary source of decarbonised hydrogen. Natural gas reforming with carbon capture. Expect to see plants built as part of the clusters announced today.
Longer term, the cost of green hydrogen will come down and become the preferred source - for example as part of integrated offshore wind/electrolysis plants with the hydrogen piped to shore.
So we're going to burn gas for energy to turn other gas into hydrogen? Even if we say gas prices fall in the medium term how is that even close to economically viable? That's without addressing the CO2 storage costs, the cost of upgrading the existing natural gas storage distribution network to accept hydrogen. Who's investing all of this money?
It is economically viable when you internalise the negative externalities associated with CO2 emissions. A high enough carbon tax, and blue hydrogen is a lower cost option than just burning the natural gas.
As with other low carbon technologies, the government will give it a kick start through public sector funding. Co-funding CAPEX, support per tonne of decarbonised hydrogen produced, support for the costs of CO2 transport and storage.
Either the taxpayer pays, business pays, the consumer pays or the planet is buggered. Our choice.
But hydrogen is still competing with renewable electricity and electric water heating. It doesn't exist in isolation. With a high CO2 tax like that hydrogen would lose to electric. The automotive industry has already realised this, it won't be long until water heating goes the same way.
Why, if I had £1bn to invest in green energy, would I look at hydrogen instead of offshore wind plus compressed air batteries? The cost of the latter is lower and it doesn't rely on nice Mr Putin keeping the pipelines open.
Meeting the peak winter demand for heating (and the huge difference between summer and winter demand) is the challenge. We achieve this today with natural gas - line pack, salt cavern storage, LNG. I consider that it is much easier (and lower cost) to meet this challenge through hydrogen using a similar approach than with electricity.
None of this is easy or cheap. But if we want to achieve net zero, we need to do it - and pay for it.
It is almost like Khan is a qualified solicitor who knows the temperate and non prejudicial language to be used.
No, I’m afraid you’re wrong. He uses “it appears” with “was another attempt to divide us”. “Horrific killing” is stated as fact
You need to go to Specsavers.
'it appears that the horrific killing'
No sorry, afraid you are wrong. I can read written English perfectly well. He wasn’t saying ‘it appears TO BE a horrific killing’ he’s saying ‘it appears that this horrific killing is attempting to divide us’
The ‘appears’ relates to the ‘another attempt to divide us’, not to the nature of the killing
I've only seen 3 of the top 25. Fleabag, Office, Sherlock. All trad BRITISH shows. And people say I'm not a patriot.
I've seen at least one episode of 37 of the top 100 shows. I don't think that I watch a lot of TV, probably well under an hour a day on average, but I try to watch something good whenever I do.
Statement by Donald J Trump, 45th President of the USA, on the death of Colin Powell.
'Wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously, so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media. Hope that happens to me someday. He was a classic RINO, if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans. He made plenty of mistakes, but anyway, may he rest in peace!'
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Will that be industry experts with or without an agenda?
Any time a so called expert speaks the first question you should stop and ask yourself is "who are they and what is their agenda?"
If their agenda is to ensure hydrogen is in the mix in the future because that's their business model then that makes them an actor in this, not an independent expert.
Hydrogen may have some use as an industrial fuel, but for domestic heating it's likely to be marginal or a non event.
I expect that around 80% of homes that currently have a natural gas supply will end up being switched to a hydrogen supply.
So neither marginal nor a non-event.
You still haven't explained where it's going to come from.
In the short to medium term, blue hydrogen will be the primary source of decarbonised hydrogen. Natural gas reforming with carbon capture. Expect to see plants built as part of the clusters announced today.
Longer term, the cost of green hydrogen will come down and become the preferred source - for example as part of integrated offshore wind/electrolysis plants with the hydrogen piped to shore.
So we're going to burn gas for energy to turn other gas into hydrogen? Even if we say gas prices fall in the medium term how is that even close to economically viable? That's without addressing the CO2 storage costs, the cost of upgrading the existing natural gas storage distribution network to accept hydrogen. Who's investing all of this money?
It is economically viable when you internalise the negative externalities associated with CO2 emissions. A high enough carbon tax, and blue hydrogen is a lower cost option than just burning the natural gas.
As with other low carbon technologies, the government will give it a kick start through public sector funding. Co-funding CAPEX, support per tonne of decarbonised hydrogen produced, support for the costs of CO2 transport and storage.
Either the taxpayer pays, business pays, the consumer pays or the planet is buggered. Our choice.
But hydrogen is still competing with renewable electricity and electric water heating. It doesn't exist in isolation. With a high CO2 tax like that hydrogen would lose to electric. The automotive industry has already realised this, it won't be long until water heating goes the same way.
Why, if I had £1bn to invest in green energy, would I look at hydrogen instead of offshore wind plus compressed air batteries? The cost of the latter is lower and it doesn't rely on nice Mr Putin keeping the pipelines open.
Meeting the peak winter demand for heating (and the huge difference between summer and winter demand) is the challenge. We achieve this today with natural gas - line pack, salt cavern storage, LNG. I consider that it is much easier (and lower cost) to meet this challenge through hydrogen using a similar approach than with electricity.
None of this is easy or cheap. But if we want to achieve net zero, we need to do it - and pay for it.
Baxi also make domestic electric boilers for people who are off grid, small volume. These may well also be a part of the solution. Scaling up shouldn’t be an issue. This was the sort of thing,
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Industry experts with an agenda to push their industry. I'm sure you would have believed the tobacco industry experts 40 years ago too.
Or Facebook today ...
Speak for yourself. I used to work for a boiler company in an engineering role and still speak to them. Don’t assume everyone gets their info from Facebook, even if you do.
I think you missed the point of my post.
It was as valuable a contribution as Big Poochie D.
It was a needless sly dig.
Perhaps overly brief, but not sly. See my longer response to Max.
You may think your industry is different and better than others. But I sincerely doubt it.
It’s not my industry, it’s my former industry and all I’m mentioned was the current network is about 80% hydrogen enabled. I don’t get Max’s hostility or your snide dig. I have no horse in this race. I am just interested in the technology. Max isn’t a expert, he deals in pensions.
I have a master's degree in chemistry and, unless my company has changed my job description without telling me, I don't work in pensions.
Must confuse you for someone else. 😂😂😂 still you don’t know my background or knowledge when you made snide digs at me, and some idiotic reference to the tobacco lobbyists in the seventies.
No snide digs mate, just your unyielding trust in "industry experts" seems a bit naïve after the number of scandals we've had from industries that had experts telling us everything was all good.
I have no inherent hostility towards hydrogen, just that it will end up being a huge waste of resources and a big distraction from what is possible because the government wants to try and find a like for like replacement to natural gas, which hydrogen isn't. It just seems like it is on the surface.
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Will that be industry experts with or without an agenda?
Any time a so called expert speaks the first question you should stop and ask yourself is "who are they and what is their agenda?"
If their agenda is to ensure hydrogen is in the mix in the future because that's their business model then that makes them an actor in this, not an independent expert.
Of course that’s the case. But these people are people I used to work with who I catch up with from time to time. In our discussion there is no agenda and I don’t doubt they are right. Hydrogen may not be part of the domestic heating future but it may well be.
When I worked in the oil business - Hydrogen was the Future. Because electricity left them feeling a bit left out.
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Industry experts with an agenda to push their industry. I'm sure you would have believed the tobacco industry experts 40 years ago too.
Or Facebook today ...
Speak for yourself. I used to work for a boiler company in an engineering role and still speak to them. Don’t assume everyone gets their info from Facebook, even if you do.
I think you missed the point of my post.
It was as valuable a contribution as Big Poochie D.
It was a needless sly dig.
Perhaps overly brief, but not sly. See my longer response to Max.
You may think your industry is different and better than others. But I sincerely doubt it.
It’s not my industry, it’s my former industry and all I’m mentioned was the current network is about 80% hydrogen enabled. I don’t get Max’s hostility or your snide dig. I have no horse in this race. I am just interested in the technology. Max isn’t a expert, he deals in pensions.
I have a master's degree in chemistry and, unless my company has changed my job description without telling me, I don't work in pensions.
Must confuse you for someone else. 😂😂😂 still you don’t know my background or knowledge when you made snide digs at me, and some idiotic reference to the tobacco lobbyists in the seventies.
No snide digs mate, just your unyielding trust in "industry experts" seems a bit naïve after the number of scandals we've had from industries that had experts telling us everything was all good.
I have no inherent hostility towards hydrogen, just that it will end up being a huge waste of resources and a big distraction from what is possible because the government wants to try and find a like for like replacement to natural gas, which hydrogen isn't. It just seems like it is on the surface.
I don’t have an unyielding trust of industry experts. I only commented about the distribution systems preparedness based on discussions with former colleagues as I am interested in how the company is getting on. I know there are trials going on, including some local to me, and I know there are many concerns about how to make it work and many issues. I am also aware it isn’t just domestic heating they are looking at.
Statement by Donald J Trump, 45th President of the USA, on the death of Colin Powell.
'Wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously, so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media. Hope that happens to me someday. He was a classic RINO, if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans. He made plenty of mistakes, but anyway, may he rest in peace!'
Leaving aside Trump’s (somewhat expected) shameless narcissism, I did find the hagiographic treatment of Powell by the msm rather nauseating. Trump has a point.
He was a complicated politician, whose career was notable for his one major fuckup. Iraq - in particular, the lies on which it was justified - was unforgivable.
His passing is notable. And, on a human level, sad. That is all.
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Will that be industry experts with or without an agenda?
Any time a so called expert speaks the first question you should stop and ask yourself is "who are they and what is their agenda?"
If their agenda is to ensure hydrogen is in the mix in the future because that's their business model then that makes them an actor in this, not an independent expert.
Hydrogen may have some use as an industrial fuel, but for domestic heating it's likely to be marginal or a non event.
I expect that around 80% of homes that currently have a natural gas supply will end up being switched to a hydrogen supply.
So neither marginal nor a non-event.
You still haven't explained where it's going to come from.
In the short to medium term, blue hydrogen will be the primary source of decarbonised hydrogen. Natural gas reforming with carbon capture. Expect to see plants built as part of the clusters announced today.
Longer term, the cost of green hydrogen will come down and become the preferred source - for example as part of integrated offshore wind/electrolysis plants with the hydrogen piped to shore.
So we're going to burn gas for energy to turn other gas into hydrogen? Even if we say gas prices fall in the medium term how is that even close to economically viable? That's without addressing the CO2 storage costs, the cost of upgrading the existing natural gas storage distribution network to accept hydrogen. Who's investing all of this money?
It is economically viable when you internalise the negative externalities associated with CO2 emissions. A high enough carbon tax, and blue hydrogen is a lower cost option than just burning the natural gas.
As with other low carbon technologies, the government will give it a kick start through public sector funding. Co-funding CAPEX, support per tonne of decarbonised hydrogen produced, support for the costs of CO2 transport and storage.
Either the taxpayer pays, business pays, the consumer pays or the planet is buggered. Our choice.
But hydrogen is still competing with renewable electricity and electric water heating. It doesn't exist in isolation. With a high CO2 tax like that hydrogen would lose to electric. The automotive industry has already realised this, it won't be long until water heating goes the same way.
Why, if I had £1bn to invest in green energy, would I look at hydrogen instead of offshore wind plus compressed air batteries? The cost of the latter is lower and it doesn't rely on nice Mr Putin keeping the pipelines open.
Meeting the peak winter demand for heating (and the huge difference between summer and winter demand) is the challenge. We achieve this today with natural gas - line pack, salt cavern storage, LNG. I consider that it is much easier (and lower cost) to meet this challenge through hydrogen using a similar approach than with electricity.
None of this is easy or cheap. But if we want to achieve net zero, we need to do it - and pay for it.
But the economics of hydrogen don't make sense against renewable electricity even with an energy storage solution included in the LCOE. Again, I'll pose the question, why, as an investor with £1bn, would I invest in hydrogen vs renewable electricity? Even under your system of very high CO2 taxes the case for hydrogen against renewable electricity seems marginal to non-existent. The existing infrastructure of natural gas isn't as compatible as advertised either so there's a real chicken/egg situation too. Every household has got an electricity connection, though.
Statement by Donald J Trump, 45th President of the USA, on the death of Colin Powell.
'Wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously, so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media. Hope that happens to me someday. He was a classic RINO, if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans. He made plenty of mistakes, but anyway, may he rest in peace!'
Leaving aside Trump’s (somewhat expected) shameless narcissism, I did find the hagiographic treatment of Powell by the msm rather nauseating. Trump has a point.
He was a complicated politician, whose career was notable for his one major fuckup. Iraq - in particular, the lies on which it was justified - was unforgivable.
His passing is notable. And, on a human level, sad. That is all.
He also liberated Kuwait from Saddam in 1990 and finally Iraq from Saddam in 2003.
However it does show how far US politics has shifted since then that the Democratic President has withdrawn US troops from Afghanistan and the lead candidate for the 2024 GOP nomination has attacked the former Secretary of State from his party over WMD claims and the Iraq War.
Neoconservatism is without a home in US politics for now
It is almost like Khan is a qualified solicitor who knows the temperate and non prejudicial language to be used.
No, I’m afraid you’re wrong. He uses “it appears” with “was another attempt to divide us”. “Horrific killing” is stated as fact
You need to go to Specsavers.
'it appears that the horrific killing'
No sorry, afraid you are wrong. I can read written English perfectly well. He wasn’t saying ‘it appears TO BE a horrific killing’ he’s saying ‘it appears that this horrific killing is attempting to divide us’
The ‘appears’ relates to the ‘another attempt to divide us’, not to the nature of the killing
I think we are allowed to say there was a horrific killing, it's not like anyone's defence is going to be that there wasn't. Pushing the argument only a bit further, perhaps we shouldn't be saying that Sir David is dead? It would be a perfectly good defence to a charge of murder, if he isn't.
I blame Angela Rayner for these right-wing nutty anti-vaxxers rounding on Gove.
Is that what they were? Anti-vaxxers. The chap with the camera who questions Gove says something about lock-downs, and at the end some are using the p-word. This all seems rather an overreaction but presumably something happened already, or else why is half the Yard on hand?
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Will that be industry experts with or without an agenda?
Any time a so called expert speaks the first question you should stop and ask yourself is "who are they and what is their agenda?"
If their agenda is to ensure hydrogen is in the mix in the future because that's their business model then that makes them an actor in this, not an independent expert.
Hydrogen may have some use as an industrial fuel, but for domestic heating it's likely to be marginal or a non event.
I expect that around 80% of homes that currently have a natural gas supply will end up being switched to a hydrogen supply.
So neither marginal nor a non-event.
You still haven't explained where it's going to come from.
In the short to medium term, blue hydrogen will be the primary source of decarbonised hydrogen. Natural gas reforming with carbon capture. Expect to see plants built as part of the clusters announced today.
Longer term, the cost of green hydrogen will come down and become the preferred source - for example as part of integrated offshore wind/electrolysis plants with the hydrogen piped to shore.
So we're going to burn gas for energy to turn other gas into hydrogen? Even if we say gas prices fall in the medium term how is that even close to economically viable? That's without addressing the CO2 storage costs, the cost of upgrading the existing natural gas storage distribution network to accept hydrogen. Who's investing all of this money?
It is economically viable when you internalise the negative externalities associated with CO2 emissions. A high enough carbon tax, and blue hydrogen is a lower cost option than just burning the natural gas.
As with other low carbon technologies, the government will give it a kick start through public sector funding. Co-funding CAPEX, support per tonne of decarbonised hydrogen produced, support for the costs of CO2 transport and storage.
Either the taxpayer pays, business pays, the consumer pays or the planet is buggered. Our choice.
But hydrogen is still competing with renewable electricity and electric water heating. It doesn't exist in isolation. With a high CO2 tax like that hydrogen would lose to electric. The automotive industry has already realised this, it won't be long until water heating goes the same way.
Why, if I had £1bn to invest in green energy, would I look at hydrogen instead of offshore wind plus compressed air batteries? The cost of the latter is lower and it doesn't rely on nice Mr Putin keeping the pipelines open.
Meeting the peak winter demand for heating (and the huge difference between summer and winter demand) is the challenge. We achieve this today with natural gas - line pack, salt cavern storage, LNG. I consider that it is much easier (and lower cost) to meet this challenge through hydrogen using a similar approach than with electricity.
None of this is easy or cheap. But if we want to achieve net zero, we need to do it - and pay for it.
But the economics of hydrogen don't make sense against renewable electricity even with an energy storage solution included in the LCOE. Again, I'll pose the question, why, as an investor with £1bn, would I invest in hydrogen vs renewable electricity? Even under your system of very high CO2 taxes the case for hydrogen against renewable electricity seems marginal to non-existent. The existing infrastructure of natural gas isn't as compatible as advertised either so there's a real chicken/egg situation too. Every household has got an electricity connection, though.
The big problem is the amount of energy that has to be expended in making hydrogen. Then storing and transporting it is a pain.
The classic is the hydrogen powered car.
1) To get decent range needs to use a fuel cell to generate electricity, rather than an ICE. 2) So you have an electric car driven by a hydrogen fuel cell. 3) But for efficiency, too get more range, you need regenerative braking. 4) So you add a battery, controllers etc. 5) So you now have a fuel cell, hydrogen, a battery and electric power train. 6) But hydrogen refuels so much more quickly? or does it? 7) Cryogenic (liquid) hydrogen has interesting handling problems. Oh, and you can't pump it quickly. 8) Compressed gas hydrogen is extremely dangerous. Look up the handling rules for that.
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Will that be industry experts with or without an agenda?
Any time a so called expert speaks the first question you should stop and ask yourself is "who are they and what is their agenda?"
If their agenda is to ensure hydrogen is in the mix in the future because that's their business model then that makes them an actor in this, not an independent expert.
Of course that’s the case. But these people are people I used to work with who I catch up with from time to time. In our discussion there is no agenda and I don’t doubt they are right. Hydrogen may not be part of the domestic heating future but it may well be.
When I worked in the oil business - Hydrogen was the Future. Because electricity left them feeling a bit left out.
Quite. The Hydrogen source is intended to be the existing gas industry using reforming to extract H2 from methane and sequestering the carbon somewhere. But the actual output of that process is CO2, so you need to put energy into turning CO2 into carbon, or else claim that your CO2 storage is going to keep a lid on large amounts of CO2 indefinitely.
My brother-in-law has an air source heat pump on his well insulated newly built house. They're becoming quite popular in the self-build market in rural Ireland I think - I walked past another one round the corner recently - but houses built for sale are still relying on oil. So I'm a fan.
These arguments over technology though demonstrate a weakness in the government approach of choosing which technology we will use and providing piecemeal grant schemes.
It would be much better if they would simply tax carbon, and then return the tax raised as a flat rate per capita payment. This would make all low/zero carbon alternatives relatively cheaper, tax the heaviest users of carbon most, provide cash to lower income households so that they can spend on improvements, and allow the market to choose which technology works best.
It would also mean that the exchequer would avoid becoming reliant on carbon taxes to fund day-to-day spending.
I'm old enough to remember Labour's Green Deal, and then I look at the size, complications and cost of heat pumps and I think...ok, good luck with that.
That was before the cost of gas quadrupled in the space of a couple of months. Alternative heating solutions and/or improved insulation might look rather more interesting to consumers now.
Its a lot of equipment to fit in a standard three bed semi.
Despite what is says if you are going to use the ASHP a lot then the radiators and pipework will need to changed, as pumping 40 degree water through 15mm pipework into a standard radiator will provide very limited heat.
Agree on the lot of equipment.
That looks like someone trying to create an opportunity to keep their technology in the game. It's problematic because 1 - we are pivoting away from gas, 2 - because it is a more complex install which will requite you to eg have 2 annual services not one (gas engineers will love you), 3 - because there are far simpler solutions available.
The stuff about always needing new pipework is for an ASHP is baloney, btw. You perhaps resize your rads (or use a double of the same size). Once you have improved your fabric you do a heat demand model for your house, and a calculation which will tell you what kit you need. Replacing rads is cheap. And then set the appropriate flow rate.
Keeping the same radiators is even cheaper. Which is what happens if you switch from natural gas to hydrogen.
Gas explosions are more common than you'd like them to be. Another home was destroyed in Ayr from a gas explosion yesterday. I was woken up by the Police and ordered to evacuate my own home in the week after the London Riots after a lone copycat moron chose to go on an arson campaign and set fire to the gas pipe going into one of my neighbours leading to a fear the entire bloc could go up.
I'm no chemist but from what I understand hydrogen seems even riskier than natural gas to be connected to homes for if things go wrong.
Safety studies have been performed, and more are ongoing. On balance, the risk from hydrogen is roughly the same as that from natural gas. While, for example, there is a greater leakage potential, hydrogen is less likely to achieve a fuel-air mixture in the explosive region. Also, no carbon monoxide deaths from hydrogen.
More to the point, how will it ever be economic ?
Once we fully internalise the negative externalities of burning unabated fossil fuels, then low-carbon technologies will be cheaper.
In other words, tax the feck out of CO2 emissions.
We think we've been having a free lunch since the dawn of the industrial revolution. Now the earth has presented us with the bill.
I'm not asking about the economics versus fossil fuels. I'm asking how producing hydrogen to heat homes will ever be economic versus doing so with green electricity.
Yup, hydrogen seems like a fool's errand. It would require ripping out and replacing our existing natural gas infrastructure to accommodate how tiny hydrogen molecules are.
The nation has got to look beyond gas delivery and move towards electrical heating for everything with electricity generated by SMR/mini-nukes and renewable energy with compressed air battery storage.
In the end hydrogen will prove to be unfeasible due to the hugely explosive nature and inability to safely transport and pipe it to homes it as we do with natural gas.
Over 80% of the existing infrastructure is hydrogen compatible and it is already being trialled. The large boiler companies are heavily investing in it. The issue is the safety.
Is it really that much more explosive than our current gas supply? I can't imagine it collecting in the air in the same way as methane unless a house is extremely well sealed.
The fuel-air mixes are different - the real issue is that hydrogen can leak much more easily. Proving that a set of pipework is hydrogen tight is an interesting challenge.
Yes, which is why the 80% number is a load of rubbish.
Who to believe, industry experts or a London based pensions man.
Will that be industry experts with or without an agenda?
Any time a so called expert speaks the first question you should stop and ask yourself is "who are they and what is their agenda?"
If their agenda is to ensure hydrogen is in the mix in the future because that's their business model then that makes them an actor in this, not an independent expert.
Of course that’s the case. But these people are people I used to work with who I catch up with from time to time. In our discussion there is no agenda and I don’t doubt they are right. Hydrogen may not be part of the domestic heating future but it may well be.
When I worked in the oil business - Hydrogen was the Future. Because electricity left them feeling a bit left out.
Run that by me again - hydrogen is more oil like than electricity is?
I blame Angela Rayner for these right-wing nutty anti-vaxxers rounding on Gove.
Is that what they were? Anti-vaxxers. The chap with the camera who questions Gove says something about lock-downs, and at the end some are using the p-word. This all seems rather an overreaction but presumably something happened already, or else why is half the Yard on hand?
It's a part of the world where police are regularly stationed.
I don't think the wider public realise how lucky we got in 2017 during the attack on Westminster.
If Micky Fallon's armed bodyguards weren't waiting where they were, a knife wielding terrorist was only a few metres from where hundreds of unarmed MPs were voting.
Comments
Laurence Fox
@LozzaFox
China is building coal power stations at an unprecedented rate, whilst you are about to impoverish the most vulnerable in society (again)
Also, the clue is the word “global” in global warming.
People voted conservative not green.
https://twitter.com/LozzaFox/status/1450451487633682435
It was a needless sly dig.
It’s slightly futurology but at the end of the day if you have a air source heat pump and traditional rads you’re basically going to be running at near direct electricity anyway on a cold January morning.
The darkness wasn't the worst aspect, though..
I don't want to 'spoil' it, but the way the entire arc is concluded is massively unsatisfying.
There are also certain plain stupid/illogical moments. Two characters set off for the capital first, but arrive after the army. Anyone who's into military history will know that an army is much, much slower than one or two travellers deliberately making haste.
Edited extra bit: probably unnecessary but edited to obscure two character names in case anyone's watching and doesn't know if X and Y survive.
Surely without an absolutely enormous ramp up of storage, most of our renewable energy is next to useless in reducing our reliance on other forms of power.
Nobody has explained how the ordinary person can even start to afford to change their boiler for a heat pump and their car for an ev
The mantra will be but it has to be done but it cannot be done if the US, China and others play lip service to it
So neither marginal nor a non-event.
I wouldn’t do a passivhaus with mechanical heat recovery from a ventilation system for the same reason as I don’t like heat pumps - expensive to maintain, plenty of moving parts to go wrong.
I think the first couple of episodes were well done. The battle against the White Walkers worked and the aftermath of the burning pyres of those who fell in the battle ... That worked.
It was the ending that was rushed and failed. I can understand what Martin was thinking and in text showing more the perspective in what she was thinking I think it could have worked as a tragedy. But on screen, I don't think it did.
1. code of silence to protect the industry's rep (e.g. RC church, most hospitals and police forces)
2. self-interested selection of materials to be presented publicly and hiding of detrimental data (e.g. tobacco, opioid drug producers, Facebook)
3. overly optimistic assessment of one's own effectiveness in self-policing (Facebook, again)
4. blind spots - simply not seeing what you are doing wrong, including not benchmarking against outsiders. We see this in life sciences research all the time. Scientists come to the field with saintly intentions of saving the world, and are completely blind to the fact that some of the things are want to do are very, very dangerous or could very easily be misused by someone not so saintly.
The point that kicked this off is that increasingly we aren't vaccinating. The kids and the boosters don't seem to be going smoothly.
The former didn't have enough snow.
Thank you for your concern though. Looking forward to bedtime.
I know it is not easy when you are working
The ‘appears’ relates to the ‘another attempt to divide us’, not to the nature of the killing
Longer term, the cost of green hydrogen will come down and become the preferred source - for example as part of integrated offshore wind/electrolysis plants with the hydrogen piped to shore.
Heat pumps sound shit
Is it the seal that goes or does the moulding distort over time ?
You may think your industry is different and better than others. But I sincerely doubt it.
This will have the effect of encouraging home owners to invest in their property if they hope to market it, and of course it would form part of any survey report providing a platform for the seller and buyer to negotiate a deal which in effect shares the greening costs of our housing stock without the need for government intervention
Refuses to pass legislation that would allow them to chuck Rob Roberts out of The Commons.
Labour amdt defeated by 297 to 213, govt majority 84
https://twitter.com/JohnRentoul/status/1450465138142810114
https://twitter.com/RoyalDickie/status/1450463738872705027?s=20
It seems the root cause was the showrunners getting bored and wanting to move on. But they were in such a hurry they did a half-arsed job. Anyway, must be off.
- instead the figure is a combination of new jobs and old-jobs-revamped-as-green-jobs
(eg gas fitters who start fitting electric pumps or workers at car factory which switches from petrol to electric)
https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1450465522022338561
"It appears that the horrific killing of Sir David Amess was another attempt to divide us."
As with other low carbon technologies, the government will give it a kick start through public sector funding. Co-funding CAPEX, support per tonne of decarbonised hydrogen produced, support for the costs of CO2 transport and storage.
Either the taxpayer pays, business pays, the consumer pays or the planet is buggered. Our choice.
'Wonderful to see Colin Powell, who made big mistakes on Iraq and famously, so-called weapons of mass destruction, be treated in death so beautifully by the Fake News Media. Hope that happens to me someday. He was a classic RINO, if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans. He made plenty of mistakes, but anyway, may he rest in peace!'
https://twitter.com/PoliticsForAlI/status/1450459209070415882?s=20
@BenPBradshaw
With #Covid19UK soaring, highest death rate in Europe & #NHS on its knees, it’s time for Govt to bring back masks, distancing, ventilation,home working & a European style green pass, which have kept rates so low on Continent. Booster & teens jabs also need rocket booster."
https://twitter.com/BenPBradshaw/status/1450371602156294145
What are these people thinking harassing Gove like this days after what happened to Sir David Amess.
what’s most sinister about this is that he has no way of knowing whether they are harmless wingnuts or pose an actual physical danger
https://twitter.com/PickardJE/status/1450466716266414082
But he meant ‘it appears to be an attempt to divide us’ not ‘it appears to be a horrific killing’, let’s leave it at that
Part of the issue with the death of coal mining was the lack of new jobs for people to go into wasn't it?
If the death of gas has ready made new jobs for gas engineers to go into rather than being unemployed then I'd think the gas engineers would be glad for that.
It's not like we have millions of unemployed and no vacancies as it stands.
Why, if I had £1bn to invest in green energy, would I look at hydrogen instead of offshore wind plus compressed air batteries? The cost of the latter is lower and it doesn't rely on nice Mr Putin keeping the pipelines open.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcjGZsJLuOE
Everyone needs to condemn this no matter their political persuasion otherwise democracy dies
https://twitter.com/mundialmag/status/1450467965858721793?s=21
"A lot of people are saying that Colin Powell would have beaten sleazy Bill Clinton to the Presidency had he decided to run. He surely would have had the second largest inauguration crowds in history, after me."
https://twitter.com/JuliaHB1/status/1450466672557633543?s=20
None of this is easy or cheap. But if we want to achieve net zero, we need to do it - and pay for it.
https://www.baxi.co.uk/new-build/products/boilers/electromax
I have no inherent hostility towards hydrogen, just that it will end up being a huge waste of resources and a big distraction from what is possible because the government wants to try and find a like for like replacement to natural gas, which hydrogen isn't. It just seems like it is on the surface.
He was a complicated politician, whose career was notable for his one major fuckup. Iraq - in particular, the lies on which it was justified - was unforgivable.
His passing is notable. And, on a human level, sad. That is all.
*the "protestor" not M Gove.
However it does show how far US politics has shifted since then that the Democratic President has withdrawn US troops from Afghanistan and the lead candidate for the 2024 GOP nomination has attacked the former Secretary of State from his party over WMD claims and the Iraq War.
Neoconservatism is without a home in US politics for now
I think we are allowed to say there was a horrific killing, it's not like anyone's defence is going to be that there wasn't. Pushing the argument only a bit further, perhaps we shouldn't be saying that Sir David is dead? It would be a perfectly good defence to a charge of murder, if he isn't.
The classic is the hydrogen powered car.
1) To get decent range needs to use a fuel cell to generate electricity, rather than an ICE.
2) So you have an electric car driven by a hydrogen fuel cell.
3) But for efficiency, too get more range, you need regenerative braking.
4) So you add a battery, controllers etc.
5) So you now have a fuel cell, hydrogen, a battery and electric power train.
6) But hydrogen refuels so much more quickly? or does it?
7) Cryogenic (liquid) hydrogen has interesting handling problems. Oh, and you can't pump it quickly.
8) Compressed gas hydrogen is extremely dangerous. Look up the handling rules for that.
or
You make the battery bigger and have an EV.
These arguments over technology though demonstrate a weakness in the government approach of choosing which technology we will use and providing piecemeal grant schemes.
It would be much better if they would simply tax carbon, and then return the tax raised as a flat rate per capita payment. This would make all low/zero carbon alternatives relatively cheaper, tax the heaviest users of carbon most, provide cash to lower income households so that they can spend on improvements, and allow the market to choose which technology works best.
It would also mean that the exchequer would avoid becoming reliant on carbon taxes to fund day-to-day spending.
I don't think the wider public realise how lucky we got in 2017 during the attack on Westminster.
If Micky Fallon's armed bodyguards weren't waiting where they were, a knife wielding terrorist was only a few metres from where hundreds of unarmed MPs were voting.