To rule out H2, or not to rule out H2

he National Infrastructure Commission has come out with its Second National Infrastructure Assessment today, and the headline for energy fans is the NIC calling for Government to rule out hydrogen for heat. You can tell that the NIC knew this was going to be the headline, because they have published a technical annex on the topic with the same profile as the actual main NIA paper.

The NIC has gone further than the CCC in this regard; the CCC's Balanced Pathway for CB6 includes some hydrogen for home heating in their modelling. What explains the discrepancy?

There are various components to this answer, but it is driven at least in part by the NIC's approach to home heating options, shown in Figure 4 in the H2 Technical Annex:

This shows some interesting outputs of their work - not least that for flats electric resistive heating looks like a tempting option - but also that they have excluded some options from their consideration.

The important ones for our purposes are heat networks and hybrid devices. I would be very surprised if heat networks don't end up being a big part of the solution for existing flats. Hybrid devices are also important - these are systems with heat pump that provides the bulk of the load with a boiler to provide peak heat. The CCC's work assumes that these devices are the source of H2 demand, rather than boilers.

Not considering all possible devices feels like an omission in the work, although I doubt it was intentional and more to do with scope. However, the strength of the claim made by the NIC means that it will be highly contested, and any omissions seized on.