Decarbonising heating in Britain

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An abridged version of this article was written for Extinction Rebellion's newspaper "The Hourglass" in November 2019 under the title: "Staying warm in a house on fire".

Paradoxically, global heating is likely to result in colder winters in Britain for some decades to come, as the temperate Gulf Stream weakens and disruption to the polar vortex unleashes the Beast from the East. But burning yet more fossil fuels to stay warm is the last thing we need. We can do a little to help by keeping temperatures down at home (put on warm clothes instead of turning up the thermostat!), keeping doors and windows closed and blocking up draughts, covering bare floors and drawing curtains, but our best efforts can only reduce our fuel use (and bills) marginally. The big changes have to be made at government levels, but they’re not easy.

Heating consumes more than half the energy we use in our homes, and about a sixth of the energy we use nationally, and most of that is CO2-emitting gas and oil. There are reckoned to be 26 million gas boilers in the UK. How can we decarbonise our heating?

The Climate Change Council wants a ban on gas boilers in new houses and, with improvements in building regulations, houses could be built which require practically no heating (or cooling) at all, or their needs could be met using heat pumps. However, new houses are only a tiny proportion of all our housing. The insulation and draughtproofing of existing houses can be improved to a useful extent, but nowhere near enough to eliminate the need for heating at all. What about replacing oil and gas boilers with electric heating - perhaps using heat pumps? In France a lot of heating is electric, but they have masses of cheap, carbon free nuclear electricity. In Britain we’re not even on course to replace our existing nuclear power stations as they reach the end of their lives, let alone to massively expand our generation capacity. Wind makes a significant contribution but, as Germany has shown, we can’t decarbonise with wind alone (and in winter, when we need most energy, solar is practically useless). We could decarbonise our fossil (and biomass) fuelled power stations using carbon capture and storage but we’d still need a large increase in electricity generation capacity to switch home heating to electricity, and a big upgrade in grid capacity to get all the extra power to where it’s needed. Not to mention that electric boilers and heat pumps are very far from being a drop-in replacement for the common domestic combi boiler.

Another approach is being tested in the North of England where natural gas coming ashore from the North Sea will be split into Hydrogen and Carbon Dioxide, with the CO2 being pumped back out to sea and sequestered in disused gas reservoirs deep underground. The Hydrogen will then be fed into the existing gas pipe network to feed modified cookers and boilers in homes and businesses. It will require a massive conversion effort but we did something similar between 1968 and 1976 when we converted from town gas (which was a mixture of mostly Hydrogen and deadly Carbon Monoxide) to “North Sea Gas”.[1]

Whatever approach, or combination of approaches, this country chooses will ideally be a matter for a Citizen’s Assembly to decide, informed by the science, engineering, economics and other experts they call upon to advise them.

Footnotes and References

  1. "Gas industry timeline", National Gas Museum website