Half of all human energy consumption is used for heating, and nearly 50% of it is used for heating and hot water in homes. For electricity - only 19%. It can be seen that heating issues are even more important than electricity. If fossil fuels are not given up, it is impossible t

Half of all human energy consumption is used for heating, and nearly 50% of it is used for heating and hot water in homes. For electricity - only 19%. It can be seen that heating issues are even more important than electricity. If fossil fuels are not given up, it is impossible to achieve a green transformation here. However, as new scientific work has shown, hydrogen is just a daydream in this role.

Joule Magazine published a review of A 32 scientific papers on the possibility of converting heat energy into Hydrogen , which in many Western countries is considered a key component of green transformation. For the first time, this study did not consider work funded by certain companies interested in the large-scale transition to hydrogen in the field. As a result, Jan Rosenow, the author of the review, came to some rather interesting conclusions.

As he pointed out, almost all independent (in terms of funding) work in the field shows that hydrogen heating is not only more expensive than existing boiler rooms, but also this seemingly more expensive approach to solving heating problems such as heat pumps (converting frequency air conditioners, used for heating) and solar heating (solar rays heat the coolant on the roof of a house, which has heated the water in the heating circuit). This conclusion is hard to call expectation, as the last two heating methods are usually several times more expensive than boiler rooms.

Thermal production problem is a major obstacle to the transition to a carbon neutral economy. The key is not only that humans use to generate heat twice and a half times as much energy as electricity. It is also important that the demand for heat in winter is many times higher than in summer, and even considering industries that consume slightly more than half of the calories, the consumption in summer is hardly reduced. As a result, the same UK consumes four times as much energy per unit of time in winter as warm months.

It is difficult to solve this problem without burning fuel. In theory, you can use an electric-driven heat pump to heat. But in this case, electricity consumption will be two to three times higher in winter than in summer (in normal circumstances, not severe winter). The power industry, which operates with one-third of its capacity in the summer, will remain idle for a long time without claiming, which will significantly increase its power generation prices. Many people want to avoid this consequence. The usage scheme of

hydrogen. The significant drawbacks for heating from SES and WES for homes hinder their widespread use of

"For decision makers, hydrogen used for heating is seen as attractive. It seems easy to replace methane with hydrogen, which won't change anything about the family. But in reality, major technological changes are needed - including pipes in the house, all of which cost people a lot of money," Jan Roznau said.

In addition, the authors add that almost all hydrogen today is obtained from fossil fuels, which makes it not carbon neutral. Getting hydrogen from "green" electricity (from wind farms and solar power plants ) is still several times cheaper than from methane. Low energy efficiency remains a key problem here: the efficiency of electrolysis is only 80%, and the typical gas boiler is 85%, which is why the final efficiency of hydrogen heating is no more than 70%.

Electrically powered heat pumps, although they lose 5-10% of their energy due to the resistance in the transmission line, usually receive 3 to 4 kWh of heat per kilowatt-hour (the difference is eliminated by absorbing heat from outdoor winter air). That is, when the temperature is above zero, their total electricity cost is three times or more than hydrogen heating.

Rosnau generally does not object to hydrogen. He pointed out that this may help the industry to "decarbonize". It consumes a little more heat than residential and commercial buildings, which is mainly high potential heat, and temperatures up to hundreds of degrees. No heat pump can provide this, nor do alternatives to green hydrogen (at least within the framework of the approach adopted in the West, in fact, they certainly exist, but not yet in the Western countries). But in the household sector, he stressed that this gas will not only increase their costs, but will also force them to increase waste of natural resources and increase overall energy consumption.

Although Rosnau correctly outlines some of the problems with hydrogen (coincidentally coincides with some of the papers in this Naked Science article), he does not elaborate on the shortcomings of heat pumps, which makes their success as a gas alternative to doubt. The truth is that at minus five degrees and below, the heat pump generates about one kilowatt-hour of heat energy for one kilowatt-hour: it becomes very difficult to cool the outdoor air at such a temperature to heat the room.

So in practice, in a country that switches to heat pumps completely, peak energy consumption in winter will be four to five times that in summer during the coldest winter. That is, this heating will be forced to rely on the huge capacity of the power plant - a multiple of the existing ones - to be idle almost all year round, opening only on the coldest days. It is obvious that such a decision will be huge for society. Therefore, other authors have pointed out more than once that the transition to heat pumps will also greatly increase heating costs.

At the same time, the price of heating has become a pain point in many modern society. For example, in the UK, even before the price shock in 2022, 60,500 people died in cold weather each year, accounting for about 0.1% of the total population each year. It has been reliably determined that in rooms with worse temperatures, the average blood pressure of a person will rise. And, it has more winter temperatures indoors than outdoors.

Due to the systematic increase in this stress, the possibility of death from cardiovascular disease is increased, which is the main factor in death from a cold. Extended increase in heating costs will inevitably lead to a drop in temperature in the homes of residents in Western countries, and all the consequences that come with it.