Policy & Socio-Economics

Heating and hot water for UK buildings make up 40% of our energy consumption and 20% of our greenhouse gas emissions. It will be necessary to largely eliminate these emissions by around 2050 to meet the targets in the Climate Change Act and to maintain the UK contribution to international action under the Paris Agreement.<br/>Progress to date has stalled. The Government needs a credible new strategy and a much stronger policy framework for buildings decarbonisation over the next three decades. Many of the changes that will reduce emissions will also contribute toward modern affordable comfortable homes and workplaces and can be delivered alongside a major expansion in the number of homes. This report considers that challenge and sets out possible steps to meet it.

The Paris Agreement marks a significant positive step in global action to tackle climate change. This report considers the domestic actions the UK Government should take as part of a fair contribution to the aims of the Agreement.<br/>The report concludes that the Paris Agreement is a significant step forward in global efforts to tackle climate change. It is more ambitious in its aims to limit climate change than the basis of the UK’s existing climate targets. However it is not yet appropriate to set new UK targets. Existing targets are already stretching and the priority is to take action to meet them.

Achieving the UK's net zero target by 2050 will be a challenge. Hydrogen can make a substantial contribution but it needs investment and policy support to establish demand increase the scale of deployment and reduce costs. The Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution confirms the government’s commitment to drive the growth of low carbon hydrogen in the UK through a range of measures. This includes publishing its hydrogen strategy and setting out revenue mechanisms to attract private investment as well as allocating further support for hydrogen production and hydrogen applications in heating.

We have created a bespoke model to help understand the cost of hydrogen in the UK across the value chain under different pathways. Our analysis highlights areas for cost reduction and identifies factors that could make hydrogen more attractive to investors.

You can read the full report on the Deloitte website at this link

Our new independent report finds that hydrogen can play an important role in UK’s ambitious decarbonisation plan and boost its global industrial competitiveness.

Key insights from this new analysis include:

• New independent report from Aurora Energy Research shows that hydrogen can meet up to half of Great Britain’s (GB) final energy demand by 2050 providing an important pathway to reaching UK’s ambitious Net Zero targets.
• The report concludes that both blue hydrogen (produced from natural gas after reforming to remove carbon content) and green hydrogen (produced by using power to electrolyse water) are expected to play an important role providing up to 480TWh of hydrogen or c.45% of GB’s final energy demand by 2050.
• All Net Zero scenarios require substantial growth in low-carbon generation such as renewables and nuclear. Large-scale hydrogen adoption could help to integrate renewables into the power system by reducing the power sector requirement for flexibility during peak winter months and boosting revenues for clean power generators by c. £3bn per year by 2050.
• The rollout of hydrogen could accelerate green growth and enable the development of globally competitive low-carbon industrial clusters while utilising UK’s competitive advantage on carbon capture.
• In facilitating the identification of a cost-effective hydrogen pathway there are some low-regret options for Government to explore including the stimulation of hydrogen demand in key sectors the deployment of CCS in strategic locations and the standardisation of networks. These initiatives could form an important part of the UK Government’s post-COVID stimulus plan.

Read the full report on Aurora Energy Research Website

Hydrogen can be used for a variety of domestic and industrial purposes such as heating and cooking (as a replacement for natural gas) transportation (replacing petrol and diesel) and energy storage (by converting intermittent renewable energy into hydrogen). The key benefit of using hydrogen is that it is a clean fuel that emits only water vapour and heat when combusted.



To support implementation of the National Hydrogen Strategy Geoscience Australia in collaboration with Monash University are releasing the Hydrogen Economic Fairways Tool (HEFT).  HEFT is a free online tool designed to support decision making by policymakers and investors on the location of new infrastructure and development of hydrogen hubs in Australia. It considers both hydrogen produced from renewable energy and from fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage.



This seminar demonstrates HEFT’s capabilities its potential to attract worldwide investment into Australia’s hydrogen industry and what’s up next for hydrogen at Geoscience Australia.



You can use the Hydrogen Economic Fairways Tool (HEFT) on the Website of the Australian government at the link here

Hydrogen Europe is the organisation representing the interests of the European hydrogen industry. It fully adheres to the European Union’s target of climate neutrality by 2050 and supports the European Commission’s objectives to develop and integrate more renewable energy sources into the European energy mix.<br/><br/>In December 2015 in Paris a global climate agreement was reached at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP 21). The Paris Agreement is seen as a historic and landmark instrument in climate action. However the agreement is lacking emphasis on international maritime transport and the role that this sector will need to play in contributing to the decarbonisation of the global economy and in striving for a clean planet for all.<br/><br/>Hydrogen hydrogen-based fuels (such as ammonia) and hydrogen technologies offer tremendous potential for the maritime sector<br/>and if properly harnessed can significantly contribute to the decarbonisation and also mitigate the air pollution of the worldwide fleet. Hydrogen Europe will be the catalyst in this process the decarbonisation and also mitigate the air pollution of the worldwide fleet. Hydrogen Europe will be the catalyst in this process.<br/><br/>The pathway towards hydrogen and hydrogenbased fuels for the maritime sector does not come without technological and commercial challenges let alone regulatory barriers.

Outline

This independent report by Vivid Economics and University College London was commissioned to support the Climate Change Committee’s (CCC) 2020 report The Sixth Carbon Budget -The path to Net Zero. This research provided supporting information for Chapter 7 of the CCC’s report which considered the UK’s contribution to the global goals of the Paris Agreement.

Key recommendations

The report models ‘leadership-driven’ global scenarios that could reduce global emissions rapidly to Net Zero and analyses the levers available to developed countries such as the UK to help accelerate various key aspects of the required global transition.

It highlights a set of opportunities for the UK alongside other developed countries to help assist global decarbonisation efforts alongside achieving it’s domestic emissions reduction targets

European countries approach the market ramp-up of hydrogen very differently. In some cases the economic and political starting points differ significantly. While the probability is high that some countries such as Germany or Italy will import hydrogen in the long term other countries such as United Kingdom France or Spain could become hydrogen exporters. The reasons for this are the higher potential for renewable energies but also a technology-neutral approach on the supply side.

Hydrogen has been identified as a potential energy vector to decarbonise the transport and chemical sectors and achieve global greenhouse gas reduction targets. Despite ongoing efforts hydrogen technologies are often assessed focusing on their global warming potential while overlooking other impacts or at most including additional metrics that are not easily interpretable. Herein a wide range of alternative technologies have been assessed to determine the total cost of hydrogen production by coupling life-cycle assessments with an economic evaluation of the environmental externalities of production. By including monetised values of environmental impacts on human health ecosystem quality and resources on top of the levelised cost of hydrogen production an estimation of the “real” total cost of hydrogen was obtained to transparently rank the alternative technologies. The study herein covers steam methane reforming (SMR) coal and biomass gasification methane pyrolysis and electrolysis from renewable and nuclear technologies. Monetised externalities are found to represent a significant percentage of the total cost ultimately altering the standard ranking of technologies. SMR coupled with carbon capture and storage emerges as the cheapest option followed by methane pyrolysis and water electrolysis from wind and nuclear. The obtained results identify the “real” ranges for the cost of hydrogen compared to SMR (business as usual) by including environmental externalities thereby helping to pinpoint critical barriers for emerging and competing technologies to SMR.

This concept study extends the power-to-gas approach to small combined heat and power devices in buildings that alternately operate fuel cells and electrolysis. While the heat is used to replace existing fossil heaters on-site the power is either fed into the grid or consumed via heatcoupled electrolysis to balance the grid power at the nearest grid node. In detail the power demand of Germany is simulated as a snapshot for 2030 with 100% renewable sourcing. The standard load profile is supplemented with additional loads from 100% electric heat pumps 100% electric cars and a fully electrified industry. The renewable power is then scaled up to match this demand with historic hourly yield data from 2018/2019. An optimal mix of photovoltaics wind biomass and hydropower is calculated in respect to estimated costs in 2030. Hydrogen has recently entered a large number of national energy roadmaps worldwide. However most of them address the demands of heavy industry and heavy transport which are more difficult to electrify. Hydrogen is understood to be a substitute for fossil fuels which would be continuously imported from non-industrialized countries. This paper focuses on hydrogen as a storage technology in an all-electric system. The target is to model the most cost-effective end-to-end use of local renewable energies including excess hydrogen for the industry. The on-site heat coupling will be the principal argument for decentralisation. Essentially it flattens the future peak from massive usage of electric heat pumps during cold periods. However transition speed will either push the industry or the prosumer approach in front. Batteries are tried out as supplementary components for short-term storage due to their higher round trip efficiencies. Switching the gas net to hydrogen is considered as an alternative to overcome the slow power grid expansions. Further decentral measures are examined in respect to system costs.