Hydrogen could be pumped into the gas network before the end of this decade, the secretary of state for business and energy has said.
Kwasi Kwarteng, who was promoted to the role earlier this month, told an online meeting organised by the right of centre thinktank Onward last week that many members of the public required greater reassurance that hydrogen is safe, especially those in older age groups.
“There’s a job to persuade people that hydrogen is safe and we have got to make sure it’s really, really safe.”
But pointing to the prime minister’s recent announcement of a town-scale trial for hydrogen in heating, he stressed that the rollout of hydrogen can happen soon.
“The timeline isn’t as long as people think: in seven or eight years we could be in a system where we have hydrogen being distributed in the old gas network. That would of course help very considerably with decarbonisation.
“Things have to be modified but we are looking at that very closely.”
Kwarteng, also claimed that the push to cut emissions to net zero has “melded together really well” with the government’s agenda to level up the UK economy because many of the greatest opportunities for green technologies were in ex-industrial regions, like Teesside.
Guy Newey, strategy and performance director at the Energy Systems Catapult, warned that the climate change ambitions of many councils has run ahead of practical implementation.
He said: “Right now we have a missing piece of the institutional arrangement: 200 local authorities have declared a climate emergency in many cases with no idea of how to get there.”
But Newey, who was a special adviser to former energy and climate change secretary Amber Rudd, said that council have a pivotal role to play in decarbonisation plans, which will have to be tailor-made for individual areas.
He said: “The decarbonisation plan of Meriden is very different to Doncaster and Glasgow: you need to understand the building stock and the state of the pipes and wires in the ground.”
The online meeting was taking place to launch Onward’s ‘Getting to Zero’ project, which is being chaired by former shadow energy and climate change secretary Caroline Flint, and ex- environment secretary of state Dame Caroline Spelman.
Last week, Great Britain’s gas networks released a joint plan for their conversion to deliver hydrogen over the coming years.