Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure the economic viability of the use of hydrogen-ready boilers in domestic heating.
Burning natural gas for heating accounts for a significant proportion of household carbon emissions. There is currently no clear consensus on the best approach to decarbonising heat at scale, and our December 2018 report on Clean Growth: Transforming Heating set out that using hydrogen as a replacement for natural gas, including for domestic heating, may play an important role.
BEIS is?currently?investing over £100m in hydrogen innovation. This includes Hy4Heat, a programme which aims to assess the safety and technical feasibility of hydrogen for heating in homes. This includes working with industry to develop prototype hydrogen appliances including hydrogen ready boilers and will evaluate their likely costs and performance upon completion of the programme in March 2021.