Hydrogen is key to weaning ourselves off Russian fossil fuels

Europe is in a terrible bind thanks to its dependence on Russian oil and gas. With one hand we are doing our best to cripple the Russian economy with sanctions in response to its invasion of Ukraine. With the other, we are putting money in Vladimir Putin’s pocket every time we turn on the central heating, run a bath or fill up at the petrol station.

This is not a completely new situation: in 2014, Russia cut off natural gas supplies to Ukraine over a pricing dispute, leading to fears that flows to the EU, which then as now relied on Russia for about one third of its gas, would be interrupted. A series of articles appeared in the press questioning with some urgency how we could wean ourselves off Russian gas.

Most of the talk at the time was about U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports and calculations that Russia would not want to push its biggest customer to diversify fuels. U.S. LNG exports arrived, but not in sufficient volume to change the dynamics of the global natural gas market, while Europe, including the UK, has done a good job of replacing coal-based electricity with renewable energy, but is as reliant as ever on Russian gas.

Europe, and the UK (although less so the latter), are still reliant on Russian oil and gas, for uses from filling our vehicles to heating our homes.

So, is anything different this time? We would argue yes. For one, motivation has never been higher. European governments and citizens are shocked and outraged at Russia’s actions in Ukraine and there is a genuine fear that Putin could use energy supplies as a weapon in response to sanctions – there is evidence that he has already done so this winter by curtailing supplies and driving up natural gas prices to record levels.

Secondly, there is a genuine alternative. Hydrogen.

Green hydrogen can be produced by any country with an electrolyser and some renewable energy resources. In the UK, we have some of the world’s most favourable conditions for offshore wind and have done a good job of opening out resources up to investment. In February, the government announced it would double the frequency of renewable energy tenders to yearly. In January, Scotland completed one of the largest offshore wind tenders in the world, more than doubling the UK’s existing capacity.

The UK is also a world leader in electrolyser technology with companies including CPH2 and ITM Power, while innovators like Johnson Matthey produce some of the essential components for these machines, having very openly turned their back on batteries. Further along the supply chain, companies such as Ryze Hydrogen are creating the transport and supply infrastructure needed to get hydrogen to end users, while Wrightbus and JCB are building vehicles and plant machinery that run on the clean fuel.

UK company Ryze Hydrogen are creating the transport and supply infrastructure needed to get hydrogen to end users.

A quick win for the UK would be to expedite its decision on allowing hydrogen blending of up to 20% in the country’s natural gas pipeline network. According to the government’s hydrogen strategy, published last year, an indicative assessment of the value for money case for hydrogen blending is set to be published in the third quarter of this year, with a final policy decision likely in late 2023.

The UK’s Energy Network Association said mid-January the UK gas grid will be ready for 20% hydrogen by 2023 and all five of the country’s gas grid companies will meet the government’s target for hydrogen readiness.

Trials have already been run. HyDeploy, the first project in the UK to blend hydrogen into a gas network, saw 100 homes and 30 university buildings on a private gas network at Keele University receive the blended gas for a period of 18 months ending in spring 2021. With a 20% blend, no changes need to be made to domestic appliances.

Furthermore, the UK’s first demonstration and testing homes with household gas appliances fuelled entirely by hydrogen were officially opened in July 2021, by the Energy Minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan, at Northern Gas Networks’ innovation site in Gateshead.  The two semi-detached houses have been built in a partnership between gas distributors Northern Gas Networks (NGN), Cadent and the Government’s Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), to enable the public to experience a zero-emission hydrogen gas-fuelled home of the future.

The innovative hydrogen project has been produced with support from the government’s Hy4heat innovation programme.  Hydrogen boilers have already been developed by leading manufacturers Baxi Heating and Worcester Bosch and prototypes of fires, cookers and hobs are also available form partners working with BEIS on Hy4Heat projects.

UK domestic consumption accounts for more than one third of the country’s total natural gas consumption, meaning blending alone during a transition phase could make a significant dent in the need to import gas from places like Russia. Moving that decision forward would create a huge source of early demand for green hydrogen, pushing down production costs and creating a virtuous circle for the sector.

Green hydrogen can be produced by any country with an electrolyser and some renewable energy resources. In the UK, we have some of the world’s most favourable conditions for offshore wind and have done a good job of opening out resources up to investment.

The country’s renewable energy capacity is growing all the time, but we will always need natural gas for power unless we invest in long-term energy storage. Clean hydrogen is one of the leading contenders.

UK industry, one of the country’s other major users of natural gas, is already making huge strides in the use of hydrogen to decarbonise operations with hubs being created in places like H2Teesside, Zero Carbon Humber, and the HyNet cluster in the northwest.

More attention has been focused on Russia’s power in the natural gas market, but it also supplies Europe with about one third of its oil and the shift away from petrol and diesel is another important plank of the continent’s energy independence.

Battery electric vehicles have stolen a march on passenger vehicles, but big questions loom over the environmental sustainability of battery materials and the danger of becoming dependent on another monopoly producer: China. It is widely acknowledged that China now owns approximately 80% of the battery supply chain.

Hydrogen fuel cells, and now prototype hydrogen combustion engines, are showing their worth in trucks, buses and plant machinery. Hydrogen-powered passenger vehicles are increasingly being seen as the tortoise that could yet catch the hare of battery electric vehicles in that race too.

We have the motivation to loosen our dependency on Russian hydrocarbons, and we have the means. Let’s make it happen.

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