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Campaigners fear loophole will let new homes in England be fitted with gas boilers
(The Guardian, 21 Mar 2023) Regulation may allow ‘hydrogen-ready’ boilers that can run on fossil fuel gas, and are unlikely ever to use hydrogen.
Ministers are preparing to allow new houses to continue to be fitted with gas boilers, long after they were supposed to be phased out, campaigners fear.
A loophole being considered for the forthcoming future homes standard, a housing regulation in England intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from newly built homes in line with the net zero target, would allow new homes to be fitted with “hydrogen-ready” boilers.
However, experts have told the Guardian that these are functionally not much different from standard gas boilers. “Hydrogen-ready” boilers can be used with fossil fuel gas, of the kind used by most of the UK’s existing housing stock, and experts fear they are unlikely ever to use hydrogen, as many studies have shown that hydrogen is likely to be too expensive, and face too many technical challenges, to be widely used for home heating.
This means that stipulating that such “hydrogen-ready” boilers could be fitted in new homes, instead of genuinely low-carbon heating such as heat pumps, would risk tying millions of households into fossil fuel use for the long-term, and imperil the UK’s commitment to reaching net zero emissions by 2050.
The Guardian, 21 Mar 2023: Campaigners fear loophole will let new homes in England be fitted with gas boilers
