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The government must focus on increasing the take-up of heat pumps in the next ten years rather than investing in hydrogen technology for home heating, a report from Imperial College London’s Energy Futures Lab said.

But Ecotricity founder Dale Vince, who launched a campaign to save Britain’s gas boilers with the Express, said replacing them with heat pumps was “not the answer either”.

He said: “The cost will be astronomical, with huge disruption and waste on a scale we may never have seen before – the throwing away of tens of millions of existing gas appliances and of our national gas grid. 

“The answer is really simple, just change the gas we put into the national grid. Instead of gas made from fossils we can use gas made from grass.”

Dale, 60, said his solution, which requires an anaerobic digestion plant, could create 100,000 jobs at a “fraction of the price” of hydrogen and heat pumps.

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The other net zero heating options include replacing natural gas with hydrogen but it is currently more expensive, and producing it can add to greenhouse gas emissions. 

The Government’s favoured choice is to get households to switch from gas boilers to heat pumps powered by renewable electricity. 

But heat pumps can cost up to 10 times as much as boilers and use three times as much electricity.

The research release by Imperial today (WED), commissioned by the MCS Charitable Foundation, said UK homes are currently responsible for 23 per cent of carbon emissions.

Increasing energy efficiency levels of existing homes, green financing and long-term grants to increase the rollout of heat pump technology would create tens of thousands of new jobs, the report found.

Its co-author Dr Richard Hanna, said: “With further investment in research and demonstration, hydrogen has potential to help decarbonise challenging sectors like industry and shipping, but right now there is not a strong case for using it to heat our homes.”

Hydrogen would be best used in sectors which are hard to electrify, such as shipping and aviation, the research concluded.

David Cowdrey, Director of External Affairs at MCS, said: “This report clearly shows that hydrogen will not play any significant role in domestic heating in the next ten years, and may not be a viable option until 2050. 

“Plans for hydrogen to play a role in economically heating our homes should be reviewed.

“The cost of installing the required infrastructure, and producing hydrogen from natural gas, call into question whether it can play any significant role in helping us reach net zero emissions by 2050.”

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