The report, commissioned by MCS Charitable Foundation, projects that hydrogen would cost 70-90% more than gas on average.

The authors conclude that hydrogen will be a much more expensive heating fuel than natural gas and it would be better to prioritise other technologies to decarbonise domestic heating, like heat pumps.

This comes as the UK Government is preparing to decide next year whether to allow blending of up to 20% hydrogen into the gas network, and is due to make a decision on rolling out hydrogen for home heating on a mass scale in 2026.

MCS Charitable Foundation, whose work focusses on decarbonising homes, heat and energy to deliver a net zero future says that this report adds weight to the fast-growing body of evidence showing hydrogen is economically and environmentally unviable as a source of home heating.

Dr Richard Hauxwell-Baldwin, Research & Campaigns Manager at MCS Charitable Foundation, said pursuing hydrogen for home heating would lock in high energy prices for a generation.

He said, “At a time when we need policies in place to cut both bills and carbon, pursuing hydrogen for home heating seems a strange policy choice.

“The fossil fuel industry is lobbying hard to get hydrogen pumped into homes around the country as it would allow them to continue their otherwise unsustainable businesses. But this would be a disaster for already hard-pressed households and the environment.

“The most cost effective, efficient and sustainable way to reduce energy bills would be for the Government to massively invest in the electrification of heat through heat pumps and heat networks, not hydrogen.”

Jitendra Patel, Senior Consultant at Cornwall Insight and an author of the report, said while hydrogen does have a part to play in the decarbonisation pathway, through for example, use in the industrial sectors and in surplus electricity, current and forecast costs all show it is simply uneconomical to use a 100% hydrogen fuel for heating our homes.

“We do however see benefits in accelerating the roll out of renewable generation to help bring down generation costs and we predict a near cost parity between green and blue hydrogen production methods by 2030 when using surplus electricity.”

Juliet Philips, Senior Policy Advisor at E3G, said we are in a cost of living crisis caused by exposure to international fossil fuel markets. In order to bring down bills permanently, we need to invest in solutions which permanently get us off gas – such as home insulation, heat pumps and renewables.

“In contrast, blue hydrogen, produced using fossil fuels, further weds us to volatile international gas markets. And as this new research shows, it could also hike up consumer bills,” she said. “We urge the government to listen to the economics and the science ahead of making big decisions on hydrogen for heating – or it will be consumers who end up footing the bill.”

Chaitanya Kumar, Head of Environment and Green Transition at the New Economics Foundation, said: “There is way too much hype around hydrogen and while some of it is legitimate, the focus on it for domestic heating is a mirage and governments should be highly sceptical of the gas industry’s sales pitch.

“It is evident that natural gas from the North Sea will never offer true energy independence for the UK and if the current energy crisis has taught us anything, it should be to turbocharge the transition away from natural gas, not entrench our reliance on it. Boosting domestic renewables and cutting energy demand permanently are the only two genuinely sustainable solutions facing us.”

Jonathon Porritt, Founder and Director of Forum for the Future, said: “This is an extremely timely and significant report, sending the clearest possible signal to Ministers that using hydrogen to replace natural gas for domestic heating is an unwise and potentially dangerous distraction.

“Future supplies of green hydrogen must be prioritised for the hard-to-abate sectors, and blue hydrogen looks more and more unviable given astronomically high gas prices persisting well into the future.”

It’s the second report of its kind this month. An Element Energy report warned that using hydrogen as a fuel to heat homes and water instead of gas could double bills in Europe.

Even by 2050, based off an average home with consumption of 12,700kWh per year, it would cost an average of €1,580 for a medium-sized house to be heated by hydrogen, double the average price of heating the same sized property with gas at the end of 2021, the report states.

Read more:  Report warns heating with hydrogen could double European household energy bills

Tackling decarbonisation, ramping up hydrogen boilers and reducing costs 

Nonetheless, with governments under intense pressure to ramp up low-carbon technologies to meet net zero targets and tackle climate change, hydrogen will continue to be courted as an energy solution.

EU President Ursula Von der Leyen believes hydrogen will be a “game changer” for the continent and said her executive will propose to create a new European Hydrogen Bank to secure around €3bn in investments for the sector.

“We’ve all seen to what extent the Green Deal is important. Summer 2022 will remain in people’s memoires,” she said. “We all saw the dry rivers, the burning forests, the impact of the extreme heat. And under the surface, the situation is far starker.”

The National Grid says relying on fossil fuels to heat our homes, businesses and buildings is no longer an option if we’re to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. “We must now look to low- or no-carbon energy sources as alternatives and hydrogen is one of the most promising options,” it states.

To bring clean hydrogen gas into our homes, we need to make sure that home appliances like boilers, cooking appliances and gas fires are hydrogen ready, it adds. “Manufacturers have already built hydrogen boilers, so the technology is available – it just needs a widescale strategic switchover, led centrally by government.”

Experts are optimistic and believe that the switch to hydrogen heating will start to happen in the next 10 years, in line with UK and US government targets to cut carbon emissions by as much as half by 2035. In the US, the Department of Energy has established the Hydrogen Earthshot initiative, which seeks to reduce the cost of hydrogen to $1 for one kilogram in one decade.

Scientists have been testing ways to ‘blend’ hydrogen with natural gas as a way to lower emissions.

One of the first and largest clean hydrogen projects in the US, The HyGrid Project, was launched in 2021 and is located on Long Island. By blending green hydrogen into the existing distribution system, it will help to decarbonise the existing gas networks and is expected to heat approximately 800 homes, as well as providing pure and blended hydrogen for use in vehicles.

Other National Grid projects in the pipeline for both the production and utilisation of green hydrogen include a multi-use hydrogen facility, to be in central New York in 2023.