Net-zero Emissions

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Tuesday 7th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord links together two important facets of this work: the importance of getting on with building new nuclear capacity, which I think is widely recognised, and the importance of developing heat networks. We do not have such a tradition of heat networks in this country, but they are rapidly expanding and we are investing hundreds of millions of pounds in future heat networks.

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, can the Minister confirm that after the publication of this strategy, he indicated that the decision on hydrogen-based heating for homes would not be taken until 2025? If so, what advice does he give now to householders whose boilers are running out of time? Should they buy a heat pump or a hydrogen-ready boiler, or wait until the price of air pumps comes down and a decision is taken in at least four years?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord is correct about the timescale for taking a decision on hydrogen. It is not yet a mature technology in terms of whether it would be available in sufficient quantities on a wide enough scale to be used for home heating. We are funding a large series of trials, moving towards a hydrogen neighbourhood, a hydrogen village and then a hydrogen town-level trial before we can advise people to take that forward. In the meantime, we have set our ambition to phase out the sale of gas boilers by 2035.