Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the potential role of hydrogen hybrid boilers in replacing natural gas boilers from 2025.

The Department has been considering the potential contributions of different technologies to decarbonise heat, including the deployment of heat pumps and the potential use of hydrogen on the grid.

In order to support this, prototype ‘hydrogen-ready boilers’ are being developed under the £25m BEIS Hy4Heat programme. This programme is seeking to investigate if it is technically possible and safe to replace methane with hydrogen in appliances for residential and commercial buildings and evaluate the likely costs and performance.

The Government is also supporting the uptake of heat pumps and hybrid heat pumps through the Renewable Heat Incentive and the Green Homes Grant Voucher Scheme. We are continuing to develop our position on the potential role of hybrid heating systems in meeting net zero by 2050 and they have been included in our large scale ‘Electrification of Heat Demonstration Project’. The project aims to gather further evidence on how these systems operate in practice, which will provide more in-depth understanding of hybrids’ role in decarbonising heating going forwards.

We will be setting out the immediate actions we will take for reducing emissions from buildings in our Heat and Buildings Strategy which we plan to publish in due course.