Moving away from gas in the home

[Indecisivelurcher]

Just musing on this while watching the news about gas prices. What are the options for moving away from gas at home? We have a gas hob, so would need electric instead which is pretty easily done. But what about replacing gas central heating? Retrofitting the UK housing stock with insulation and other forms of heating is absolutely essential in hitting net zero. I briefly looked into air source heat pumps and they are so expensive still and the fact they make a noise puts me off.

Watching to see if anyone has any bright ideas.

Hydrogen boilers

heatable.co.uk/boiler-advice/hydrogen-boilers

New build estates could be serviced by a biomass district heating supply. Solar power stored for when additional heat and hot water is needed in the middle of winter.

Thanks for the link @Eve

Hydrogen boilers sound like they are at least 10yrs off and more like 20+. I don't think we can leave it that long before taking action, myself.

Can solar power be stored at the mo?

Solar would mean moving to electric heaters then I suppose.

Solar output can be stored in batteries , or in a water if you have a tank

We are installing a biomass range and solar thermal water heating

I think that dicussion of changing energy sources for heating should always come second to the need for better insulation. Once that has happened, and I'm talking both on an individual and a collective level, we can see much better what the options are, and relative costs.

Any move to electric (heat pumps) is going to require more energy generation, that will need to be renewables for there to be an impact on climate change. Hydrogen is in the future for sure but again will need to be produced from renewable resources. Renewable power generation will take time to scale up. It makes sense that the most impactful thing we can do right now is insulate, insulate, insulate.

Look up ground source heat pumps. More efficient than air source, and shouldn't have that whirring noise! More expensive though.

As with air source pumps, there's no point having it installed unless your house is fully insulated, double/triple glazed etc. That is the single best thing you can do to reduce gas use in the home.

In the longer term, we will hopefully be moving as a nation to having an ever-increasing proportion of hydrogen (preferably green hydrogen rather than blue) mixed into the natural gas piped into our homes.

There have been some successful medium-scale trials of this over the last few years, so could happen sooner rather than later.

Green hydrogen is decades away

Smaller actions now will have greater impact on the climate

Ground source heat pumps should be standard in all new build imo. If they became the norm the price would come down too. We have solar panels that heat water, they work well with underfloor heating

@anothermansshoes

Green hydrogen is decades away

Smaller actions now will have greater impact on the climate

No it's not - one of the hydrogen in homes schemes I mentioned uses green hydrogen. Hydrogen production by electrolosis is pretty well-established technology, and massive green hydrogen plants are being built in Brazil and France already. It's a fantastic way to use up excess electricty production from renewable sources - way better than battery storage - and is round the corner in terms of rollout I would say.

Yes they are even working on producing hydrogen directly in the offshore wind farms, as it's cheaper and more efficient to pipe the hydrogen than the electricity.
Anyway, short term, insulate!

We added cavity wall insulation earlier this year, and just getting a warm roof put on the single storey, with wildflower roof on top of that. It'll be a well insulated winter.

Upto 20% hydrogen can be added to natural gas and used in conventional boilers. Hydrogen is unlikely to become a common fuel in domestic heating however due to the damage it causes to metal and leaking.

Heat pumps are very likely to be the main source of heating and of course insulate, insulate, insulate. Other technologies such as mechanical ventilation with heat recovery.

The government has committed to halving the UKs emissions in the 15 years so expect a lot changes.

We are going to have to do a lot of things in tandem to move away from gas and it's going to take time.
Reducing demand through better insulation which needs to go hand in hand with proper ventilation strategies. The easiest current swap is a straight one to electric boilers which are fairly efficient and have the bonus of being able to be fitted onto existing wet central heating systems. The problem with these is that the cost of electricity is generally higher than gas and the demand of everyone switches over is currently not met by the infrastructure we have. We are getting there but there are lots of cogs that need to fall into place (infrastructure, upgrading, skills and training) and currently the government isn't really helping.
I do talk about this a lot with clients and even have a public talk about it on the weekend and the difficulty is that there is no one easy tick box solution which means people tend to kick the can down the road hoping somebody else will sort it out.
I suspect the current supply issues will help push some people to do more but government needs to help facilitate this proactively and properly for the vast majority of the housing stock.

Following

Anyone know about retrofitting buildings with insulation?

I’m in a 50s block of flats, I guess I can ask my freeholder to look at what’s in the loft, but not sure what if anything can be done about walls? They are solid brick so cavity insulation not relevant.

Our loft is fully insulated, we have cavity walls insulation and new windows. What else can we insulate?

It's a bit of a myth that the national grid couldn't cope with the extra demand. Electricity generation and infrastructure is ever evolving and the way we use electricity is increasingly efficient.

www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/5-myths-about-electric-vehicles-busted

You can replace a gas boiler with an electric one and it will connect up to an existing wet, central heating system. No need to change all the rads etc.

@1990s

Anyone know about retrofitting buildings with insulation?

I’m in a 50s block of flats, I guess I can ask my freeholder to look at what’s in the loft, but not sure what if anything can be done about walls? They are solid brick so cavity insulation not relevant.

You can internally insulate but make sure you leave a void for water to go down as it could come in through the solid brick. This would be a big job though, all your rooms with external walls would get a bit smaller and would need to be replastered etc.

[quote Daftasabroom]It's a bit of a myth that the national grid couldn't cope with the extra demand. Electricity generation and infrastructure is ever evolving and the way we use electricity is increasingly efficient.

www.nationalgrid.com/stories/journey-to-net-zero/5-myths-about-electric-vehicles-busted[/quote]
Interesting link, thanks!