Energy companies around the world still maintain that natural gas (perhaps cleaned up with a puff of hydrogen) is the “transition fuel” that will take us to net zero. Despite the current crisis of price and supply in the gas market, it’s described by BP as “resilient” and by Centrica as “more affordable than other energy sources”.
“It’s bollocks,” Greg Jackson, the founder and CEO of Octopus Energy, replies, when I ask what he makes of this idea. “Everyone wants to talk about the transition fuel – maybe a 20 per cent hydrogen mix in our gas supplies, that kind of thing… Even if the hydrogen was zero-carbon – which, by the way, the creation of hydrogen so far in the UK at scale is definitely not – it would only reduce the carbon emissions of gas by 6-8 per cent because of the lower energy density, [and] it would put bills up dramatically, because hydrogen is a lot more expensive.
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This article appears in the 13 Oct 2021 issue of the New Statesman, Perfect Storm