I wrote Hydrogen Boom more than three and a half years ago. I was mainly looking at the wisdom, safety and practicability (or otherwise) of using hydrogen to replace natural gas in residential and commercial buildings. It seems that (despite wasting a lot of money on the project) those in power have given up on that idea, and are concentrating on trying to force us to take up heat pumps instead. However, they haven’t given up on hydrogen as part of their net zero drive.

David Turver has just published an article with the heading “Green Hydrogen to Increase Gas Bills” and sub-heading “Green hydrogen is expensive and the Government is planning to increase your gas bill to pay for it”. I urge you to read the article for yourself, but in essence, it draws attention to the Hydrogen Allocation Rounds (HARs) that are similar to the Allocation Rounds (ARs) under the Contracts for Difference (CfD) scheme, but at much higher prices. HAR1 in December 2023 saw:

a strike price of £175/MWh (in 2012 prices) or about £244/MWh in 2024 money. By way of comparison, today’s elevated gas price is ~99p/therm or £34/MWh. Green hydrogen will cost about seven times the current UK gas price or ~23 times US gas prices. The Government gleefully announced that these projects would receive over £2bn of revenue support from the Hydrogen Production Business Model (HPBM). The 125MW of contracts awarded in HAR1 is only the tip of the iceberg though because HAR2 is aiming to support seven times that with 875MW of capacity under consideration.

This has to be paid for somehow, and the Government is now considering a Gas Shipper Obligation to fund over £2bn of revenue support from the HPBM. Read the article and weep.

However, I want to add another wrinkle to all this nonsense. Another question relates to the utility, if any, of all this in reducing a tiny fraction of the UK’s territorial greenhouse gas emissions, which are in total only 0.7% of global emissions according to the European Union’s Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR). The problem is that we can’t simply harness hydrogen without more ado. The government’s plans involve its manufacture, preferably in the form of what they like to call “green” hydrogen. Such processes themselves involve the creation of greenhouse gas emissions. How are they to be measured, in order to ensure that the use of hydrogen as part of the net zero plan makes “sense”? Why, with the thumb on the scale, of course. We have seen how the Levelised Cost of Electricity purports to show that electricity generated by renewables is cheap, by the simple expedient of ignoring many of the costs associated with its production. It seems (given how keen renewables enthusiasts are to cite the Levelised Cost of Electricity in support of their claims) that this tactic has been effective. And so it is also being rolled out when it comes to measuring the greenhouse gas emissions associated with hydrogen manufacture.

There is a UK Low Carbon Hydrogen Standard for hydrogen producers to use for greenhouse gas emissions reporting, including a calculator tool, all pursuant to The Hydrogen Production Revenue Support (Directions, Eligibility and Counterparty) Regulations 2023 (yes, really). Version 3 of the UK Low Carbon Hydrogen Standard Greenhouse Gas Emissions Methodology and Conditions of Standard Compliance was produced in December 2023, and it can be found here, if you’re interested. I warn you, though – it runs to 169 pages. That triggers another thought – it’s really quite terrifying to contemplate the cost of the time of civil servants and sundry “experts” producing stuff such as this, then monitoring it, all to produce some arcane figures relating to one small aspect of the UK’s GHG emissions. However, I digress. Finally, I arrive at the point I wanted to make, which is that when it comes to calculating the emissions associated with hydrogen production, there is once more a very heavy thumb on the scale:

5.2. The GHG emissions from the construction, manufacturing, and decommissioning of capital goods (such as production equipment, any upstream pre-processing equipment, vehicles, storage assets), business travel, employee commuting, and upstream leased assets are not within scope of the Standard.

5.3. GHG emissions associated with hydrogen processes after the Hydrogen Production Facility gate (for example, off-site Hydrogen Storage, off-site liquefaction, off-site hydrogenation into a hydrogen carrier) are not within scope of the Standard.

5.12. The total emissions allocated to Outputs of any Step in a Pathway shall be split only between the Products and Co-Products of that Step. By contrast, Waste or Residue Outputs from any Step in a Pathway shall have no emissions allocated to them.

5.13. The classification of an Output material can, therefore, have a significant impact on the Hydrogen Product GHG Emission Intensity, as Co-Product materials shall be allocated some of the emissions from the Step and previous Steps, reducing the emissions burden on the final Hydrogen Product.

Make of it all what you will. I am increasingly left thinking we are ruled by lunatics.

11 Comments

  2. I can’t help but think this is a tiny indicator of a decadent civilisation in terminal decline.

    I am not optimistic for the UK’s future. It feels as if we can’t get off this train until it hits the wall. What the present government might describe as hard choices, an objective observer would consider trivial ones. (Not a party political point. The previous government were the same.) The moves that are absolutely necessary to avoid an almighty crash are already impossible politically.

    Net Zero is only a part of it, of course. But it is a gangrenous limb that needs amputating.

    Liked by 2 people

  3. I think the hydrogen debacle ties in with Jit’s article about counting territorial emissions only and congratulating ourselves that the UK is leading the way. It isn’t, it’s exporting its emissions to countries with lower environmental standards, and the net result might be an increase in global emissions. At the minimum, any reduction in emissions is much less than is claimed.

    As with not counting consumption emissions, so it is with not counting some emissions associated with the manufacture of hydrogen. It’s remarkable, but the people in charge are guilty of misinformation on a massive scale. We need to point out endlessly that just because they don’t count the emissions, it doesn’t mean that the emissions don’t count.

    Liked by 2 people

  4. With apologies for spreading a dark cloud of doom, more on decadent Britain:

    “The deep rot of the British state Old orthodoxies are holding us back”

    It’s nice to see some commenters pointing the finger at Net Zero.

    Unherd Link.

    Liked by 1 person

  5. My attention has been drawn to an Excel file within the government document relating to UK Low Carbon Hydrogen Standard. It is called: “Fugitive Hydrogen Emissions Risk Reduction Plan and Annual Report Templates”

    and this says,

    Hydrogen itself does not adsorb infrared radiation and so is not classified as a direct Greenhouse Gas (GHG). However, if released in significant quantities – for instance through fugitive emissions – hydrogen would change the chemistry of the atmosphere and would increase the warming effect of other GHGs released. This and other ‘indirect’ effects mean emissions of hydrogen have an impact on climate change.

    Those indirect effects – the production of nitrous oxides when hydrogen is burnt in air- have 298 times more GWP than CO2. And yet, unlike oil, producers are not being held liable for downstream global warming impacts.

    So there you have it. The bald truth.

    The great British public are being duped yet again.

    Liked by 2 people

  7. MikeH – paywalled for me, but from the header can guess the content & no surprise really.

    Like

  8. While using hydrogen in domestic boilers has been abandoned, there’s still lots of effort – and taxpayer money – going into hydrogen blending for power plants:

    https://www.centrica.com/media-centre/news/2025/hydrogen-milestone-uk-s-first-hydrogen-to-power-trial-at-brigg-energy-park/

    Worth noting that this was at a very low concentration – only 3%. No mention of the potential problems with higher concentrations such as incompatibility of standard turbines and the need to adjust calorific values.

    Nor does it mention the big, grey pachyderm in the room: where to locate the hydrogen plants? If they are co-located with big windfarms, they will be drastically under-utilised. Otoh, if they are put close to power plants, they will do nothing to ease constraints on transmission.

    Liked by 1 person

  9. From Hydrogenfuelnews:

    “The UK’s clean-energy scene got a real jolt on 2 September 2025 when ScottishPower dropped the bombshell that it was waving goodbye to its flagship green hydrogen projects at Whitelee and Cromarty. These ventures had snagged hydrogen subsidies in the first Hydrogen Allocation Round (HAR1), yet never firmed up an investment decision or drew down any public funds. It’s a stark reminder of how policy ambition and raw market forces don’t always see eye to eye.

    Why has ScottishPower pulled the plug?

    Spokespeople for ScottishPower pointed to three main hurdles:

    • High production costs: Even with the hydrogen subsidies secured at around £241/MWh, electrolytic hydrogen still costs more than fossil-derived gas.
    • Weak demand signals: Promised offtake agreements and big industrial buyers never materialised at scale.
    • Policy unpredictability: Slowroll on support measures has left investors feeling uneasy.

    “We threw everything we had at these green hydrogen projects, but the economics just don’t add up right now,” says a ScottishPower spokesperson. Across Europe, more than one in five announced renewable hydrogen schemes in 2024 have hit the brakes or been cancelled.”

    I liked: “It’s a stark reminder of how policy ambition and raw market forces don’t always see eye to eye.” Welcome to reality!

    Liked by 2 people

  10. The bandwagon is still rolling……from PowerMag:

    “Air Liquide announced the successful start-up of the world’s first industrial-scale ammonia cracking pilot unit with a 30-tons-per-day ammonia-to-hydrogen conversion capacity at the Port of Antwerp-Bruges, Belgium.

    This groundbreaking innovation, announced November 13, demonstrates a key missing technology brick to a viable pathway for converting ammonia into hydrogen, and unlocks challenges of transportation of hydrogen. This technology proven at the industrial scale for the development of world-scale ammonia cracking plants enables access to low-carbon and renewable hydrogen for the decarbonization of industry and mobility.

    The ability to efficiently transport hydrogen over long distances is a persistent challenge in developing a robust global hydrogen economy. Ammonia (NH3), formed by hydrogen and nitrogen molecules, emerges as a valuable hydrogen carrier. It can be cost-effectively produced in regions rich in renewable energy sources, such as solar, hydro, and wind or other low-carbon power.

    A well-established global infrastructure already exists for the large-scale production, transportation, and utilization of ammonia. This allows for the export of ammonia from energy-abundant regions to end-users worldwide, where it can then be “cracked” back into hydrogen, providing a crucial component for decarbonizing industry and mobility.”

    You couldn’t make it up.

    Liked by 1 person

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