Radical plans to use hydrogen to heat UK homes and businesses have moved a step closer after the Government’s official climate advisers said the plan was “technically feasible” and called for major trials to be undertaken.

In a report, the Committee on Climate Change identified using hydrogen in place of natural gas in the UK’s existing gas grid as one of the two “main options” for greening Britain’s heating supplies.

It said the second was the use of heat pumps, which use a reverse refrigeration process to draw heat from the air, ground or a water source.

The Government must decide by 2025 what role hydrogen will play in order to implement its chosen plan in time to hit its 2050 climate targets, Matthew Bell, the CCC chief executive, said.

About 80pc of UK homes are currently heated using natural gas from the grid, which produces carbon dioxide when burnt.

The CCC estimates that if the UK is to comply with the Climate Change Act, which requires greenhouse gas emissions to be slashed to 20pc of their 1990 levels by 2050, the majority of homes and almost all businesses will need to cease burning natural gas.

However, the CCC said the UK’s attempts at green heating so far had “been unsuccessful” and called for the Government to devise “a proper strategy”.

This including doubling the rate of installation of heat pumps this parliament in homes that are not on the gas grid, many of which use heating oil, as well as conducting the “sizeable trials of hydrogen for heating”.

“The main options for the decarbonisation of buildings on the gas grid in the 2030s and 2040s are heat pumps and low-carbon hydrogen,” the CCC said in a report.

In addition, the UK could also use some district heating networks in urban areas, taking heat from a central source through insulated pipes to homes and businesses.

David Fuller's view

This is clearly a project for the future and unlikely to be of any near-term benefit.  Nevertheless, it provides further evidence of energy creativity in this fascinating era of accelerating technological innovation. 

At the beginning of this century alarmists were worried about running out of energy, against a background of every higher prices for crude oil.  The exact opposite is happening as a result of human ingenuity.  In the next decade and well beyond, we will be awash with increasingly cheap energy from a variety of different sources.  That will be good news for consumers and GDP growth in developed economies, but don’t tell anybody – they won’t believe you.

Here is a PDF of Emily Gosden's article.