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NEA response to BEIS Consultation: Hydrogen for heat: facilitating a grid conversion hydrogen heating trial
- 18th October 2021
NEA’s response to the BEIS Consultation on hydrogen heating trials. NEA welcomes the plans to deliver a hydrogen village trial by 2025. In this response, NEA sets out the key issues that will need to be considered to ensure fuel poor and vulnerable households can benefit from the trial and are adequately protected from any potentially negative outcomes.
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Summary of our Recommendations
- Any trials with domestic customers must demonstrate the highest safety standards have been applied before, during and after the trials end.
- BEIS should consider how, in addition to the necessary focus on consumer protections, the village trial can be used to gather evidence on how to maximise
benefits of a hydrogen grid conversion trial for fuel poor and vulnerable households. - BEIS should look at how the trial can be used to gather evidence on the possible total costs of supplying hydrogen to domestic homes, including wholesale, distribution, and conversion costs. This should feed into a broader distributional analysis of the possible impact of large scale hydrogen conversion on energy bills and thus energy affordability, which will likely remain a barrier to fuel poor and vulnerable households accessing affordable warmth in a decarbonised future.
- BEIS should work with Ofgem to establish a framework for assessing the extent to which GDN’s communications and information about the trial meet the criteria of comprehensive, clear advice tailored to individual circumstances, including the needs of vulnerable consumers, those who do not speak English as a first language, those with limited financial capability, those who are non-users or narrow-users of the internet, and finally those in the private or social rented sector, where engagement with both tenant and landlord will be important.