Inputs: hydrogen
We have no baseload hydrogen, only peaking.
Other bodies which look at the future of the electricity system disagree, but we don't think hydrogen will be a significant part of the future power system. We think green hydrogen - hydrogen produced by electrolyzing water using renewable electricity - would be a brilliant way to decarbonize heavy industrial processes that use lots of fossil-produced hydrogen today (steel, fertilizer, refineries). We just don't think it makes sense to use it for baseload power generation.
The Committee on Climate Change says 25 GW of Hygroden CCGTs will exist on the system by 2035, producing power for £100/MWh.
2035 is 12 years away: very soon, for a brand-new, untested technology to operate commercially at scale. Today, the only turbines being built can handle a hydrogen blend of, generously, no more than 50% (which only leads to a 7% carbon reduction due to hydrogen's low calorific value). Burn more than that, and instabilities in the way hydrogen burns lead to issues. The round-trip efficiency of making it using electricity, transporting and storing it safely, and then burning it again to make steam to turn a turbine, is just far too low (something like 20%).
There are many unknowns for hydrogen at scale
There is no track record for any Operations and Maintenance for hydrogen turbines, no supply chain, and no full-scale 100% operational hydrogen plants. There is no fuel source for a large supply of green hydrogen - most electrolyzers are still fairly small and have reliability issues. Electrolyzers, too, are a relatively early-stage technology. Storage and transport of hydrogen also present all manner of leakage and safety issues. And that's before we consider the grid connections needed to connect 25GW into the network when there is such a struggle to get connections, with many new connections having dates post-2035.
If we get a large injection of subsidy into the sector, it will probably change things, and we'll update the next version of the forecast.
(Michael Liebrich's Hydrogen ladder explains this much better than us!)
Updated about 1 month ago