Will clean green hydrogen ever replace gas in Australian homes?

There’s much talk these days about ‘clean green’ hydrogen and how it can replace natural gas for most of our non-industrial heating and cooking needs; and how the trunk and reticulated gas networks must be readied to deliver this new fuel source.

But something doesn’t add up. There seems to be no realistic pathway to the wide-spread uptake of hydrogen.

To highlight this concern, let’s set aside all the safety, environmental, regulatory and commercial barriers to hydrogen becoming a viable energy source. Let’s just focus on the transition pathway for consumers.

Transitioning consumers to hydrogen is not like shifting them from analogue to digital TV. Those two systems could operate in tandem for a number of years. With gas, the pathway is binary.

While current gas appliances can function with a small blend of hydrogen, there is an upper limit. At the same time, the pipeline network can deliver only one fuel type (or fuel blend) to consumers.

This means the quantity of hydrogen in the gas network can rise from zero to, say, 10 per cent with little disruption. But what happens next is far from clear.

If networks increase the hydrogen content, there will be widespread appliance failure. So that’s not going to happen.

There’s no economic case for laying a second network of pipelines just to deliver hydrogen. So that’s also not going to happen.

And of course, millions of retail gas customers won’t instal hydrogen appliances until they have access to hydrogen. So a consumer-led hydrogen market is also not going to happen.

Even if conversion of the gas network is technically possible, the pathway to the wide-spread uptake of hydrogen faces a chicken and egg problem.

Therefore, what exactly does the hydrogen transition look like? Will hydrogen ever be transported to millions of consumers through the reticulated gas network? It’s hard to see.

Before we start spending huge amounts on ‘readying’ the gas network for hydrogen, let’s first see some planning to confirm there is a safe, cost-effective and realistic pathway to a consumer market for hydrogen.

Dr Ron Ben-David is Professorial Fellow, Monash Business School, Monash University