A report commissioned by the Environmental Defense Fund slams the concept of natural gas-hydrogen blends as a false path to New York’s building decarbonization goals. 

Such blends have been proposed by New York gas utilities, but they would be minimally effective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions from buildings, according to the report, which advocates instead for using electric heat pumps. 

“Blending Hydrogen & Natural Gas: A Road to Nowhere for New Yorkers” concludes that an 80-20 blend of natural gas and green hydrogen would cut greenhouse gas emissions from buildings by 7% and cut emissions from the building sector as a whole by only 3.9%. 

Meanwhile, it would take 48 TWh of electricity from renewable sources to generate that much green hydrogen for heating fuel, the reports states, nearly eight times more than heat pumps would need to heat the same buildings. 

“Injecting hydrogen into gas pipelines, homes and buildings is not an interim decarbonization solution, despite industry assertions,” Erin Murphy, EDF’s senior attorney for energy markets and utility regulation, said in a news release.  

Buildings generate approximately a third of New York’s greenhouse gas emissions, due primarily to combustion of carbon-based fuels for heat, and slashing that output is a central piece of the state’s climate protection strategy. 

The report was released Sept. 12 and authored by Switchbox, a New York City think tank. It is based on present-day hydrogen-generation and heat pump technology and on circa-2021 data on buildings and gas service in New York. 

Numerous efforts are underway to develop ways of generating hydrogen at lower cost and greater efficiency. 

But heat pumps are 7.8 times more efficient than hydrogen for heating, and that is a huge gap to close, said Max Shron, research director at Switchbox and an author of the report. 

“I don’t think there is a way to have hydrogen be economical for heating,” he told NetZero Insider. 

Also, even more-efficient heat pumps may be developed as hydrogen production is improved, he added.  

Beyond the cost of generating hydrogen, there is its energy density — less than one third that of natural gas, the report states, meaning that more must be burned to obtain the same amount of heat. And there is loss in storage and transmission of hydrogen. 

The report suggests that instead of heating fuel, hydrogen should be targeted for hard-to-decarbonize applications in the transportation and industrial sectors. 

“You can use hydrogen for other things that are not heating and have it be much more economical,” Shron said. 

Green hydrogen must be produced with renewable electricity to be considered “green.” Advocates go one step further, and insist the renewable electricity be generated from newly created generation, because generating hydrogen from existing renewable generation would push other users back onto fossil fuels.  

Construction of new renewables in New York is lagging the ambitious timetable the state has set for itself. 

Murphy told NetZero Insider that the report is intended to be educational if not preemptive. New York gas utilities, facing a future where their product is excluded from buildings, have begun proposing projects and long-term plans involving continued service with hydrogen or biogas blends presented as less impactful to the environment. 

“That is really concerning because all the leading analyses are clear that is not the solution,” Murphy said. 

The state Public Service Commission has not approved any of these requests, she said, but neither has it articulated a clear policy.

The report is an attempt to move that policy-making process along and inform consideration, Murphy said. 

She’s optimistic the political climate in New York will make hydrogen less likely to be accepted as a means of building decarbonization. 

“The state has a strong climate law and then the policy documents that have been developed have also been quite clear on this point,” she added. 

The report also examines the differences between heat pumps and a 100% piped hydrogen scenario. 

Neither Murphy nor Shron was immediately aware of such a proposal in New York, but they said it was included in the report because a 20% hydrogen blend is sometimes presented as a stepping stone to 100% hydrogen. 

A 100% green hydrogen replacement for natural gas also is not a viable heating solution, the authors write, as it would reduce building emissions by only 54%, require four times more renewable electricity, and require installation of thousands of miles of new gas mains, plus all-new appliances to burn it.