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Energy in Demand - Sustainable Energy - Rod Janssen 
The article shows a number of things. First, that for the most part journalists don’t know much about energy & are thus incapable of parsing bias (or indeed wishful thinking) from facts. Harvey falls into this class & this style of article – where a couple of supposed experts are (uncritically) interviewed for their views which are then reported as gospel. Harvey asks some questions about H2 & its ability to power space heating – but fails then to keep on asking questions.
Moving to the “experts”, Rosenow (a lawyer) can only talk in terms of heat pumps. The reality is that we need to talk in terms of an energy system transformation – of which heat pumps are a part (how big of or small is still difficult to say). Sadly, the big energy picture passes Rosenow by. In the case of Liebreich (and indeed Rosenow) their comments betray their lack of knowledge with respect to the capacity of existing electrical power networks to carry the loads needed to power HPs (& charge Evs). They assume that power networks can be quickly and easily be reinforced. They can’t.
I speak as a power engineer whose expertise is, electrical power networks. I have designed them, built them & operated them. I am an expert in this area. I am under no illusions that H2 can provide a total solution to space heating in the UK or anywhere else. But neither can district heat (I know exactly what is involved – the effort and the disruption) or HPs. At best we will need a mix, it will be a mess, it will be less than ideal. But that’s engineering you see – often a result that is a compromise. By contrast, the Rosenow and Liebriech’s of this world tend to talk in terms of single solutions, green sunlit uplands – with or without unicorns.
I have no problems with the UK press giving space to such views, god knows they gave space to Farage and his pack of dolts. But the lack of a countervailing or indeed more nuanced view in such articles is unfortunate & as noted, a reflection of the depths to which the UK press has sunk.
Mike, the problem has always been that both policy makers -and journalists – constantly seek to promote one single “silver bullet” that will answer every problem. Perhaps if they used the term”holy grail” instead, there would be rather greater appreciation of the well nigh impossibility of delivering any single simple solution to achieve the nirvana of “net zero.”
That said, personally I still think that the best form of energy is the kind you don’t use in the first place. But then, if I am so clever, how come I ain’t rich?
Yes, I like the idea of the holy grail. But there are too many in search of that “silver bullet.”
“Moving to the “experts”, Rosenow (a lawyer) can only talk in terms of heat pumps”. I never studied law in my life. I studied geosciences at Muenster followed by environmental economics & policy (LSE) and a PhD in energy policy (Oxford). I have published extensively on energy efficiency and heating which has been the main focus of my research for almost 15 years. Feel free to consult my Google scholar profile. https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=1JY9q5sAAAAJ&hl=en
Parr pretends superior knowledge and accuses me of assuming “that power networks can be quickly and easily be reinforced.” Actually I don’t assume that.
Like National Grid, I assume that the ability to electrify heating and transport by 2050 is not constrained by the capacity of the current power network, which can be very substantially reinforced and expanded over the next 28 years.
Believing the opposite, as Parr does, is to ignore the evidence of history. Believing that the economics of hydrogen will miraculously come good – despite a 6x efficiency penalty in heating and a 3x penalty in transport – is to ignore the evidence of thermodynamics.