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And at the same time, we’re publishing our second green gas report – this one we’ve commissioned from Imperial College London.
We wanted a deeper dive into the data, to look more closely at the availability of land and grid connections, the economics of green gas, the job creation potential – the whole works really. And we wanted the impact that an independent and academic voice could add to this.
Because to us gas from grass is an amazing opportunity – right beneath our feet.
This new study shows that the opportunity is even bigger than we said it was seven years ago – we have enough grassland in Britain not just to heat all our homes with grass gas but also to power all of our industry. Creating more jobs than we forecast back then and more economic benefits.
Freeing us entirely from fossil fuel supplies and the markets that set their prices beyond our control – and freeing us from our dependency on unreliable or unethical sources of fossil fuels, such as Russia and the Middle East.
Making all the (green) gas we need from the grass under our feet is the perfect complement to using the wind and the sun to make (green) electricity. In combination we can achieve Energy Independence this way and enormously strengthen our economy, which pre the energy crisis was depleted by £50 billion every year, that’s how much we spent to bring fossil fuels to Britain just to burn them. £1 billion each week.
We can make what we need here, create good long term jobs here, help farmers diversify from animal agriculture, save ourselves a shedload of money every year – and do what we have to do, to avoid the worst of the climate crisis into the bargain – get to net zero carbon.
It’s a plan with no downsides. It even creates habitats for wildlife, on a vast scale – over and above those that exist on grassland now.
Our Government is set on a different direction. They intend to ban the sale of new gas boilers in a couple of years – forcing a slow (two decades?) and painful transition to heating our homes with Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHP). This is a plan that has had no serious analysis – until today.
Its drawbacks are manyfold – ASHPs create low-temperature water, existing radiators need to be replaced, or underfloor heating installed. They increase household energy bills by over 40 percent a year.
Some 20 percent of UK homes are unsuitable unless they have energy efficiency makeovers (which they need anyway, but there is no program to provide this) and another 20% are simply unsuitable period.
Air source heat pumps are least efficient in the winter when the air is coldest and heat demand is at its highest – gas demand can rise eight-fold in cold spells.
This will lead to massive spikes of electricity demand on that grid (while we throw away the gas grid) and the need to treble the amount of green energy we need to generate annually – in order to get to 100% green electricity on the grid.
We estimated the cost of a national heat pump program to be £300 billion – guessing at the grid cost. As our report today shows, the more detailed study puts the cost at £283 billion – in round numbers I call that 300.
On the other hand, we’ve estimated the cost of a national green gas program at 30 billion.
This report could not be more timely – we’re deep into an energy security crisis that has exacerbated an existing energy price crisis – while we urgently need to deal with the role of energy in the climate crisis anyway.
The answer is not to throw away our national gas grid and the tens of millions of appliances that use it, imposing vast costs on the public – the answer is simply to change the gas we put into the grid. And carry on as normal.
Green gas is cheaper, faster and far less wasteful than a switch to heat pumps. And more balanced and diverse in terms of energy supply, an essential part of smart grid operation – gas and electricity grids can support each other and share the energy load of the country.
Wind, sun, sea and grass – that’s how we get to (green) energy independence.
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