Heat pumps are only for the privileged, says Britain’s gas chief
Melissa Lawford
7 min read
National Gas boss Jon Butterworth has said that gas will still have a role in powering the UK even as it moves towards net zero
Heat pumps are only for the “privileged” who can afford them, the chief executive of Britain’s gas network has said.
Jon Butterworth, chief executive of National Gas, said many people would struggle to heat their homes unless they were offered alternatives such as hydrogen-powered boilers.
“My personal view is that I worry electrification feels like it’s for the privileged and that isn’t what our country is about,” he said in an interview with The Telegraph.
“We’ve got to electrify everything that we can. But I struggle to see how you electrify a flat in London with an air source heat pump. I just don’t see how that’s possible.
“The population – decent, hard working families – need options that are affordable.”
The Government has been pushing to roll-out heat pumps nationally and has banned gas boilers from 2035 in an effort to encourage people to switch.
However, public uptake of heat pumps, which are powered by electricity, has been poor. In 2021, the devices made up just 2pc of all heating systems sold in the UK – the lowest share in Europe, according to the European Heat Pump Association.
Many people have been put off by the high costs of installing a heat pump as well as the upgrades needed in some cases to make the devices work effectively.
Mr Butterworth said: “You’ve got to have mega insulation, really good quality insulation, before you can start to electrify without it being an exorbitant cost. Heat pumps just can never be the option for all households.”
Mr Butterworth is running Britain’s gas network at a pivotal moment for the sector. National Grid, which until recently ran the gas network, is phasing out fossil fuels from power generation as the grid increasingly sources its electricity from renewables.
At the start of this year, National Grid sold off a 60pc majority share in its gas transmission and metering business to Macquarie Asset Management and British Columbia Investment Management Corporation.
The assets have been rebranded as National Gas. Mr Butterworth, who began his career in the sector at 16 as an apprentice with British Gas, became chief executive of National Grid Gas Transmission and Metering in 2021 and has continued at the helm since the sale.
He is presiding over what net zero supporting politicians and campaigners hope will be the decline of natural gas.
Jess Ralston, of the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, said: “We’re looking at quite a change in the role of gas. It’s probably not going to be used for our power anymore and it’s going to stop being used for heating.”
However, Mr Butterworth is adamant that it will remain an essential part of Britain’s energy sector.
“We’ve got to think of a joined up system,” he said. “When the wind doesn’t blow, gas is absolutely vital.
“If we hadn’t had gas in 2022, there were 260 days when we would have had rolling blackouts, and for 26 of those days we would have had a full blackout.
“There is public pressure for electrification at speed without thinking through the big picture. If we are not careful, we will over electrify. But when it comes to the winter, we need a lot of gas ready to roll.”
85pc of Britain’s homes currently have gas boilers, meaning a rapid transition away from gas will be difficult.
New energy efficiency requirements for constructions means new-build properties will be far better equipped Mr Butterworth points out that most of the houses “that are going to be around in 2050 are already built”.
He said: “It is a big ask to try and electrify all of them. We need to do the right thing for everybody and give them choice.”
For Mr Butterworth, hydrogen is the future for Britain’s gas network. The gas, which can be produced by electrolysis without releasing any carbon, has been touted as a way to heat homes by repurposing natural gas boilers.
“We can electrify where we can electrify but we need to recognise that we must have hydrogen if this country wants to maintain its position as one of the great trading nations on earth.”
However, it is expensive and the technology is nascent. Infrastructure must also be refitted to cope with the gas’s smaller molecules.
Energy Secretary Grant Shapps said earlier this month: “There was a time when people thought you just have something that looks like a gas boiler and we’ll feed hydrogen into it.
“The problem with that is the hydrogen molecules are very small. You have to replace potentially quite a lot of piping.
“So I’m not sure that home heating will be all through hydrogen.”
Mr Butterworth said: “It’s not that people don’t want hydrogen. They don’t want air source heat pumps either. They just want to keep their gas.”
Hydrogen is likely to have a much larger role in powering heavy industry than people’s homes, said Ms Ralston. These sectors require high levels of thermal power that cannot be delivered efficiently from electricity.
“Hydrogen is going to be massively important for those heavy industries like steel-making, glass, ceramics, cement,” she said.
However, electricity is also insufficient for many other industries, Mr Butterworth argued.
“There are about 300,000 businesses, from fish and chip shops to hotels, restaurants, biscuit manufacturers, that need gas to do their business. We can be romantic about electricity but they need thermal energy at scale to do what they need to do.”
If the future of the gas network is hydrogen, there is still an affordability issue there too, and the existing gas network also needs massive upgrades to be able to carry it.
National Gas is starting to repurpose Feeder Nine, an enormous high pressure pipeline down the east coast of England that delivers to heavy industry.
It also has a test site up on the Scottish border called Future Grid. Here, National Gas is using decommissioned parts of the network to assess the impact of transporting hydrogen on the pipelines.
Mr Butterworth said: “We’ve cut up all parts of the system from around the country over the last few years, recycled it, welded it back together and then injected it with high pressure hydrogen for all sorts of tests.”
Ultimately, National Gas intends to repurpose the existing transmission network – the system of enormous pipes that take gas at scale from high pressure LNG terminals in the North Sea, the Irish Sea and storage and then dispatch it through gas turbines to cities. The process will take 20 years and tens of billions of pounds.
Mr Butterworth expects around a fifth of the UK gas network will be supplying hydrogen within a decade. Further in the future, hydrogen could replace natural gas altogether, he said.
“We could get to 100pc by 2050, if we mandate hydrogen boilers and work with industry to change some of their kit.”
The Government needs to provide more certainty to encourage investment in hydrogen, he said.
Mr Butterworth said: “We’re just waiting for the policy on what that would look like, before investors will start to put serious money into hydrogen.”
The UK can learn from the German approach, he said. There, the government has delegated heating decisions to local authorities.
Mr Butterworth said: “There is more devolved responsibility to deliver net zero by the equivalent of our mayors. That just takes more account of the demographics of society. The more you move decision making to the trench, the better the decision making is.”
However, if Whitby is a case in point, these decisions may also be more likely to simply be “no” to change.
