Chamber and committees

Without rehashing the disagreement that we have had, I ask whether, if the UK Climate Change Committee presents the Scottish Government with the same advice that it has given to the UK Government, which is that hydrogen does not have a role for home heating and has a limited or niche role for transport, the Scottish Government will accept it.

I will address that in my closing comments.

In presenting its advice on the seventh carbon budget to the UK Government, the UK Climate Change Committee wrote that hydrogen has

“an important role within the electricity supply sector as a ... long-term storable energy that can be dispatched when needed and as a feedstock for synthetic fuels. However, we see no role for hydrogen in buildings heating and only a very niche, if any, role in surface transport.”

I urge the Scottish Government to listen to the UK CCC, which is its own adviser and source of expert advice on climate action, to understand and accept its position, and ensure that our approach to the development of hydrogen focuses on the most efficient use of what could be an important part of our energy system and economy.

I move amendment S6M-17399.2, to leave out from “be a leading” to end and insert:

“play a leading role in developing a green hydrogen industry, both to help decarbonise challenging sectors of the economy, and for export; recognises that hydrogen produced from fossil fuels not only produces greenhouse gas emissions but also risks undermining confidence in the future of the green hydrogen sector; further recognises that the use of green hydrogen needs to be prioritised in areas that are hard to decarbonise in other ways, and that its use for domestic heating can never achieve the efficiency of other clean heat sources, and therefore regrets that the First Minister described hydrogen for domestic heating as ‘the path that we must take’, in February 2025; recognises that the UK Climate Change Committee sees ‘no role for hydrogen in buildings heating and only a very niche, if any, role in surface transport’, and urges the Scottish Government to accept that the value of green hydrogen will be in areas such as hard-to-decarbonise industrial sectors and energy storage.”

Do I have some time in hand?

Absolutely. The size of the molecule, compared to the atom, also factors into the infrastructure, because leakage would be significant if we do not replace some of the infrastructure.

As recently as February, the First Minister made a speech describing hydrogen heating as a

“shining example of how Scotland is leading the way in finding solutions to tackle climate change.”

He said that it was

“ a clear signal of the path that we must take.”

That is absurd. Most of those in the gas industry who have been pushing that nonsense have started to give up on it. The idea is that it is a trial or a proof of concept, but the question is not whether using hydrogen for heating would work. Of course it would work, just as flushing your toilet with sparkling mineral water would work, but it would never be a sensible thing to do.

If I understand the argument correctly, that still depends on the development and efficiency of carbon capture and storage, which has yet to be proven and will always add additional cost.

Green hydrogen is where Scotland has a massive advantage. The potential scale of renewables generation in Scotland is immense, and if we develop that potential fully, we will be producing far more electricity than we need or can export through transmission infrastructure, which means that the production of hydrogen is an obvious opportunity.

Where hydrogen comes from is not the end of the story. We also need to address how it is used. There are still those who cling to the idea that we can simply inject hydrogen into existing energy systems, whether that is the gas grid for heating or transport systems to displace fossil fuels, but there are some fundamental limits that we need to address.

We can generate renewable electricity and use it to produce hydrogen. The hydrogen can then be stored, transported to where it is needed and turned back into useful energy, but at every step in that journey, efficiency is lost, so we end up with less useful energy at the end of the process than was generated at the start. Any use case in which direct electrification can be achieved will always be the better choice when compared with hydrogen, not only with today’s technology, but under the laws of physics.

That argument is only stronger for heat, because the technology that some countries have been deploying at scale for decades, and with which Scotland is struggling to catch up, goes far beyond even the theoretical limit of the 100 per cent efficiency that a closed system can reach. Heat pumps do not turn electricity into heat, but rather use electricity to gather heat from the ambient environment. They can produce up to three or four times as much heat output from the electrical input that they run on. Hydrogen can never do that, yet the Scottish Government continues to promote the notion of hydrogen for domestic heating.

The member talked about energy security. In what way does it assist energy security to power home heating with something so massively inefficient as hydrogen, compared with the extremely high level of efficiency that comes from direct electrification? That will undermine the country’s energy security rather than help it.

The member expressed some scepticism about the Green’s position on heating and, in the very next sentence, went on to explain how much energy loss is involved in the production of hydrogen. Can he not accept, as the UK Climate Change Committee has advised, that hydrogen is an extremely inefficient way of providing heat for people’s homes and buildings in comparison to the forms of electric heating that are already available?

I welcome the fact that we have the opportunity to debate this issue. It should not be seen as a simplistic debate, and there certainly should not be a split between unequivocal hydrogen enthusiasts and hydrogen sceptics. The issue is much more complicated than that. The role that hydrogen could play in Scotland’s energy system and in several industries could be very significant. It could become a significant part of our economy, too, if we produce large amounts for export. I would disagree with anyone who suggests that that cannot happen, but hydrogen is not a magic solution for some of the challenging aspects of the transition to sustainability. I would equally disagree with anyone who wants to see hydrogen in the same category as carbon capture and storage, direct air capture of greenhouse gases or foolhardy experiments to dim the sun.

There are, sadly, some people in our society, and too many current and former politicians—as we have seen this week—who want to abandon real climate action in favour of implausible techno-fixes. Hydrogen has the real potential to be seen in the same way, and we cannot afford that. Neither can we afford the same simplistic, unrealistic thinking to affect the way that we develop the hydrogen sector.

Sarah Boyack was right to say that there are two critical questions—how we produce hydrogen and how we use it. The answers to both questions will determine the value that it has for our society and for the transition to sustainability.

First, where does hydrogen come from? The internationally recognised colour code for hydrogen has about as many shades on it as the pride flag does, but fundamentally, most industrially produced hydrogen to date has been made using fossil fuels with no abatement of emissions. Whether that is the most polluting fuels such as lignite, which some countries use to produce hydrogen, or others such as fossil gas, we need to be clear that that approach has no role to play in a transition to sustainability. It should not only be denied Government investment but simply not be permitted.

Then there are people who advocate for blue hydrogen, which is still produced using fossil fuels but with the addition of long-promised carbon capture and storage technology. Even if CCS can ever be made to work at high enough capture rates to result in negligible overall emissions—there is still plenty of doubt about that question—it will always be a huge additional cost, making the production of blue hydrogen dramatically less efficient. If hydrogen is to play any meaningful role, it must be produced using renewable electricity—it must be green hydrogen.

Will the member take an intervention?

Will the member take an intervention?