New Project: Zero-Carbon Emission Integrated Cooling, Heating and Power (ICHP) Networks

14 January 2021

DEI have been awarded EPSRC funding to work with National Grid on a new research into decarbonising heating and cooling using Hydrogen.

DEI Directors Professor Tony Roskilly (PI) and Professor Simone Abram (Co-I), DEI Fellow Dr Andrew Smallbone (Co-I) and colleagues at Imperial College London, Professors Richard Green and Goran Strbac, will work with National Grid, Durham County Council, The Climate Change Committee and Wales and West Utilities, to explore a zero-carbon emission ICHP energy network concept for decarbonising heating and cooling through the production, distribution and utilisation of hydrogen.

Hydrogen and bioenergy have the potential to make a significant contribution toward low carbon heating.

Across the UK, 80% of the heating in buildings and industries is generated using natural gas. The Department for Business, Energy & Industry Strategy agrees that transitioning to electricity, hydrogen and bioenergy have the potential to make a significant contribution toward low carbon heating. With respect to hydrogen, one potential approach is to use the existing natural gas distribution grid to transport hydrogen.

At the national scale, existing gas grid infrastructure would be modified and used to deliver natural gas and hydrogen produced from clean sources to distributed ICHP energy centres across the UK.

At the local scale, intelligent thermal networks, would convert this hydrogen and distribute its energy as electricity, heating or cooling across urban areas in localised industry and residential networks.

ICHP energy centres would also offer additional flexibility, resilience etc. and provide an opportunity to integrate transport energy services through the provision of hydrogen fuelling and electric vehicle fast charging.

Focus of project

The project will be focus on investigating the role and value of the ICHP concept in supporting cost effective heat sector decarbonisation and transition to low carbon whole-energy system.

The aim of the proposal will enable in depth assess of the role of ICHP concept from whole system perspective by:

Quantifying the techno-economic value of ICHP based heat sector decarbonisation in the whole-energy system context, considering infrastructure investment and operating costs for different carbon emissions targets in short, medium and long term.
Identifying and quantifying the benefits of flexibility options (i.e., energy storage, demand side response, hydrogen-based flexible gas plants).
Assessing the role of ICHP paradigm in enhancing the electricity system resiliency, given that the extreme weather conditions should be considered when planning low carbon energy system.

Outputs will be technical evidence of the potential of the technology for stakeholders across the whole system (policy, national, local and consumers).