Are Hydrogen-Blend Ready Boilers Worth The Asking Price?

For many homeowners and building managers, Autumn is the time to get their annual boiler inspection sorted and look into potential upgrades to future-proof their heating system and save money in the long run.

There are a lot of options in this regard, but for homes not suitable for a heat pump or for people who do not want the hassle of retrofitting the system even with an upgrade scheme in place to help make it more affordable, replacing the existing boiler with a more efficient model is a big step forward to reducing bills.

However, one other option that has become the subject of a year-long investigation is the concept of “hydrogen-blend-ready” boilers.

Alongside heat pumps, hydrogen boilers have been explored as an option for replacing natural gas, given that hydrogen gas can be delivered using most of the same infrastructure and the only changes that would need to be made would be to the boilers themselves.

However, as of 2024, no hydrogen boilers are on the market for domestic use and several hydrogen village trials were cancelled, putting the future of a hydrogen switchover in doubt.

Around this time, several manufacturers, most notably Worcester Bosch, claimed that their range of “hydrogen-blend ready” boilers could run on a 20 per cent blend of hydrogen and natural gas, thus “future-proofing” heating.

There were a lot of issues with the marketing surrounding these boilers, the biggest of which was that there was no difference between a “hydrogen-blend-ready” boiler and any other boiler on the market.

All boilers need to run on at least 20 per cent hydrogen by default, meaning that there is no difference other than the sticker.

Also, this sowed confusion between hydrogen boilers, hydrogen-ready boilers and hydrogen-blend-ready boilers.

Hydrogen-ready boilers are designed to be easily modified to use 100 per cent hydrogen if and when a switchover takes place, but hydrogen-blend-ready boilers are not.

The Competitions and Markets Authority warned boiler manufacturers about these claims and highlighted that the best choice for homeowners who need to replace their boiler without considerable effort is a like-for-like replacement.