New Zealand’s approach to climate change will impact many aspects of our day-to-day lives. Rinnai looks at what changes we might expect for how we heat water in our homes.
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he Government is in the process of deciding on policies following the Climate Change Commission’s (CCC) recommendations on how to tackle climate change and meet the requirements for carbon neutrality by 2050. This article looks at how these policies may impact the two main categories of domestic water heating: instantaneous gas and electric storage.
Instantaneous gas Much has been talked of a ‘gas ban’. While the CCC’s advice does not advocate a total gas ban, they do recommend the Government sets a date on the halt of new gas connections once a national energy strategy is developed and there is greater clarity around the contribution future gases can make.
Given the complexity of converting a natural gas or LPG appliance to 100% hydrogen, in future we are likely to see hydrogen-specific appliances where hydrogen combustion is factored in at the design stage.
The gas industry is advocating that fuel gas transitions towards hydrogen and bioLPG over the next 10-20 years. This decarbonisation of gas has the same outcomes for New Zealand in terms of ‘carbon budgets’ as a halt on new connections proposed in the CCC recommendations. The initial stage of decarbonised fuel gas would be the introduction of a blend of natural gas and up to 20% hydrogen. This percentage is used as it is the maximum you can realistically add to NZ natural gas whilst keeping the general characteristics of natural gas that current appliances run on. When you consider a fuel change, it’s not just the current appliances being sold that will be impacted, but all the in-use connected appliances in homes, schools and businesses. At Rinnai, we have been doing some testing on our current appliances and we can report that these can operate perfectly well on a natural gas blend with 20-30% hydrogen. We will shortly start testing water heating appliances that we have sold over the last 20 years to determine if they can operate on the proposed 20% blend. We don’t expect issues, but the correct thing to do is test and find out. The work for bioLPG is also underway, and we will be running trials on some appliances shortly to see how they perform and operate. Testing on current Rinnai appliances has shown that they can operate on a natural gas blend with 20-30% hydrogen. Rinnai will shortly start testing water heating appliances sold over the last 20 years to determine if they can do the same.
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