THIS month the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) had to tell Worcester Bosch, Britain’s favourite boilermaker, to stop saying big, fat green fibs about its boilers.

It’s a little story that shows how corporate Britain too often responds to “net-zero” calls with made-up stories about using more energy through speculative technologies that don’t really exist, rather than looking at existing, workable energy conservation plans.

Worcester Bosh was marketing its gas boilers as “hydrogen blend-ready.” It implied they are “unique or special as they can run on a blend of up to 20 per cent hydrogen.” Worcester Bosch told customers they could “future-proof” themselves by buying its “hydrogen-enabled” boilers because this “green” fuel would be arriving soon.

But all these claims are nonsense. As the CMA pointed out, “most boilers” can run on a 20 per cent hydrogen blend. There is nothing special here.

More importantly, Worcester Bosch was relying on claims hydrogen would be used for home heating “despite this not currently being available and its introduction being potentially years away and dependent on future government decisions.”

It was trying to sell boilers on fake green claims about the future. I find this particularly sad with Worcester Bosch as it is a good engineering firm that can make very efficient boilers. But natural gas-reliant industries are very keen to push the possibility of hydrogen as a fuel to avoid deeper questions about energy.

Hydrogen could be “green.” When you burn hydrogen it produces water, not CO2. However, this only works if you first have non-polluting ways to produce “green hydrogen,” by using, say, electricity from wind turbines.

There are plenty of carbon-heavy hydrogen production methods too — like “blue” hydrogen made from natural gas, or “brown” hydrogen made from coal. Second, you have to engineer a hydrogen gas transmission system, making sure it is safe for houses.

Right now, the gas industry is keen to talk about hydrogen to give a “green” impression, but less willing to make concrete steps. Last year proposed trials of “hydrogen villages,” where a few thousand customers would get modified boilers and hydrogen pumped through the natural gas network, were abandoned.

More strikingly, the government’s independent advisory board, the National Infrastructure Commission, looked at the hydrogen heating homes plan.

It said: “The commission’s analysis demonstrates that there is no public policy case for hydrogen to be used to heat individual buildings. It should be ruled out as an option to enable an exclusive focus on switching to electrified heat.”

So the whole hydrogen boiler question should be dead — but there are too many corporate interests trying to keep this non-starter going. There are boilermakers like Worcester Bosch telling customers fairy stories.

There is also gas transmission firm Cadent. It owns a lot of Britain’s natural gas pipeline network, so is always very busy at party conferences, holding meetings and events to persuade MPs that a switch to hydrogen could work.

At the most recent conference, there was a whole “hydrogen zone” at both Tory and Labour conferences, embracing a whole bunch of businesses hoping to bump the government into hydrogen.

Politicians can easily be persuaded by this corporate lobbying. They like the idea that we don’t need to do much to reduce carbon, so the government has less responsibility, that the corporations will do it by themselves, and that imaginary technologies will act like a deus ex machina and make everything easy.

The fact that it was down to the CMA to bust these fake green claims, rather than the Energy Secretary, shows a lack of political will.

While “hydrogen home heating” is probably a dead end, the more energy-conserving technologies like heat exchange pumps are probably a much better bet. However, these would need both government intervention and extensive investment and retooling by industry, so both political and corporate Britain keep returning to the imaginary gas.

Pseudo-anti-fascist MPs are better late than Starmer

On Wednesday August 7 mass counter-demonstrations in many cities mostly outnumbered proposed racist demonstrations. The big, national anti-fascist mobilisation broke the spell of the anti-migrant, anti-Muslim and generally racist riots of the days before.

They stopped the fascist momentum. This meant that protests organised by the grassroots left rode in like the cavalry and saved both the nation — and the struggling Keir Starmer government.

A number of Labour MPs have rushed to praise the counter-demonstrations, even where they did nothing to build them — or even opposed them. You could call this demonstration of after-the-event support “the charge of the late brigade.”

Walthamstow MP Stella Creasy is one of the most obvious cases, but she is far from alone. Creasy told constituents they should “stay away from the area” rather than support a counter-demonstration to a planned far-right event, and let the police deal with any fascist stunt.

However, after a huge turnout of anti-fascist demonstrators in Walthamstow, Creasy said this proved “Walthamstow is the house of love.” She posted pictures of the anti-fascist demo and said “thank you” to “every one of you who has shown solidarity.”

There are other Labour MPs who did the same — refused to back the anti-fascist protests, but praised them after the event. Some have criticised this “late brigade,” arguing they are hypocrites, trying to take credit for that which they did not build.

I disagree — I think we should welcome these converts to the cause — on the proviso they support future mobilisations. Because their position is much better than Starmer’s.

While even Chief of the Metropolitan Police Sir Mark Rowley said the counter-demonstrations had been a “show of unity from communities,” which helped break the racist riots’ momentum, Starmer is trying to pretend that it is only aggressive police action and hard sentencing that has slowed the riots.

This is dangerous stuff. Only popular mobilisation, which demonstrates “the people” are against “the racists” can undermine the fascists in the long term.

The worry for me is Starmer only wants to rely on ideas of “policing” here, not only because he doesn’t want to credit the grassroots leftwingers who helped get the popular mobilisation going, but also because he doesn’t want to challenge the politics of the anti-migrant rioters, he only wants to challenge their “thuggery.”

Follow Solomon on X @SolHughesWriter.