The UK Government has been investigating the possibility of replacing the current natural gas network with hydrogen over the coming years to help reach net-zero carbon emissions.

But a planned trial this week was scrapped amid local opposition and Grant Shapps has now said it is “unlikely” that hydrogen could be used to replace gas-powered boilers, pointing to the need to replace thousands of miles of pipes in a switchover.

Mr Shapps told an event in Westminster: “I am a big believer in hydrogen as part of our energy mix in the future and I think Britain should have a very big role in it, we will make sure we do have this hydrogen economy.

“What I think less now though, having spent a lot of time on this subject, is it is unlikely that hydrogen – there was a time when people thought, ‘Ah, you just have something which looks like a gas boiler and you feed hydrogen into it’ – the problem with that is hydrogen molecules are very small, you have to replace potentially quite a lot of piping, and of course you’ve got to produce the ‘green’ hydrogen to make the whole thing stack up, the kind of volumes which mean that the transition would be pretty slow.

“So I’m not sure that home heating will be all through hydrogen, it will have a role to play.”

He added: “I think hydrogen will be used for storing energy – you won’t have to switch off wind farms at night when you don’t need power because you can turn it into hydrogen and use it later – it will be used for heavy industry, in the future it will be used for heavy transport.”