Saturday 13 June 2020

Blue hydrogen - a Trojan horse from oil and gas

The announcement by the German Government that their hydrogen strategy will include support for so-called blue hydrogen as a transitional measure must be regarded as a huge setback for a sustainable energy transition. Essentally what is being proposed is the propping up of oil and gas rather than the alternative – an energy efficient decentralised system based on renewable energy.
The danger is that the British Government will now follow suit.
Blue hydrogen is hydrogen produced from natural gas with the carbon captured and stored – with the caveat of course that the process, for cost reasons, is unlikley to abate more than 85% of the carbon content of the natural gas.
Essentially what the natural gas industry will succeed in doing with ‘blue’ hydrogen is to preserve their multinational gas extraction business by the trick of branding their product differently in different countries. Gas from the same fields will be either branded (further downstream) as ‘blue’ or nothing at all (in other words, normal carbon producting stuff).
Of course it will only be in a few places that the gas will be marketed as ‘blue’. I’m sure lots of fancy consultants will be employed to convince us that really blue gas comes from particular places, but the reality is that in a complex world of international gas trading such distinctions will be window dressing.
Instead of the spending extra investment to kick start the blue hydrogen distribution business we should be spending it on building up energy supplies from renewable energy.
The sort of scheme we should be supporting, indeed being made mandatory is like one being piloted in Wales. This involves local houses being power systems in themselves that generate, store and use the energy efficiently. The Swansea City scheme involves new energy efficient housing being built complete with solar pv panels, batteries and also heat pumps. This will lead to a system that (because of the efficiency of heat pumps) lead to carbon emissions that are 4xs (yes, four times) less than using ‘blue’ hyrdogen. Not only that but the system will also manage fluctuating renewable energy supplies in a way that avoids extra investment in peak power plants and also reduces investment in transmission and distribution wires.
It may be difficult to retrofit some existing houses with heat pumps, although fitting them to district heating systems powered by large scale heat pumps may often be possible. In such cases electric storage heaters can be deployed. These can also be managed so that their electricity use can be timed to fit in with the vailability of renewable energy, again so reducing investment in power plant and distribution wires.
Of course hydrogen has important uses – (although not in space heating where it is inefficient compared to renewable electriciytm, especially with heat pumps). Important uses for green hydrogen include making steel, fertiliser, shipping fuel, cement and storing renewable electricity – but here we should be making investments in green hydrogen – hydrogen supplied from renewable energy via electrolysis – not wasting the money on propping up the oil and gas companies. We face a crucial crossroads here. Do we want to channel lots of money into propping up the existing gas industry or instead use it to build up markets for decentralised sustainable energy?

For more information on how hydrogen might fit into a 100percent renewable energy economy, go to the website https://100percentrenewableuk.org/

5 comments:

  1. https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-8417289/Rolls-Royce-triggers-250bn-nuclear-mini-reactor-race.html

    How do you like them apples Dr Dave? And you ain't seen nuthin' yet! 7.04 GW of R-R SMRs + 6.4 GW from Hinkley and Sizewell C gets to 1/3rd of the UK's electricity consumption, with the low-carbon, 24/7 variety.

    Maybe you should rename '100% Renewable UK' '66.66% Renewable UK', pull your report and edit it, then just charge £8.00.

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  2. SMRs are fantasy propositions, as I argued 4 years ago in a blog post, and little has changed since then to produce real projects. Please see my argument at http://realfeed-intariffs.blogspot.com/2016/04/small-modular-reactors-wishful-thinking.html

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  3. So, producing hydrogen intermittently and inefficiently is a reason to overbuild wind? That's a tail wagging a dog. It does seem comedic to blame reliable baseload for wind's curtailment costs. Whatever, with the advancement in SMR's that you have been missing recently the wind boondoggle will become moot in 5 years. If it doesn't, it will be a triumph of ideology over economics and the UK will be competitively poorer for it.

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  4. Wind power is now a proven economic winner, with costs having been in great decline over recent years (as with solar pv). With regard to storage and balancing there are a number of available, plausible, options which need to be developed and market tested to find the best mixture. Please see the section on 100percentrenewableuk which deals with this for further discussion: https://100percentrenewableuk.org/storage

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  5. Our definitions of 'plausible' are completely at odds. Yours has no sound basis in economics, which is a foundation of your case against new nuclear, with cherry-picked examples.

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