‘Academics warn fugitive emissions from producing hydrogen could be 20% worse for climate than using gas’, reports The Guardian. Climate claims aside, the lack of practicality in the hydrogen plan (is there one?) is becoming ever clearer. Why waste time and effort, and a fortune, for no known benefit to anyone or anything, but plenty of economic pain to citizens?
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The government’s plan to replace fossil gas with “blue” hydrogen to help meet its climate targets could backfire after US academics found that it may lead to more emissions than using gas, says The Guardian.
In some cases blue hydrogen, which is made from fossil gas, could be up to 20% worse for the climate than using gas in homes and heavy industry, owing to the emissions that escape when gas is extracted from the ground and split to produce hydrogen.
The process leaves a byproduct of carbon dioxide and methane, which fossil fuel companies plan to trap using carbon capture technology. However, even the most advanced schemes cannot capture all the emissions, leaving some to enter the atmosphere and contribute to global heating.
Professors from Cornell and Stanford universities calculated that these “fugitive” emissions from producing hydrogen could eclipse those associated with extracting and burning gas when multiplied by the amount of gas required to make an equivalent amount of energy from hydrogen.
Robert Howarth, a Cornell University professor and co-author of the study, said the research was the first to be published in a peer-reviewed journal to lay bare the “significant lifecycle emissions intensity of blue hydrogen”.
The paper, which will be published in Energy Science and Engineering, warned that blue hydrogen may be “a distraction” or “something that may delay needed action to truly decarbonise the global energy economy”.
Full article here.
Cornell University analysis: How green is blue hydrogen? [pdf]
CU: ‘the use of blue hydrogen appears difficult to justify on climate grounds.’
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Papers of this nature, valid or not, will have little traction in political circles; which are driven by lobbyists and vested interests. Overall the ‘CAGW Message’ must be preserved.
Some excellent comments – our group has trialled converting coal to gases that comprise the natural gas found commonly in pipelines (and methane of course) and depending on the bacteria mix up to 24% hydrogen of the headspace on coals from China, USA and Australia. Though there has been interest shown, this has not converted into practice. In the meantime, we a poking along extracting a significant amount of the remaining gold in ore heaps that had been previously rinsed to ‘completion’ by the use of cyanide.
Paper says: In fact, there is no experience at commercial scale with storing carbon dioxide from carbon capture, and most carbon dioxide that is currently captured is used for enhanced oil recovery and is released back to the atmosphere.
So CCS and hydrogen are climate duds. Back to unreliables and gas then 🤣
From the industry perspective, switching from natural gas to blue hydrogen may be viewed as economically beneficial since even more natural gas is needed to generate the same amount of heat.
Gets funnier by the minute.
Further, our analysis does not consider the energy cost and associated greenhouse gas emissions from transporting and storing the captured carbon dioxide.
Stop! Can’t take any more 😆
“Professors from Cornell and Stanford universities calculated that these ‘fugitive’ emissions…”
Like the way other professors prognosticated rising sea levels, food shortages, ice age weather returning…?
Now blue hydrogen backfiring I’d like to hear…
Where are we, Toto?
Still, the supply of green hydrogen in the future seems limited for at least the next several
decades.
Game over for would-be planet savers then. But what’s this?
Biden-backed ‘blue’ hydrogen may pollute more than coal, study finds
Thu 12 Aug 2021 11.30 BST
Infrastructure bill includes $8bn to develop ‘clean hydrogen’ but study finds large emissions from production of ‘blue’ hydrogen
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/12/clean-fuel-blue-hydrogen-coal-study
That annoying study ruining the supposedly green window dressing again. Get ready to waste $8bn developing ‘clean hydrogen’.
Reblogged this on Gds44's Blog.
Now blue hydrogen backfiring I’d like to hear…
I don’t think so JB, it would be a rather loud BOOM. 😉
‘The government’s plan to replace fossil gas with “blue” hydrogen to help meet its climate targets could backfire after US academics found that it may lead to more emissions than using gas’
Irrelevant. The objective is to appear to be doing something. You don’t actually have to be doing something.
@Gamecock
Yeah, but you do have to be spending money. Lots of it.
Correct, pochas94. Look to see pops up owning or running blue hydrogen businesses.
Obama set up friends and contributors in the renewables businesses (sic). They weren’t really businesses; they were really fronts to launder money for Friends of Obama.
I am confident that Boris’ wifey has all the answers.
I still think in the UK hydrogen technology should be a subject to open debate. A debate where all advocates and financial backers of the technology have to inhale a lungful of hydrogen before speaking. 🙂
Mr Nut Nut PM does not comprehend science, or engineering.
“does not comprehend science, or engineering”
My brother told me long ago that new car salesmen were not taught the business of car dealerships until they had been on the job for over a year. Not knowing made it a lot easier for them to lie.
Reblogged this on boudica.us and commented:
H/T gds44
It’s not the emissions surely, it’s the energy balance in production and the permeability. There’s bound to be a hindenberg sometime soon. I will be nowhere near it.
The Idiot’s Answer To Global Warming: Hydrogen
August 12, 2021/ Francis Menton
Due to inevitable inefficiencies in the processes, when you burn the hydrogen, you get back less energy than you expended to free it up. No matter how you approach the problem, the process of freeing up hydrogen and then burning it costs more energy than it generates.
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2021-8-12-the-idiots-answer-to-global-warming-hydrogen
The Green Hydrogen Problem That No One Is Talking About
Oct 28, 2020
One industry source told Oilprice that the production of one ton of hydrogen through electrolysis required an average of nine tons of water. But to get these nine tons of water, it would not be enough to just divert a nearby river. The water that the electrolyzer breaks down into constituent elements needs to be purified.
. . .
Other alternatives to distillation, according to chemists, are unreliable at this point.
https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/The-Green-Hydrogen-Problem-That-No-One-Is-Talking-About.html
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Costs and logistics problems keep piling up.
I would add, oldbrew, that for every ton of hydrogen, they will get 8 tons of pure oxygen.
Pure oxygen is extremely corrosive. It is dangerous to breath for an extended period. It can make what the seemingly nonflammable flammable (see Apollo 1).
Any plan to produce mass hydrogen from water should include their plan to handle the oxygen.
Indeed, Gamecock.
Manhattan Contrarian noted: The waste oxygen in the electrolysis process is also a fire hazard.
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Climate obsessed governments will surely find they’ve made a rod for their own backs if they pursue mass production of hydrogen, by whatever means. Inefficient, hazardous, expensive.
I tend to think that, “Hey, let’s look on the bright side”
The only thing that is likely to make the “hydrogen economy” work, is nuclear power.
It is the only way to make energy cheaper. Anything else sends us back to…pick your century.
UN doesn’t like nuclear energy…