Of course climate-obsessed policymakers want to use it produce hydrogen and capture any CO2, at unknown but hefty expense — doing things the hard way. Why not save a fortune and just put it into the existing gas network?
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Low carbon hydrogen could heat up to 20 million homes and businesses across London and the South East of England for decades to come, according to a new industry report.
The Bacton Energy Hub (BEH), a Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) hydrogen project, located on the coast of Norfolk, could not only help to secure the UK’s energy supply but also play a major role in significantly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, says the North Sea Transition Authority.
Currently the National Transmission System (NTS), supplying gas to homes and businesses in London and the South East of England, consists largely of methane. However, it is possible that by 2030 hydrogen produced at Bacton could be blended into the NTS, helping the transition to net zero while ensuring energy security.
Blending 20% hydrogen into the NTS creates the potential to abate 1.6 million tonnes per annum (MTpa) of CO2 by 2030, rising to 17MTpa by 2050.
CCS-enabled hydrogen – produced from natural gas with carbon dioxide captured and stored – would form the early supply until the early 2040s, after which electrolytic hydrogen – produced through a process of splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen, called electrolysis – would take over.
CCS-enabled hydrogen production creates CO2 as a by-product and Bacton offers plentiful potential carbon storage fields – supported by the North Sea Transition Authority’s (NSTA) Carbon Storage Licensing Round – which can meet those needs.
There are undeveloped gas reserves of up to 2 trillion cubic feet at Bacton, which could be used as feedstock for the production of CCS-enabled hydrogen.
The NSTA’s 33rd Licensing Round, launched in October 2022, included four priority clusters in the Southern North Sea – areas with known hydrocarbons with the potential to be developed quickly – so the necessary gas resource is readily available.
The Climate Change Committee suggested that carbon storage can play an important role in scaling up the hydrogen industry. The use of hydrogen in boilers can save up to 85% of emissions compared to natural gas use in boilers.
The scale of the project is such that it will create hundreds of green jobs in East Anglia, providing a significant boost to the local economy.
Full article here.
Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Just another Grant and benefit income SCAM to waste another load of high costs on the consumer and taxpayer. IMO it would be fraudulent to allow such a scheme to go ahead.
Do I really need to spell out in simple terms why this CCC Hydrogen scheme would not be viable?
And how do they plan to capture the CO2 and where are they going to store it?
‘providing a significant boost to the local economy’
…at the avoidable expense of the rest of the population.
Bill J – article quotes someone referring to ‘potential reuse of existing infrastructure for CO2 storage’.
This is steam reformation isn’t it? Not green hydrogen. Why not just use the gas normally? What’s the word on pressurized automobile fuel tanks? What’s the word on leakage in steel pipe work? My local fuel station has underground tanks – can they be pressurized to contain hydrogen? Given that hydrogen is 30% as energy dense as gas, what about petrol? How many vehicle miles can you get out of a forecourt tank with petrol versus hydrogen? Hundred times? Oh tell me someone!
“Why not just use the gas normally?”
No taxpayer subsidies to be had for that!
It is well known and proven many times that more CO2 helps green plants grow better and more CO2 helps green plants use fresh water more efficiently.
It has not been proven, not even one time, that CO2 has ever, is now, or ever will, cause any harm.
Taking significant CO2 from the Atmosphere would cause green plants to produce less food for humans and domestic animals and animals in nature.
That should be identified as evil and criminal and should be prosecute
This was written:
The Climate Change Committee suggested that carbon storage can play an important role in scaling up the hydrogen industry. The use of hydrogen in boilers can save up to 85% of emissions compared to natural gas use in boilers.
Since we must use “Green Energy” to accomplish the carbon storage, in order to matter, the emissions in China go up 850% to produce the windmills and solar panels and batteries and mine and process the mined material and manufacture and transport and build roads and structure and assemble all of this, the victim countries cut their emissions a little bit and the big winner countries increase their emissions orders of magnitude, they are allowed to do this, according to the “alarmist fair play rules”.
This evil stuff is tolerated because the evil media is controlled by evil rich people and governments and too many make obscene profits from the subsidies.
They are having a little trouble with Twitter recently, People on Twitter are now allowed to criticize evil activity that was totally censored earlier in this year and previous years.
“Low carbon hydrogen”?
H2 would be a much better fuel if you added some C atoms, just like it comes out of the ground. Utter morons!
Wyzelli:
Quite. It’s a bit like this dry water I’ve got sculling around my waste bin.
Re. ‘low carbon’ hydrogen, the article explains:
CCS-enabled hydrogen – produced from natural gas with carbon dioxide captured and stored – would form the early supply until the early 2040s
Of course CCS processes are also power-hungry, and expensive. Do we hear *subsidies* and/or *carbon taxes*?
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Re. steel pipes and leakage, plastic pipes will take over:
Replacing Britain’s old gas pipes and laying the foundations of a zero-carbon gas grid
04 AUGUST 2020
This investment in replacing old iron mains pipes has been going on sometime. In fact, it first began back in 2002
https://www.energynetworks.org/newsroom/replacing-britains-old-gas-pipes-from-safeguarding-the-public-to-laying-the-foundations-of-a-zero-carbon-gas-grid
Close to someone working with shipping operator trying to convert to hydrogen. Its a night are as they cannot stop leaks – presumably because of the molecular weight/size of H2. They have gone way over budget just trying to have a useable fuel tank. Of course this happens with new technologies but at the moment the fundamental physics suggests they are going to have to spend vast sums just on basic fuel tanks.
Yes. It is hydrogen embrittlement that is destroying the Forth Road Bridge. Every so often one of the supporting wires goes ‘Ping’ and is no longer useful in supporting the loads. The bridge has already been forced to seriously downgrade its capacity and render the building of another crossing.
Letting hydrogen loose in our gas distribution system is NOT a good idea.
Since hydrogen can leak out of any container who is going to pay for the damage when it goes BANG? Or haven’t they thought about that.