Switching to hydrogen fuel could prolong ‘the methane problem’, say researchers

The imagined methane problem derived from the ‘greenhouse’ obsession, that is. Hydrogen already has a nitrogen problem, according to IPCC climate theories at least. Now it seems there’s a leaky infrastructure issue.
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Hydrogen is often heralded as the clean fuel of the future, but new research suggests that leaky hydrogen infrastructure could end up increasing atmospheric methane levels, which would cause decades-long climate consequences, says Science Daily.

Hydrogen’s potential as a clean fuel could be limited by a chemical reaction in the lower atmosphere, according to research from Princeton University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association.

This is because hydrogen gas easily reacts in the atmosphere with the same molecule primarily responsible for breaking down methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

2050: The never-ending nightmare of Net Zero

Classifying this as humour may not be appropriate, but we live in hope.
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IT IS the year 2050 and Britain, relentlessly driven by the governing Labour-Green coalition, has achieved Net Zero, imagines David Wright @ TCW (The Conservative Woman).

The nation is quite unrecognisable from the comfortable, well-fed country it was in the early part of the 21st century.

Massive wind turbines cover the landscape; the old ones built 25 years ago now knocked down and lying next to the new ones because it was uneconomic to remove them.

The whole country is covered in a dense spider’s web of power lines from the multitude of wind and solar farms miles from where the power is needed.

Safety and air pollution concerns over UK hydrogen village

Eco house with hydrogen heating technology. [Image credit: emergingrisks.co.uk]

Not what the promoters of ‘clean’ energy wanted to hear. Reports of unwelcome emissions have been noted. The guinea pigs are getting nervous, not without reason.
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Residents in Redcar on Teesside have raised concerns over the safety of a pilot project designed to replace home gas supplies with hydrogen, says Energy Live News.

Gas distributor for the North East and parts of Cumbria and Yorkshire, Northern Gas Networks had previously submitted a proposal to the government and Ofgem for a hydrogen-powered area.

If the proposal is given the go-ahead, the gas company would need to replace all home and business gas appliances, including boilers, fires and cookers with new hydrogen systems.

According to the BBC, Steve Rudd, a resident in Redcar, said hydrogen was “inherently unsafe” – it has also been reported that other residents are worried about hydrogen’s more harmful emissions.

Bacton, Norfolk ‘has undeveloped gas reserves of up to 2 trillion cubic feet’

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.

Namibia comes to Europe to sell its sunshine

Credit: worldatlas.com

Namibia is a long way from Europe, but desperate emissions-obsessed governments may not care. Morocco is a lot nearer as one UK energy firm has already noticed.
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As Europe struggles to decarbonise its economy and wean itself off Russian oil and gas, one of the world’s sunniest and most arid nations is pitching itself to the continent as an answer to its problems, says Euractiv.

A delegation from sub-Saharan Africa’s driest country has been touring Europe to tout their nation as a potential powerhouse of clean energy.

They say Namibia can produce so much solar power it will soon be self-sufficient in electricity – and, by the end of the decade, could become an exporter of so-called green hydrogen.

“We came to Europe saying we have this amazing sun,” said James Mnyupe, economic adviser to the Namibian presidency.

EU climate chief talks up hypothetical ‘green’ hydrogen

Credit: wheels.ca

Good luck with the costs and the leakage losses from shipping. Only last month the same source reported a study saying Germany’s global hydrogen plans could accelerate climate change. The study said ‘In the worst-case scenario, hydrogen could even prove 16 times more harmful than the widespread greenhouse gas.’ The EU obviously isn’t bothered by that study, or one by the British government warning of 13% leakage losses from tanker transport of hydrogen. ‘The 75-page report, Atmospheric Implications of Increased Hydrogen Use, explains that H2 is an indirect greenhouse gas, which reacts with other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere to increase their global warming potential (GWP)’. What real world problem do they think they’re trying to solve? Looks like yet another trip to cloud cuckoo land.
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Hydrogen will be essential for Europe’s future economy, particularly to store and transport green energy, EU climate chief Frans Timmermans told the European Parliament on Thursday (28 April) — Euractiv reporting.

“I strongly believe in green hydrogen as the driving force of our energy system of the future,” said Timmermans in a meeting with the environment committee.

“Hydrogen is going to be a pivotal element in our economy of the future,” he added in a discussion that covered the impact of the war in Ukraine, the state of play with Europe’s new climate legislation and food security.

‘More wind, more solar, more nuclear’, says Kwasi Kwarteng – costing how much?

Offshore wind project in North Wales [image credit: northwales.com]

Even more expensive electricity, in pursuit of mythical net zero targets. The planned 25% contribution of nuclear power doesn’t give much confidence about where the other 75% should come from when it’s dark and not windy. Why the claimed ‘cheap renewables’ need not-cheap subsidies is not explained, and hydrogen isn’t cheap either.
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The Energy Security Strategy announced by government just under a fortnight ago “provides a clear, long-term plan to accelerate [the UK’s] transition away from expensive fossil fuel prices set by global markets [it] cannot control.”

That’s according to Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, who delivered a speech explaining his views on the new strategy and how he believes it can help shift the British energy market, reports Energy Live News.

“More wind, more solar, more nuclear – while also using North Sea gas to transition to cheaper and cleaner power,” was his succinct summary of the new strategy.

Germany’s global hydrogen plans could accelerate climate change, UK government study suggests

German hydrogen train [image credit: Euractiv]

The issue is leakage. In any case the notion of part of the supposed cure for ‘climate change’ being worse than the supposed disease is ironic. Germany imagines a future of so-called climate neutrality, a concept lacking any real-world meaning.
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German Economy Minister Robert Habeck plans to import hydrogen from all over the world to satisfy Germany’s hunger for energy despite a new study questioning the climate-friendliness of hydrogen transport, EURACTIV Germany reports.

One thing is clear to all politicians and experts: Germany is an energy importing country.

To move towards climate neutrality, the German government wants to rely primarily on importing hydrogen molecules from all over the world – efforts which have been further accelerated due to the war in Ukraine and Germany’s dependence on Russian energy imports.

EU unveils plan to end reliance on Russian gas

A roadmap to cut imports of Russian gas by two thirds in a year – but they’ll need somewhere else’s gas, whether from fracking or not, plus some coal, instead. Gas storage is to be greatly increased. But how exactly they plan to ‘ramp up’ hydrogen production, and at what cost, remains to be seen. Climate obsessions will have to be shelved for a while.
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The European Commission has outlined a new energy roadmap designed to cut reliance on Russian gas by two thirds in just a year, reports BBC News.

The plan envisages ending reliance on all Russian fossil fuels “well before” 2030.

In the short term, gas should be sourced from the US and Africa while some countries may need to use more coal in the months ahead.

Shell CCS Plant Emits More Greenhouse Gases Than It’s Captured

Photosynthesis: nature requires carbon dioxide

Which should surprise nobody. Carbon capture is energy-intensive and expensive, and invariably fails to live up to the unrealistic expectations of climate obsessives. In terms of its supposed purpose it just isn’t worth it.
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A new report provides some damning new math on one of the oil giant’s much-hyped CCS projects, says Gizmodo.

Oil companies love to tell the world about the super cool technologies that have that will allow us to keep burning fossil fuels without cooking the climate. But those technologies are largely bullshit.

A new report from Global Witness documents how a much-hyped blue hydrogen plant with carbon capture and storage (CCS) owned by Shell is only capturing a fraction of the greenhouse gas emissions that the company claims.

In fact, it’s created more emissions in its five years of operation than it’s captured.

UK’s largest electrolyser to supply hydrogen storage facility at Scottish windfarm

Whitelee wind farm, Scotland [image credit: Bjmullan / Wikipedia]

Here’s the UK government’s latest shot at ‘net zero’ climate virtue signalling. Subsidised wind farms will help produce subsidised hydrogen to fuel subsidised hydrogen vehicles such as buses and bin lorries. This is obviously even more costly than just using the wind-sourced electricity itself to run vehicles, but gets round the battery weight problem for larger vehicles like buses and goods vehicles. But to scale up, the number of wind turbines needed is going to have to be far higher than now, to provide fuel as well as nationwide electricity. Is that even feasible, let alone affordable?
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A hydrogen storage plant will be built at the UK’s largest onshore windfarm near Glasgow, after the UK government approved a £9.4m grant, reports E&T News.

The Whitelee green hydrogen project will become the UK’s largest electrolyser, a system which converts water into hydrogen gas as a way to store energy.

Hydrogen is seen as a key replacement for fossil fuels in certain applications as the world moves towards decarbonisation.

It produces just heat and water as by-products when burned or used in fuel cells, making it a highly attractive alternative to fossil fuels in industry, power, shipping and transport.

Heating homes with clean hydrogen will be ‘pretty much impossible’, says UK energy minister

Eco house with hydrogen heating technology. [Image credit: emergingrisks.co.uk]

Another green energy pipe dream bites the dust, before trials have even started? Massive cost compared to other options is just one of the stumbling blocks. Anything more expensive than electricity seems pointless anyway.
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Lord Callanan’s comments come as the British government continues to invest millions of pounds in H2 heating trials, says the Telegraph (via Recharge News).

“If I’m being honest, the idea that we could produce enough hydrogen at reasonable cost to displace mains gas is pretty much impossible,” said Lord Callanan, parliamentary under-secretary of state for climate change & corporate responsibility at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

The UK government is currently investing millions of pounds in studies on hydrogen heating, with £25m ($34m) ploughed into the Hy4Heat programme; a pilot scheme in Scotland to heat 300 homes with 100% hydrogen via the existing gas grid due to take place in 2023, backed by up to £18m of grants from the industry regulator Ofgem; and plans to heat a whole town with H2 by 2030.

Village homeowners may have gas forcibly cut off if they refuse to take part in hydrogen trial

Eco house with hydrogen heating technology. [Image credit: emergingrisks.co.uk]

At three times the price of natural gas, being cut off from hydrogen sounds like an option worth considering for householders. Electric heat pumps are promoted as an expensive alternative, as so-called climate policies continue to be bulldozed through regardless of affordability.
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Homeowners who refuse to take part in a hydrogen energy trial will be forcibly cut off by gas network operators, under Government plans to test green heating alternatives, says The Telegraph (via VNExplorer).

Residents in one village will begin the pilot scheme by 2025 to help the Government assess whether hydrogen gas can be used as a low-carbon alternative for heating homes across the country.

Ministers insisted the powers to enter people’s homes and switch off their gas would only be used as a “last resort” if the homeowners had refused to engage with any other options.

A consultation, which ended this week, suggests the Government will seek powers to allow gas distribution networks to enter homes if their owners do not wish to take part in the trial, in order to safely switch them off from the gas grid.

Current powers enable network operators to enter premises for a variety of purposes, including for suspected gas leaks or inspecting pipes and fittings.

Hydrogen, which is lighter and more flammable than natural gas, requires homeowners to replace their hobs, ovens, gas fires and pipes to ensure they operate safely.

Hydrogen: UK government sees future in low-carbon fuel, but what’s the reality?

[image credit: latinoamericarenovable.com]

HMG pays another visit to climate cloud cuckoo land. Its hydrogen ‘strategy’ turns out to be as full of obvious holes as a string vest. Don’t even ask about safety issues.
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The UK’s long-awaited hydrogen strategy has set out the government’s plans for “a world-leading hydrogen economy” that it says would generate £900 million (US$1.2 million) and create over 9,000 jobs by 2030, “potentially rising to 100,000 jobs and £13 billion by 2050”. From: The Conversation (via Phys.org).

The strategy document argues that hydrogen could be used in place of fossil fuels in homes and industries which are currently responsible for significant CO2 emissions, such as chemical manufacturing and heavy transport, which includes the delivery of goods by shipping, lorries and trains.

The government also envisages that many of the new jobs producing and using “low-carbon hydrogen” will benefit “UK companies and workers across our industrial heartlands.”

On the face of it, this vision of a low-carbon future in some of the most difficult to decarbonise niches of the economy sounds like good news. But is it? And are there other options for delivering net zero that will be better for the public?

UK plan to replace fossil gas with blue hydrogen ‘may backfire’

‘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.

Net Zero heat pump plans are dead and buried

Hydrogen future? [image credit: cleantechnica.com]

The UK’s next problem is that there’s no domestic hydrogen supply, and it will be costly to create one, then (in theory) produce vast amounts of hydrogen from renewables and/or nuclear power. Unless hydrogen for homes is going to be cheaper than electricity then electric boilers, with none of hydrogen’s safety issues and available now, could be a viable competitor in the home heating market if/when gas is shut down.
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It would appear that Boris Johnson’s Net Zero promise to install 600,000 heat pumps per year by 2028 won’t happen after all now that Britain’s big boiler firms have promised households that they will be able to buy cheap hydrogen boilers instead says The GWPF.

The only question is how much the hydrogen that is supposed to heat our homes will cost consumers.

We’ll have to wait for the government’s hydrogen strategy which is reported to be launched at the end of August.

Caltech professor helps solve Hindenburg disaster

The LZ-129 Hindenburg, the famous Zeppelin, at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in 1936 [image credit: CIVIS TURDETANI / U.S. Department of the Navy, Bureau of Aeronautics]

As hydrogen is in the news these days as a potential ‘alternative’ fuel, heavily promoted by climate obsessives and others, this look back in history is vaguely topical and offers a fresh technical analysis based on experiments.
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On the evening of May 6, 1937, the largest aircraft ever built by mankind, a towering example of technological prowess, slipped through the stormy skies of New Jersey and prepared to land, says TechXplore.

The airship Hindenburg was nearing the end of a three-day voyage across the Atlantic Ocean from Frankfurt, Germany. It was a spectacle and a news event.

Onlookers and news crews gathered to watch the 800-foot-long behemoth touch down.

And then, in one horrifying half minute, it was all over. Flames erupted from the airship’s skin, fed by the flammable hydrogen gas that kept it aloft, and consumed the entire structure, ending 36 lives.

Scam Alert: Hydrogen Hoax – The Next Great ‘Renewable’ Energy Fraud

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Prof. Ian Plimer’s warning: “We have the DNA skills now to identify a person from a tiny little piece of meat. And that’s what would be left if you have an accident in a hydrogen-driven vehicle.”

STOP THESE THINGS

Wind and solar power’s hopeless intermittency has forced rent seekers to engineer yet another fraud: hydrogen gas – which is to be purportedly produced using wind and solar’s occasional and chaotic output. Where wind and solar have never made any sense, the hydrogen proposition is completely bonkers.

Defying the laws of physics and thermodynamics – just for starters – the economics would make hydrogen gas produced using already heavily subsidised wind and solar the most expensive energy in human history.

And yet, the same class of dimwitted politicians are signing up in feverish earnest, as if they’re about to back a surefire Melbourne Cup winner.

As with wind and solar power, it’s the same too-good-to-be-true pitch directed at the starry-eyed, gullible and naïve. All, of course, in the name of obtaining a stream of taxpayer back subsidies that will outlast religion.

STT, always ready to rain on the renewable energy…

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Could hydrogen leaks affect the Earth’s ozone layer?

Hydrogen pipelines [image credit: US Department of Energy @ Wikipedia]

This is one of several questions to be investigated by a Norwegian research team. The ultimate one may be: what happens to hydrogen’s hoped-for role in the big push for so-called green energy, if the findings are unfavourable to current climate theory?
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Hydrogen is an attractive [Talkshop comment: perhaps, but expensive] alternative to fossil fuels, especially for powering trucks, ships and planes, where using batteries isn’t so easy, says TechXplore.

Hydrogen is an attractive alternative to fossil fuels, especially for powering trucks, ships and planes, where using batteries isn’t so easy.

Batteries quickly become too large and heavy if these large transport vessels and vehicles are going to travel far.

As a result, hydrogen is being discussed like never before. Both Norway and the EU have said they will invest more in hydrogen in the years ahead.

We still don’t know enough about new heat technologies to decide the best way forward

Posted on 2 March, 2021 by Green Alliance blog

This post is a reblog of an article by Dr Robert Sansom, independent consultant and member of the IET’s Energy Policy Panel.

Recently, Professor Cebon wrote on this blog that pursuing the hydrogen economy would be a mistake. I am neither an advocate of hydrogen nor am I associated with the oil and gas industry, but I was the lead author of a report, produced by the IET in 2019, which focused on the engineering questions that need to be addressed if the UK is to transition to hydrogen.  There are also major questions around the electrification of heat. Until these questions are dealt with, I do not believe anyone can say that one technology is better than another.