Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

More of a rant than a news posting this, and I started to post it on the BEV thread, but it's about more than just hydrogen for cars, and I think BEV's win the 'fight' v's HFCEV's so easily now it's not worth mucking up the thread.

So, I'm not against H2 as a storage medium to aid the rollout of large amounts of RE. I know it's not particularly effcient, so no use for intra-day storage, but for long term and larger scale storage, it may well be useful, especially as increasing the energy/storage is pretty cheap, just more tanks, without the need to spend more on the power side of it.

But, it now seems ever more clear that a lot of the support for H2 for vehicles, or space heating etc, has been pushed by 'Big Oil' either as a distraction technique to delay action, or as a means of keeping more energy within the FF industry by producing H2 from nat-gas.

So once again, like 'clean coal', or CCS for FF's, or 'new' nuclear, much of the hype for H2 has been carefully orchestrated to  delay a shift to RE/leccy and keep us on FF's for longer.

[This ties in, somewhat, with the recent news that a US Big Oil lobbyist was recorded bragging how they have 11 US Senators in their pocket, and how the US industry pretends to support a carbon tax, as they know it'll never get approved.]

Could Big Oil Be Lobbying For Hydrogen Cars To Delay Electrification?

[Some extracts, but it's really worth reading the article.]

Michael Liebreich, who founded BloombergNEF (originally New Energy Finance), is passionate about helping the environment, and thus humans. He recently said that the oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars because it wants to delay electrification. Recharge noted that he’s against using hydrogen in some sectors when in those sectors, there are cheaper and more efficient electric solutions. Two such sectors are cars and domestic heating. Yet the oil and gas industry is spending tens of millions of euros on lobbying for hydrogen. He pointed out that using hydrogen in cars and domestic heating is senseless when there are battery-powered EVs and heat pumps.

But let’s get back to Liebreich’s more recent comments. “If you’re an oil and gas company, in a way, talking about hydrogen is kind of a two-way bet because if it works, then you’re embedded in the hydrogen industry — but if it doesn’t work, you’ve delayed the transition to the thing you don’t make, which is electricity,” he explained to Recharge.

Liebreich explained that what the fossil fuel industry is doing is funding lobbyists in Brussels for use of hydrogen. Politicians seem to enjoy having photos taken with hydrogen cars and trains, so perhaps they will tolerate the existing use of grey hydrogen.

In that article, I dove into the key findings of the report. The most notable takeaway is that the hydrogen lobby’s key players are the fossil fuel industry. This report, Liebreich’s interview with Recharge, and my piece on how the PR firms are greenwashing all of this should not be forgotten. Big oil is buying politicians like I buy watermelon in the summer, and right now, they are fueling the push for hydrogen.

Why? Because it will delay the inevitable. The fossil fuel industry doesn’t sell electricity. It sells fossil fuels. If we transition to electric and renewables, that industry will go extinct.

QrizB

I can't agree entirely with that article. Here's a badly-ordered selection of part-formed thoughts I had while reading it.

• I see no immediate problems with industry making as much green (or purple) hydrogen as it can sell (colour codes here). The market will decide whether it's economic or not.
  
• The chemical process industry uses a lot of hydrogen. Currently it's mostly blue (incl. turquiose), grey or brown (all made from fossil fuels). Replacing this with green hydrogen will be a good thing.
• Hydrogen could displace ~25% of NG in Britain's gas mains, pending 100% roll-out of alternatives. The article's comment that this is impossible without replacing all the gas mains with HDPE doesn't seem to hold in the UK; until North Sea gas came on-line in the 1960s, the UK ran on town gas (syngas) which was ~25% hydrogen. Most recently installed gas mains are already yellow HDPE.
• Light BEVs (cars and vans) appear, to me at least, already too well established throughout Europe for hydrogen-powered ones to displace them. No-one is going to build a national network of hydrogen filling stations from scratch to service them. (For a recent historical comparison look at LPG powered cars; the filling network was there, the cars were "as good as" petrol, the fuel was half the price and the road tax was reduced, but uptake was poor. I don't think you can buy a new LPG car today and the filling network is withering.)
  

Martyn1981

You're right it's a messy situation, and of course, or at least in my opinion, H2 will probably be part of a large scale storage solution for deploying very high penetration RE. But as you point out, that's talking about green H2, from excess RE leccy. In fact in all the points you make you appear to be talking about green hydrogen (or purple from nuclear) which I agree with, but the fears from FF industry promotion of H2 is that it won't be green H2 we'll be using, which keeps them and FF's in the game.

If we displace FF derived H2 with green H2, and add some green H2 to nat gas, then that all helps, but the danger I see from the promotion of H2 for cars and space heating, is it distracts from the need to move most of our energy requirements from FF's to leccy asap, and could result in us making more use of FF derived H2.

Again, just my opinion, but we've seen this 'tactic' from Big Oil and the FF industry so many times before suggesting "all we have to do is (insert your choice - CCS, new nuclear, clean coal)". This creates a false belief that we don't need to transition away from FF's as quickly or as completely as science suggests. Each time we delay action, the FF industry 'wins'.

Perhaps I'm just too cynical to trust H2 solutions promoted by an industry that currently produces FF H2, and for whom the electrification of energy will eliminate all of their core business.


Just spitballing here, but talking about mains gas - obviously we need to move away from nat-gas asap, which is going to be a monumental task. Heat pumps can hopefully take much of this load, and as mentioned, we can 'water down' some of the nat-gas with green H2, depending on pipes, boilers etc etc.. So, would it make more sense to expand that green H2 production and combine it with CO2 captured, perhaps at bio-mass generation plants, to produce methane, and use that to meet more and more of the gas demand, hopefully a falling gas demand, avoiding the need to adjust/adapt to H2 in those situations?

michaels

Martyn1981 said:

You're right it's a messy situation, and of course, or at least in my opinion, H2 will probably be part of a large scale storage solution for deploying very high penetration RE. But as you point out, that's talking about green H2, from excess RE leccy. In fact in all the points you make you appear to be talking about green hydrogen (or purple from nuclear) which I agree with, but the fears from FF industry promotion of H2 is that it won't be green H2 we'll be using, which keeps them and FF's in the game.

If we displace FF derived H2 with green H2, and add some green H2 to nat gas, then that all helps, but the danger I see from the promotion of H2 for cars and space heating, is it distracts from the need to move most of our energy requirements from FF's to leccy asap, and could result in us making more use of FF derived H2.

Again, just my opinion, but we've seen this 'tactic' from Big Oil and the FF industry so many times before suggesting "all we have to do is (insert your choice - CCS, new nuclear, clean coal)". This creates a false belief that we don't need to transition away from FF's as quickly or as completely as science suggests. Each time we delay action, the FF industry 'wins'.

Perhaps I'm just too cynical to trust H2 solutions promoted by an industry that currently produces FF H2, and for whom the electrification of energy will eliminate all of their core business.


Just spitballing here, but talking about mains gas - obviously we need to move away from nat-gas asap, which is going to be a monumental task. Heat pumps can hopefully take much of this load, and as mentioned, we can 'water down' some of the nat-gas with green H2, depending on pipes, boilers etc etc.. So, would it make more sense to expand that green H2 production and combine it with CO2 captured, perhaps at bio-mass generation plants, to produce methane, and use that to meet more and more of the gas demand, hopefully a falling gas demand, avoiding the need to adjust/adapt to H2 in those situations?

Isn't suggesting that captured co2 could be used as 'net zero' mixer for H2 rather than sequestering it actually just as bad for the environment?

QrizB

michaels said:

Martyn1981 said:

Just spitballing here, but talking about mains gas - obviously we need to move away from nat-gas asap, which is going to be a monumental task. Heat pumps can hopefully take much of this load, and as mentioned, we can 'water down' some of the nat-gas with green H2, depending on pipes, boilers etc etc.. So, would it make more sense to expand that green H2 production and combine it with CO2 captured, perhaps at bio-mass generation plants, to produce methane, and use that to meet more and more of the gas demand, hopefully a falling gas demand, avoiding the need to adjust/adapt to H2 in those situations?

Isn't suggesting that captured co2 could be used as 'net zero' mixer for H2 rather than sequestering it actually just as bad for the environment?

Converting H2 to CH4 means adding carbon. Provided that carbon isn't from a fossil source it doesn't really matter where it came from. You could take it directly from the atmosphere, from biomass, even from a cement works.

(Cement is another fascinating subject. Even if you replace the !!!!!! used to fire the kilns with RE, you still get CO2 liberated from the limestone when it's turned into lime. Over a long enough time the concrete made from that lime will absorb CO2 back from the air and turn back into something resembling limestone. This was (one of) the unforeseen problem(s) with Biosphere 2; the concrete scavenged enough CO2 from the air to break the oxygen balance.)

michaels

QrizB said:

michaels said:

Martyn1981 said:

Just spitballing here, but talking about mains gas - obviously we need to move away from nat-gas asap, which is going to be a monumental task. Heat pumps can hopefully take much of this load, and as mentioned, we can 'water down' some of the nat-gas with green H2, depending on pipes, boilers etc etc.. So, would it make more sense to expand that green H2 production and combine it with CO2 captured, perhaps at bio-mass generation plants, to produce methane, and use that to meet more and more of the gas demand, hopefully a falling gas demand, avoiding the need to adjust/adapt to H2 in those situations?

Isn't suggesting that captured co2 could be used as 'net zero' mixer for H2 rather than sequestering it actually just as bad for the environment?

Converting H2 to CH4 means adding carbon. Provided that carbon isn't from a fossil source it doesn't really matter where it came from. You could take it directly from the atmosphere, from biomass, even from a cement works.

(Cement is another fascinating subject. Even if you replace the !!!!!! used to fire the kilns with RE, you still get CO2 liberated from the limestone when it's turned into lime. Over a long enough time the concrete made from that lime will absorb CO2 back from the air and turn back into something resembling limestone. This was (one of) the unforeseen problem(s) with Biosphere 2; the concrete scavenged enough CO2 from the air to break the oxygen balance.)

But if you were going to sequester the Co2 but instead burn in in methane then you double counting if you count the CCS as reducing CO2 as well.

michaels

One of the nationals (Times?) is suggesting that carbon taxes will be added to domestic gas but then all low/middle income households will get a per person carbon payment - this is supposed to offset the impact of higher fuel bills for those on lower income but still make sure people face the right price incentives around usage of gas for heating.

[I have previously suggested we add carbon taxes to everything where it makes sense (energy use, flights etc) so that we have the correct price signals but make this tax neutral by giving everyone a tradeable carbon budget so those who use less energy or take less flights or even eat less meat are rewarded for doing their bit and those who choose to consume more carbon have to buy credits to do so so that they face the correct price signals]

michaels

Not Green news as such but Natural Gas prices jumped another 10% and are now 6x higher than 12  months ago or 500% and at their highest ever.  That heap pump is suddenly looking a lot more competitive.

Martyn1981

QrizB said:

michaels said:

Martyn1981 said:

Just spitballing here, but talking about mains gas - obviously we need to move away from nat-gas asap, which is going to be a monumental task. Heat pumps can hopefully take much of this load, and as mentioned, we can 'water down' some of the nat-gas with green H2, depending on pipes, boilers etc etc.. So, would it make more sense to expand that green H2 production and combine it with CO2 captured, perhaps at bio-mass generation plants, to produce methane, and use that to meet more and more of the gas demand, hopefully a falling gas demand, avoiding the need to adjust/adapt to H2 in those situations?

Isn't suggesting that captured co2 could be used as 'net zero' mixer for H2 rather than sequestering it actually just as bad for the environment?

Converting H2 to CH4 means adding carbon. Provided that carbon isn't from a fossil source it doesn't really matter where it came from. You could take it directly from the atmosphere, from biomass, even from a cement works.

(Cement is another fascinating subject. Even if you replace the !!!!!! used to fire the kilns with RE, you still get CO2 liberated from the limestone when it's turned into lime. Over a long enough time the concrete made from that lime will absorb CO2 back from the air and turn back into something resembling limestone. This was (one of) the unforeseen problem(s) with Biosphere 2; the concrete scavenged enough CO2 from the air to break the oxygen balance.)

Nice and timely article from Cleantechnica here on the potenetial uses for H2. I thought the graphic at the start is useful, showing H2 production (it seems) after short term storage, and then the many ways of using the H2, or returning it to leccy. One use, shown is to produce methane by adding CO2 from carbon capture, and then working that through the many options and uses, including leccy generation at existing gas generation plants ...... just no longer using FF methane.

Not shown in the graphic, but mentioned later is that H2 can also be used as a direct fuel for gas generation plants, though some some differences to the procedures or equipment will apply. So existing gas gen sites, with all their existing grid connections, could be highly useful for demand following with 'green' stored gas/energy in a high penetration RE world.

Green Hydrogen Game On For NY & Archrival NJ

GE is one of several legacy engineering firms that have become active in the area of blending hydrogen and natural gas in gas turbines. One approach is to design new turbines that are specially made to handle an increasing proportion of hydrogen. The Long Island project is especially interesting because it deploys a 20-year-old GE gas turbine.

If it pans out, then gas power plants all over the country could begin transitioning to green hydrogen without having to invest in new turbines. That’s an important consideration for the US, which became splattered with new gas turbines after the cost of gas dropped in the early 2000s.

The good news is that low-cost gas provided the initial kick for driving coal out of the US power generation market. The bad news is that gas power generation stakeholders are stuck with relatively new gas turbines, but a growing number of leading electricity buyers and other ratepayers are demanding carbon-free electricity. The hydrogen blend idea could help get them off the hook until something better comes around.

QrizB

Here's an article from The Times that might sound familiar, given the discussions we've had recently over gas vs. electricity prices and environmetnal charges:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lower-bills-could-open-the-way-to-greener-home-energy-k25k00383

Lower bills could open the way to greener home energy

Electricity bills could be made cheaper compared with gas to persuade people to use more green energy, the business secretary has signalled.

Kwasi Kwarteng said that ministers were looking at the “balance” of environmental taxes on bills as part of their drive to reduce carbon emissions.

He said in an interview with The Times that the government’s net zero strategy would examine whether consumers pay too much in levies on green electricity.

According to Ofgem, nearly 23 per cent of the cost of household electricity is made up of green taxes, including part-funding the cost of investment in renewable generation and paying energy companies to subsidise energy efficiency improvement in poorer households. Last year these charges added £162 to the average annual electricity bill of £707.

In contrast the energy regulator says that environmental and social charges make up 1.86 per cent of a gas bill — or £10.23 on a £550 annual bill.

Considering that electricity is now lower-carbon at point of use than gas is, it makes sense to look at rebalancing taxes to reflect this.