Green hydrogen 'transitioning from a shed-based industry' says researcher as the UK hedges its H2 strategy
- Reference: 1629216069
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/08/17/uk_government_hydrogen_strategy/
- Source link:
The government claimed the UK-wide hydrogen economy could be worth £900m by 2030, potentially £13bn by 2050. In the next 10 years the universe's most abundant element could decarbonise energy-intensive industries like chemicals, oil refineries, power and heavy transport by helping these sectors move away from fossil fuels, it claimed.
Light, energy-intensive and carbon-free "hydrogen-based" solutions could make up to 35 per cent of the UK's energy consumption by 2050, helping the nation meet its target of net-zero emissions by 2050, according to [2]the government paper .
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But navigation from the current state of the hydrogen industry to that worthy destination might require some tricky manoeuvres. [4]The vast majority of industrial hydrogen is extracted from natural gas [PDF] in a process that releases greenhouse gasses and requires energy, which often comes from carbon fuels.
[5]Dog eats UK government's Hydrogen Strategy homework just as summer recess arrives
[6]UK urged to choo-choo-choose hydrogen-powered trains in pursuit of carbon-neutral economic growth
[7]Titanium carbide nanotech approach hints at hydrogen storage breakthrough
[8]UK gets glowing salute from Bezos-backed General Fusion: Nuclear energy company to build plant in Oxfordshire
In theory, the simplest way to overcome this problem is to use renewable electricity to extract hydrogen from water using electrolysis – so called green hydrogen. The problem is, although it works in the lab, the process has yet to be industrialised on a scale comparable with other fuels in the global energy supply chain. Green hydrogen [9]received a fillip as researchers found methods to make electrolysis more efficient at lower capital costs.
An alternative is to continue to use natural gas as a source of hydrogen but to capture and store the methane and CO 2 byproduct, and use renewable energy to power the process. But a [10]recent study found making blue hydrogen was 20 per cent worse for the climate than just using fossil gas over its entire lifecycle.
Light on detail – and how are we producing it?
The UK government is hedging its bets, its strategy outlining a "twin track" approach to supporting multiple technologies including green and blue hydrogen production.
Critics have jumped on the plans for blue hydrogen. Doug Parr, the chief scientist for Greenpeace UK, told The Guardian that extracting large quantities of hydrogen from natural gas would lock the UK "into costly infrastructure that is expensive and … may be higher carbon than just burning the gas."
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Speaking to The Register , Malte Jansen, Imperial College London research associate, said: "We may have reached a point in the battling climate change where I wouldn't want to be dogmatic about one or another. But if either technology delivers and fixes to climate problems by 2050, then that's good."
While blue hydrogen faced the challenge of capturing CO 2 effectively and avoiding methane leakage, green hydrogen production was still maturing, he said.
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"The industry is transitioning from a shed-based industry to a full-blown, highly automated one. I'm not dismissing the sort of level of technical intricacy, but there's still a lot of steps in the production of electrolysis that involve manual labour that could be automated."
While the UK government commitment could help the industry invest and raise capital, as other nations release hydrogen strategies – Germany already has one for example – the balance is likely to be in favour of green hydrogen, Malte said.
"I do not see the same level of push on blue hydrogen, people are talking about it but not just quite on the same global scale with that same level of excitement as green hydrogen," he said.
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While it was a good start, the UK strategy needs more detail, Malte said.
But industries might have to wait a little longer for vital details. The strategy [15]was already delayed because of Parliament's summer recess.
What the government has now published is a public consultation on a preferred hydrogen business model leaving many pieces of the jigsaw yet to find their places.
These include how it might build a system similar to the offshore wind industry's Contract for Difference, which gave investors confidence despite fluctuating energy prices. At the same time, the government is consulting on the design of the £240m Net Zero Hydrogen Fund, which aims to support the commercial deployment of new low carbon hydrogen production plants across the UK. Details on that and the blue and green hydrogen strategy would emerge in 2022 on the government's production strategy. ®
Get our [16]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/21/uk_hydrogen_strategy_delayed/
[2] https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-government-launches-plan-for-a-world-leading-hydrogen-economy
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YRwxm69Qth@KCNlvtA@9aQAAANE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2021/689332/EPRS_BRI(2021)689332_EN.pdf
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/21/uk_hydrogen_strategy_delayed/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/24/uk_hydrogen_trains/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2021/01/07/hydrogen_storage_paper/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/18/uk_general_fusion/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/03/greener_hydrogen_via_water_splitting/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/03/greener_hydrogen_via_water_splitting/
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YRwxm69Qth@KCNlvtA@9aQAAANE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YRwxm69Qth@KCNlvtA@9aQAAANE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YRwxm69Qth@KCNlvtA@9aQAAANE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YRwxm69Qth@KCNlvtA@9aQAAANE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/21/uk_hydrogen_strategy_delayed/
[16] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Might be worse than burning coal
Absolutely agree, nuclear is the only valid solution to our energy needs, SMRs more so. This is proven technology as used in submarines and you don't see many submariners with two heads or other radiation issues.
Then we can talk about nuclear fission...
Re: Might be worse than burning coal
Blue Hydrogen is greenwashing on a massive. country-wide scale, and pretty much what I'd expect from the Tories.
I can't wait to see what sort of subsidy we'll be paying oil companies to extract exactly the same natural gas they're already extracting, for the privilege of losing 20% of the energy in the process. It's the perfect Conservative party exchange: lots of PR, massive payments to large industry, semblance of giving a fuck and the pieces rearranged without anything being achieved. This one really does my head in.
Re: Might be worse than burning coal
>you don't see many submariners with two heads or other radiation issues
PR containment fully operational, sir!
>Then we can talk about nuclear fission...
Haven't people been doing that for decades? Isn't talking the easy part?
Re: Might be worse than burning coal
Nah Nuclear fusion is easy so long as you stage it right... Doing something useful with it like running an electric oven (instead of say turning it to a shadow of meal) that's the hard part.
Nuclear icon because boom.
Re: Might be worse than burning coal
CCS is a joke and has, in Australia been a conduit for reckless government funding to fossil fuel companies. For all the $millions wasted there is little solid technology come out. Could have just ploughed all that money directly into planting trees, natures proven CCS and already had decades old forests doing their stuff.
Greenhouse gas
Hydrogen when burned produces the greenhouse vapour H2O. However, most of that greenhouse vapour in the world is produced by the sun shining on the oceans.
1KW per square metre will produce roughly a third of a gram per square metre per second. 8 hours effective sun per day over 30,000 by 4,000 kms means 40 million tons per day of H2O vapour.
Re: Greenhouse gas
>produces the greenhouse vapour H2O
Yes, I think because the public emphasis has been on CO2 etc. it will probably have passed many people by that the main greenhouse 'gas' today is H2O. The continued rise of CO2 levels is worrying for other reasons; it has been a few years since we passed the point at which oceans switched from released CO2 for cooling to releasing H2O.
Re: Greenhouse gas
The continued rise of CO2 levels is worrying for other reasons; it has been a few years since we passed the point at which oceans switched from released CO2 for cooling to releasing H2O.
Err.. what? Unless that was sarcasm.. But pre-Greenwash, sun & wind cause evaporation, causing ocean cooling. A process that continues and has virtually nothing to do with CO2.
Other than of course CO2 being the gas that keeps on giving, and has launched a thousand subsiidies. Everything from extreme CCS, like Econtricity turning CO2 into diamonds to ideas like Green vs Blue hydrogen.
But the good thing about that scam is it can be a displacement activity. 'Renewable' power is already too cheap to meter, so windmill operators can use idle time, like during winter blocking highs. They tend to bring prolonged periods of low temperatures, so producing H2 for heat will give wind farmers something else to sell. So UK energy will be even cheaper!
I'm sure the government will eventually work this out. The free market and all that.
Re: Greenhouse gas
My understanding is that water vapour in the atmosphere goes up with temperature, ie producing water vapour is unlikely to raise temperatures much on its own but it works as a positive feedback when the temperature goes up for other reasons.
This is where the modelling gets complicated, as it is necessary to know if you get more or less clouds and where.
This newfangled
...[enter your nascent technology of choice] may be alright in the lab, but it will never be economical/safe at mass scale. Blah blah blah...
When said by someone who actually knows what they are talking about the above statement is sometimes true. When it's spoken by an armchair expert like me it's usually ignorant bollocks.
KABOOM!
Many of us are old enough to remember the transition from coal gas to natural gas. One of the big issues was that coal gas can be smelled when it leaks, while natural gas is odourless. The solution adopted (and in place to this day) as to add smelly stuff to natural gas. This is what you notice when there's a gas leak and it's smelly enough that you notice it at gas concentrations way below explosive.
Hydrogen isn't even a molecule, there are no smelly molecules that'll do any more than settle out of it.
Couple that with the fact that Hydrogen is the very devil to get to stay inside anything (let alone underground pipework - that's just sheer insanity) and the Kaboom is a "when, not if" issue.
Re: KABOOM!
>Hydrogen isn't even a molecule
Hmmmm....
Hydrogen atoms are atoms. Hydrogen molecules are molecules, comprising two hydrogen atoms. Or has something changed since O Level Chemistry days?
Re: has something changed since O Level Chemistry days?
Well yeah : there are a lot less people who have their O-level in Chemistry.
Re: has something changed since O Level Chemistry days?
GCSE chemistry. Describe how two identical Hydrogen atoms get together into a single Hydrogen molecule and why society doesn't embrace this
'A' level: Describe how a Helium atoms feels about never hooking up with a partner and why it's life choices is valid.
Re: KABOOM!
Hydrogen stored as ammonia creates an excellent method to store and transport renewable energy for end use applications. CSIRO has been developing a membrane based process to convert hydrogen into ammonia.
No KABOOM!
Re: KABOOM!
“ CSIRO has been developing a membrane based process to convert hydrogen into ammonia.”
You could just attach a load of hydrogen to a bunch of carbon molecules, the more complex arrangements are even liquid at room temperature, even more complex arrangements are a true pain to ignite requiring lots of pressure and the right amount of O2 for them to finally combust, conditions being so extreme that a bucket of complex saturated hydrogen and carbon could put a fire out with no kaboom.
The flashpoint of diesel is ~55c so long as it’s colder than that it won’t fume and the fumes therefore won’t ignite. Petrol is ~23c and gas is already a gas!!
Any second now...
Folks at Penn State University have (seemingly) been on the verge of a huge, H2 break thru for 15+ years:
https://news.psu.edu/story/210444/2005/04/22/microbial-fuel-cell-high-yield-hydrogen-source-wastewater-cleaner
https://news.psu.edu/story/173806/2009/09/29/renewable-hydrogen-production-becomes-reality-winery
and many more:
https://www.google.com/search?q=penn+state+university+bacteria+to+produce+hydrogen
Might be worse than burning coal
After the recent study by Howarth et al. [1] on the carbon cost of 'blue' hydrogen, many questions are being raised about how much sense it even makes, and whether burning the natural gas directly doesn't make more sense. Taking leakage into account, as well as the inefficiencies of carbon capture, blue hydrogen might very well be worse than burning coal in terms of its effects on the climate. Less polluting probably, though.
There's also the thing that CCS has never been applied on this scale, and we still have to sort out small details like where we would be storing all of this captured CO2 and prevent it from simply leaking into the atmosphere during a careless moment or leak in whatever reservoir is picked.
As for green hydrogen, at this point there is only one realistic source of it, and that is from nuclear power. At least if we want to have significant amounts of it. That's why e.g. in Poland companies are looking at having SMRs installed to produce both electricity and hydrogen for industrial processes.
Industrial processes is highly likely where hydrogen will remain for the foreseeable future considering how much hydrogen is used by these processes, and how long it'll take for production to ramp up.
[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ese3.956