Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to the Aussie ABC, Australia’s government broadcast service, things will fall apart unless we ditch coal and start exporting climate friendly hydrogen to a hungry global market.
Australia could fall apart under climate change. But there is a way to avoid it
The Conversation By Ross GarnautFour years ago in December 2015, every member of the United Nations met in Paris and agreed to hold global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius, and as close as possible to 1.5C.
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I have spent my life on the positive end of discussion of Australian domestic and international policy questions.
But if effective global action on climate change fails, I fear the challenge would be beyond contemporary Australia. I fear that things would fall apart.
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Australia is by far the world’s largest exporter of iron ore and aluminium ores.
In the main they are processed overseas, but in the post-carbon world we will be best positioned to turn them into zero-emission iron and aluminium.
In such a world, there will be no economic sense in any aluminium or iron smelting in Japan or Korea, not much in Indonesia, and enough to cover only a modest part of domestic demand in China and India.
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A natural supplier to the world’s industry
With abundant low-cost electricity, Australia could grow into a major global producer of minerals needed in the post-carbon world, such as lithium, titanium, vanadium, nickel, cobalt and copper.
It could also become the natural supplier of pure silicon, produced from sand or quartz, for which there is fast-increasing global demand.
Other new zero-emissions industrial products will require little more than globally competitive electricity to create.
These include ammonia, exportable hydrogen and electricity transmitted by high-voltage cables to and through Indonesia and Singapore to the Asian mainland.
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In 2008 the comprehensive modelling undertaken for the Garnaut Review suggested the transition would entail a noticeable (but manageable) sacrifice of Australian income in the first half of this century, followed by gains that would grow late into the second half of this century and beyond.
Today, calculations using similar techniques would give different results.
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Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-06/australia-could-fall-apart-climate-change-theres-a-way-to-avoid/11673836
The hydrogen absurdity is based on the idea, promoted by academics, that there is an amazing business opportunity to use Australia’s globally competitive solar electricity to produce ammonia or hydrogen through electrolysis, which would be exported to Asia’s hungry energy markets.
Strangely businesses are not rushing in to exploit this amazing opportunity. No doubt there is a big oil conspiracy to suppress the baby hydrogen economy, which could be overcome with lots of government cash.
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Storage and transport of hydrogen is currently more complicated and expensive than for diesel and gasoline. The whole infrastructure for gas-oil, diesel, gasoline, etc. has been developed during the last 100 years. Transition to battery driven transport and hydrogen infrastructure in less that 100 years is most likely expensive and wasteful.
The question is also if production and use of hydrogen is not too decentralized to serve the Green agenda of putting the blue planet into green shackles, as Vaclav Klaus says.
Yeahbut… It’s amazing what you can do with zero cost (I know, I know) energy. But I do not support projects that are uneconomical in the present time. Bureaucrats do not understand economics.
Wow. 3 paragraphs and a whole lot of lifted text = “guest essay”
And it wasn’t “according to the ABC” it was according to Ross Garnaut, distinguished economist and specialized in climate economics.
Do you have any analysis at all to offer? Or just irrelevant snark?
Analysis wasn’t needed. Garnaut is just so obviously off the planet. Perhaps he has started living on Planet-B. You know, the one where all those ill-constructed computer models actually work.
“In 2008 the comprehensive modelling undertaken for the Garnaut Review suggested the transition would entail a noticeable (but manageable) sacrifice of Australian income in the first half of this century, followed by gains that would grow late into the second half of this century and beyond.”
TRANSLATION – Climate change is going to bring misery to people all over the world
-UNLESS-
You let me, and a few friends, bring misery to people all over the world, in the name of fending off all that other suffering stuff. We will assume control, and you’ll only have to suffer for us, instead. Deal?
“the post-carbon world” ? When did the environuts make the transition from hating carbon dioxide to hating carbon? Do they really want to get rid of carbon? Our human bodies are about 18% carbon. The same is true for most animals. Plants also contain lots of carbon and even DNA contains carbon. Life of any kind would not be possible without carbon. So what is the goal of demonizing carbon.? Do they want to end all life on earth?
“Four years ago in December 2015, every member of the United Nations met in Paris and agreed to hold global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius and as close as possible to 1.5 C.”
That’s a lie. The United States never agreed to any such thing. The Paris Accord was never submitted for ratification to the United States Senate. The Paris Accord was never voted on or ratified by the United States Senate. Maybe other countries agreed to the Paris Accord. The United States never did.
We can only speculate why President Obama never asked the Senate to ratify the Paris Accord. I’m sure he was aware that without Senate ratification the treaty has no standing in American law. The simplest explanation is that he was aware that the Senate would probably have rejected it.
Its the old story. Tell a lie often enough and after a while people believe it.
“I fear that things would fall apart.”
I believe things will improve beyond our wildest expectations.
Which statement has more validity?
I would argue for the ladder, based on global trends in technology and communication. The original statement seems to be based on, well, nothing. The is no argument supporting the statement. It is just thrown out there like a ‘given’. Why do we even read this stuff?
“Australia could fall apart under climate change”.
Wow, I didn’t realize Australia was so fragile. Fall apart in what way, I wonder? Have a nervous breakdown?
All the green and lefty snowflakes will melt under the extra 1 degree of heat and they will corrode the bedrock of Australia and it will break up and drift apart.
Hydrogen/ammonia is a good option if and when fossil fuels become too expensive, but to force a change now is foolishness, just like windmills and solar panels.
From first thermodynamic principles, the whole hydrogen thing is a scientific AND economic crock. Explained in some detail with many simple concrete examples in essay Hydrogen Hype in ebook Blowing Smoke.
Electrolysis is only 50% efficient and fuel cells, also 50% efficient, so you are reducing overall efficiency to only about what you get on the road today. But that doesn’t matter if you have an inexhaustible energy supply. And, plenty of waste heat to keep you warm on the road in winter.
Combustion byproduct of hydrogen is water vapor …..
Isn’t water vapor the most plentiful green house gas? Hmmm.
Ok, so the byproduct of Hydrogen used in fuel cells or directly in combustion is water vapor which is a main greenhouse gas.
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/climatesciencenarratives/its-water-vapor-not-the-co2.html
The author from the notorious The Conversation claims, “In such a world, there will be no economic sense in any aluminium or iron smelting in Japan or Korea …” Inasmuch as neither Japan or Korea are endowed with an abundance of coal or natural gas, the economics are currently questionable. With Japan decommissioning its nuclear reactor electricity base, it will soon not make sense to even recycle aluminum, let alone produce primary aluminum. Smelting is a high-risk activity with unreliable ‘renewable’ electricity. The author seems to have already forgotten about the special risks of under-sea power cables, such as the one between Tasmania and the mainland.
I have found very few articles in The Conversation to be rigorous and reliable. It is almost as if The Conversation has become the ‘journal’ of last resort for those who can’t get published elsewhere. Yet, the editors delete comments from those who point out the errors in articles. Perhaps it is to help maintain the fiction that the articles are of high quality.
Yes, it’s all sheer speculation. But the cars on Mars will have a hydrogen tank and a water recovery tank.
Oops I guess they’ll need and oxygen tank as well.
Heard Ross Garnaut prattling on with Aunty the other day about zero emissions and by whenever we can manage it. Problem was I’d just returned from a short caravan sojourn from Adelaide to Port Lincoln through our wheat and barley belt and the harvest was in full swing. Thousands of acres and the diesel harvesters in full swing with the diesel road trains carrying grain to the silos temporary storages and export terminals and here was Ross blathering on about the nirvana of zero emissions. Yes imagining Ross and Co plus all the Greenies off to the fields with scythes and pitchforks with all that cutting winnowing stooking and haystack making for the world’s hungry a la Pol Pot and the Great Leap Forward. What a bunch of loons.
Forgetting the sheer magnitude of the costs involved in replacing all that machinery outside the normal cycle of wear and redundancy, we are not within a bull’s roar of being able to run machinery with that level of power demand for the duty cycles required of them.
You’re confusing Chairman Mao (Great Leap Forward, which killed at least 45m Chinese peasants) with Pol Pot (the Killing Fields, which killed no more than 3m Cambodians). Quite a poor effort, really. History will credit Saint Greta with a far higher death toll (billions).
I love the Unicorn graphic, with the magical rainbow fart gas emanating from the beast’s sphincter and more than ready to power the Utopian green future. Just like hydrogen and fusion.
How’s China going with the peak coal prediction Ross?
http://theconversation.com/ross-garnaut-china-to-reach-peak-coal-for-electricity-by-2015-30868
Perhaps they’ve worked out producing things with hammers and sickles aint all it’s cracked up to be according to all the leftover Western hippy eggsperts living off the surplus value of fossil fuelled energy.
It would be ruinous to convert the US to hydrogen in ten years, but adding a few more distribution points in Beverly Hills wouldn’t be too bad. Might even make money.
As an engineer, I wish this hydrogen-thing would die, as it should. Even ignoring its dangers as a fuel, for the clueless that support it, hydrogen takes more energy to produce than it produces when burned.
Just checkin’ on ya, engineer. The lower heating value of hydrogen is 119.96 MJ/kg, for propane it is 46.35 MJ/kg. Now it may be that losses during production make up the difference, and they probably do, but hydrogen actually does burn hotter on a weight basis. Probably why they use it as rocket fuel.
pochas94: “Probably why they use it as rocket fuel.”
A major consideration is that the impulse imparted to a rocket is proportional to the exhaust velocity of the combustion product(s). The lighter the combustion molecule(s), the higher its exhaust velocity. You can’t get lighter than hydrogen.
pochas94
Condensers and storage tanks could be added for fuel-cell cars. However, that would increase the size of the vehicles (since water can’t be compressed and they will be drawing in oxygen), and it will increase the weight of the vehicle as the tank begins to fill up, decreasing the ‘gas’ mileage and affecting the performance. Any way you cut it, there are drawbacks to fuel-cell cars.
beng135
You said, “…, hydrogen takes more energy to produce than it produces when burned.” So, from an energy viewpoint, it only makes sense to use hydrogen to convert stationary power sources, such as electricity, to mobile power sources, or as a storage medium. But, the electricity has to be abundant, cheap, and universally available, as from nuclear or thermonuclear reactors.
https://energypost.eu/hydrogen-fuel-cell-cars-competitive-hydrogen-fuel-cell-expert/
If interested here are a couple of web sites I quickly found. Fuel cell cars are here today (in California). They are safe, have 250 – 350 mile driving range, refuel quickly, a kilogram of hydrogen cost $10.00 and you get 70 miles per kilogram. Hydrogen prices are expected to reach parity with gasoline as usage grows. The drawback is the present lack of fueling stations, and I don’t know about durability of the fuel cells.
https://www.caranddriver.com/honda/fcx-clarity
https://www.edmunds.com/fuel-economy/8-things-you-need-to-know-about-hydrogen-fuel-cell-cars.html
If the crazy liberals and greenies are as convinced that we need to drastically reduce the world’s population as they say they are, then what better way than to get them to agree to let humanity CO2 pollute itself into oblivion? In a contrary view, if we are heading into a global cooling touted by the solar physicists, then the libs and the greens should suppress warnings about the rapidly cooling climate, and when we are caught unprepared, huge segments of the population will either starve or freeze to death.
Hydrogen is quite infeasible for use as a liquid fuel – the problem is its inherent miniscule energy density and the means to get even moderate energy density.
Hydrogen is the lightest element and is a gas at room temperatures with a density of about 0.07g/litre. Its energy density is about 3.3 Wh/l (watt.hour/litre). If hydrogen is liquified this rises to 2760 Wh/l but it must be maintained at a temperature less than -240C and while this can be done in insulated containers, a lot of energy must be expended to cool it and maintain at this temperature. It can also be compressed to say 690 Atmospheres (~10,000 lb/in2 in the old units) but this also takes energy and requires massive storage vessels to resist this pressure. Both liquified and compressed Hydrogen will also consume energy in returning them to room temperature. (Compressed Hydrogen cools as it expands and must be returned to combustible temperature and liquid hydrogen must be boiled to gasify it.)
In reality it is fairly impractical to use Hydrogen to store and transfer energy and where Hydrogen is used as a chemical in an industrial process e.g. in reduction of Nickel from its ore, it is generated where it will be used.
There are commercially available metal hydride storage cylinders to provide storage for Hydrogen but these are extremely expensive and cannot deliver large volumes of hydrogen. For example one cylinder that stores 822 litre of Hydrogen at room temperature i.e containing 2 g of Hydrogen costs ~$5000. This is equivalent to the energy in about 250 ml of petrol. The cylinder and its contents weighs just over 5.5kg comparable to about 5 litre of petrol including its container.
It is not that the use of Hydrogen as a fuel is impossible but it is not practicable for general use as a medium for transport and storage of energy.
Attempting to couple hydrogen production with renewable energy generation compounds the problem because renewables (particularly wind and solar) are not produced consistently as they are subject to weather. Solar power is only available during the day (obviously) and their intensity will vary with cloud cover – it is not often realised that solar will reduce to as little as 10% of full capacity in cloudy weather and are subject to the angle of incidence of the sunlight that in most installations varies during the day. Wind power of course is also subject to weather and can be shut off in both low and high winds. Even hydropower is subject to weather although on a longer time scale than for wind and solar. Water is needed for hydropower and in drought it may be necessary to conserve water reserves for other uses (see Australia for this). Alternatively where hydropower is dependent on snow melt a snow drought can have the same effect.
In short the idea that we can export renewable energy as Hydrogen is a ppe dream in my view.
Apparently the writers of this proposal never saw an aluminum reduction pot freeze due to the lack of power.
Nor have they considered the cost ammonia produced by hydrolysis sourced hydrogen would produce mass starvation due to the inability to pay for the ammonia.
Nor have they considered that because most agricultural nitrogen is delivered as solid urea even poor farmers in remote locations can purchase, store, and use nitrogen fertilizers. The urea can’t be produced without the cheap (read free) carbon dioxide produced by the existing natural-gas based ammonia plants. Poor Asian countries would constitute the bulk of Australia’s hypothetical fertilizer. Just how do they expect poor farm communities in Asia exclusively to use gaseous ammonia to feed their own populations?