Guest essay by Eric Worrall
The Sydney Morning Herald thinks Australia’s Scott Morrison is making a big mistake, ignoring the imminent collapse in fossil fuel prices due to low cost green hydrogen.
Crunch time looming for Morrison on climate as the world looks to Australia to act
By Marian Wilkinson
July 12, 2021 — 8.02am…
Since last December, Scott Morrison has crab-walked towards a net zero by 2050 target. But he is coming under serious pressure from Australia’s most important allies to put up a credible 2030 target in Glasgow. Morrison has been unwilling to do that.
Morrison’s determination to stick to Australia’s weak, increasingly implausible 2030 target was thrust into the international spotlight at Biden’s climate summit in April. The prime minister was one of 40 world leaders, including Xi Jinping, who attended the virtual gathering. It was designed to vault the United States into a leadership role in the global climate negotiations, and in his opening remarks Biden made it absolutely clear he wanted deep global emissions cuts by 2030. “This is the decade we must make decisions that will avoid the worst consequences of a climate crisis,” Biden said. “We must try to keep the Earth’s temperature to an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius.”
…
“It’s difficult to imagine the United States winning the long-term strategic competition with China if we cannot lead the renewable energy revolution,” Blinken told reporters. “Right now, we’re falling behind. China is the largest producer and exporter of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, electric vehicles. It holds nearly a third of the world’s renewable energy patents. If we don’t catch up, America will miss the chance to shape the world’s climate future in a way that reflects our interests and values, and we’ll lose out on countless jobs for the American people.”
…
Australia risks being overrun in this clean energy race. If green hydrogen becomes competitive with natural gas by the end of the decade, the oil and gas industry will react by slashing prices, and Australian liquefied natural gas prices will plummet. As Fortescue Metals’ chairman Twiggy Forrest put it colourfully in his Boyer lecture, the result will be “like a knife fight in a telephone box”.
For now, the Morrison government is making a strategic bet that the energy transformation won’t happen this fast. It does not believe that China, let alone India, will be able to radically shift course this decade. This will put the 1.5 Celsius plans out of reach and curb the enthusiasm in developed countries for ambitious targets to cut emissions.
…
Read more: https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/crunch-time-looming-for-morrison-on-climate-as-the-world-looks-to-australia-to-act-20210706-p587dc.html
Natural gas – you poke a hole in the ground and capture the gas which gushes out.
Green hydrogen, you build expensive solar arrays, use uncompetitively expensive electricity to crack water, capture and compress the hydrogen. Or you use steam reforming, in which water mixed with coal or natural gas is heated and pressurised so much it burns, releasing vast quantities of CO2 which somehow have to be sequestered.
And then there is the difficulty of actually handling pure hydrogen – the cost of containing a gas with molecules so small, only high spec pipes can contain it, the risk of handling a gas which ignites easily over an extraordinary range of conditions, the danger of working with a gas whose flame burns so hot it is all but invisible.
I’m guessing we might have to wait a little longer than 2030, for green hydrogen to become price competitive.
Steam-methane reforming does not release “vast quantities” of CO2, but it releases the same amount of CO2 as simply burning the natural gas.
Steam-methane reforming proceeds in two steps. In the first step, the methane-steam mixture is heated to about 1400 F and reacted catalytically (and endothermically) as follows:
CH4 (methane) + H2O (steam) –> CO + 3 H2
The second step is the exothermic water-shift reaction at about 800 F:
CO + H2O –> CO2 + H2
After the two reaction steps, the CO2 / H2 mixture is separated using pressure-swing adsorption. The overall reaction is
CH4 + 2 H2O –> CO2 + 4 H2
This process is commonly used in petroleum refineries to obtain pure hydrogen used for desulfurization of heavy fuel oils, where the hydrogen is consumed by reaction with sulfur to form H2S.
If the hydrogen is simply burned, the reaction is
4 H2 + 2 O2 –> 4 H2O
The overall net reaction for steam-methane reforming plus burning hydrogen is
CH4 + 2 H2O + 2 O2 –> CO2 + 4 H2O
which is algebraically the same as that to burn methane:
CH4 + 2 O2 –> CO2 + 2 H2O
Since enthalpy is a state function (does not depend on reaction path), the net IDEAL energy yield for steam-methane reforming plus burning hydrogen is the same as that from burning methane.
Of course, this is a simplified, First Law of Thermodynamics (energy) analysis. The problems start with the Second Law (entropy) analysis, where any energy conversion process involving heat transfer results in energy losses to the cold side. For steam-methane reforming, the energy used to heat the initial mixture to 1400 F is not completely recovered in waste-heat boilers used to generate steam. There are also energy losses in the compression required for the pressure-swing adsorption hydrogen purification process, and the pumps required to pressurize boiler feed water. .
Bottom line: Using steam-methane reforming to produce hydrogen merely to be burned releases the same amount of CO2 as simply burning methane, but energy losses in the process reduce the net energy yield below that of burning methane. Rather than trying to build hydrogen-powered vehicles (a sort of rolling Hindenburg), we would get more energy for the same CO2 emissions by building vehicles powered by compressed natural gas (some cities use natural-gas-powered buses for mass transit).
So called French “far right” party (RN, formerly FN) went full H2 retard!
They are mostly far left morons, with a political position very close to the PCF (commie) leader in the 80ties, George Marchais.
They are often confused with a French Trump/MAGA party in France, because no mainstream French channel was willing to give accurate info on Trump. Our news TV/radio channels might be slightly more accurate than the Pravda of Stalin, but not that much.
SMH? I thought that stood for “Shaking my head.”
Hilarious how greens talk about prices.
When they know full well that we are moving into an Ecommunist command economy where prices bear no relation to supply or demand.
And with all the fun that flows from that.
I think Porsche has the only plan for “green” fuel that is even remotely viable. Of course it won’t win the day because it is carbon fuel and doesn’t fit the narrative, but sounds to my non-engineering self like it could work. UNLIKE solar and wind, etc.
I can tell you the exact date that hydrogen will become practical as transportation fuel- the 12th of Never.
Once again, kiddies, there is NO direct physical evidence that man made CO2 is the control knob for the planets’ temperature. None.
What was in the Hindenburg? Green hydrogen or that gas station stuff?