Tom Baxter, University of Aberdeen
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”.
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?
Let’s examine some of the claims.
A heated debate
The government prefers what it calls “a twin track approach”, meaning both blue and green hydrogen will be used to phase out fossil fuels. Blue hydrogen fuel is produced from natural gas – a fossil fuel which currently provides most of the UK’s water and space heating – but the CO₂ that would usually be emitted is captured and stored underground.
Read more: Blue hydrogen – what is it, and should it replace natural gas?
A recent report cast doubt on the green credentials of blue hydrogen, though. The research suggested that, because of methane emissions throughout the supply chain, blue hydrogen may actually be 20% worse for the climate than simply burning natural gas for heat and power. It doesn’t appear that the government’s strategy has recognised these issues or explained how they might be avoided.
Green hydrogen meanwhile is produced by splitting water molecules using electricity. A lot of energy is lost in this process, and so on average, the cost of hydrogen per kilowatt-hour (kWh) will be greater than the electricity it is derived from.
Is green hydrogen a better option for UK households than electrifying the heating system with heat pumps in homes? Green hydrogen bills are likely to be three to five times higher than this alternative. That’s because heat pumps take 1 kWh of electricity and convert it to around 3 kWh of heat, whereas green hydrogen takes 1 kWh of electricity and converts it to around 0.6 kWh of heat.
The strategy also proposes blending natural gas supplies to home central heating systems with 20% blue or green hydrogen. This, it’s reported, will help reduce CO₂ emissions from heating by 7%. No bad thing, but are there better ways to use that blue or green hydrogen?
Around 1 kg of hydrogen blended into the natural gas supplying a boiler could save 6 kg of CO₂. The UK currently produces around 700,000 tonnes of grey hydrogen a year, used to make fertiliser production and to remove sulphur from oil. This type of hydrogen is produced from natural gas too, but unlike blue hydrogen, the CO₂ emissions aren’t captured. For every kg of grey hydrogen produced, the resulting emissions are around 9kg. So roughly, grey hydrogen produces six million tonnes of CO₂ annually. Would it not be better for the UK to use that blue or green hydrogen to replace current grey hydrogen production than using it less effectively in blends with natural gas?
The strategy claims that hydrogen could be providing between 20% and 35% of the UK’s energy by 2050. That is at odds with the Climate Change Committee – a body of experts which advises the government on climate policy. In their most recent carbon budget, which projected UK progress towards net zero emissions in the 2030s, their main pathway forecast around 14% of total energy demand being satisfied by hydrogen by 2050.
By comparison, the EU’s modelled pathways for reaching net zero by 2050 range from zero hydrogen use to 23%, with the average around 12%. Even industry projections like Shell’s forecast only 2% hydrogen use by 2050. The upper range of the UK government’s projected hydrogen use in 2050 lacks credibility, in my opinion.
Then there are influential groups lobbying parliament on behalf of hydrogen, such as the Hydrogen Taskforce, which represents members with a vested interest in the fuel who are set to receive a significant amount of business from this strategy. But is what is good for business good for UK consumers and taxpayers?
The UK government has failed to provide comparative evidence that hydrogen is a preferred net-zero route in many applications. Only by comparing the paths to net zero in a way that considers the complete life cycle of hydrogen fuel, quantifying the impacts on people, profit and the environment can the case for hydrogen be made accurately. That evidence is lacking in this strategy.
Tom Baxter, Honorary Senior Lecturer in Chemical Engineering, University of Aberdeen
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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UK 2019 renewable energy production was 119 TwH. At 50kWH per kg using electrolysis that will make 2.38 million tonnes of hydrogen. Hydrogen has a calorific value of about 130MJ/kg compared to diesel’s 45.5 so that hydrogen is equivalent to 7 million tonnes of conventional fuel (assuming a hydrogen engine is as efficient as a diesel or petrol engine- it won’t be). The UK uses 36 million tonnes of fuel on the roads every year.
If we relied on renewables and used all the renewable energy we have now for road transport then we would only travel 20% as much as we do now. That means that transport has to be prioritised and there is no more private transport.
You will have nothing and you will not be happy.
Wrong. A fuel cell is 60% efficient, three times that of an internal combustion engine.
I don’t want to join in this childish promotion of H2 as a wonder fuel; I want to reassure readers in the USA that not all UK citizens are complete morons, just the politicians!
no, just the ones not taking any notice of the climate change already impacting the UK.
Climate change continues to be evident across UK – Met Office
Griff, I note that in that report, the authors are claiming that every element of observed weather has changed / is changing from previous times.
(big surprise there. not.)
What they don’t tell us though, is what conditions they believe constitute the “ideal” weather / climate profile .
So how is society in any way better off for the production of this report?
Ah yes, the old anything different from last year must have been caused by CO2 line of magic thinking.
“The last 30-year period (1991-2020) has been 0.9°C warmer than the preceding 30 years (1961-1990). ”
“the UK has been on average 6% wetter over the last 30 years (1991-2020) than the preceding 30 years (1961-1990)”
The “problem” is so imperceptible to humans that unless there was a huge industry telling us 24/7 that the sky is falling in….. nobody would have noticed, including numbnuts like you.
During this period of “climate change™” of course crop yields have doubled:
The greening of the UK continues unabated, as does improvements in air quality and the protection of UK flora and fauna.
Stop your alarmist scaremongering, it’s ridiculous.
That depends on the outside air temperature.
Most home heat pumps are able to drive the temperature of the working fluid down to 40 to 50 degrees F below room temperature.
When the indoors temperature is 70F, that means the fluid going through the outside unit is 20F.
When the outdoor temperatures are 60F, that means a 40 degree difference. Lots of heat available to absorb.
On the other hand, when outdoor temperatures are 40F, then there’s only a 20F difference, and the heat pump has to work a lot harder in order to extract less heat.
Mark,
HPs have to work a lot harder to produce whatever heat they can, and that heat production decreases as it gets colder. All that is happening, when your house needs the most heat.
And it’s worse for underground heat pumps, because they cool the ground for days or weeks, making them less and less efficient throughout the winter.
Not true.
My brother in Norway was mandated to put ground source heat pumps by the government
Now he has two 35,000 Btu/h, heat pumps, each with two heads, for his house and a 1,000-ft deep well.
The house is warm in winter and cool in summer.
He paid $95,000 for the turnkey system
He gets around the problem cited by ZZW by getting in contact with a lot more ground.
As you point out, $95,000 to build. That system will never pay back the additional cost.
Mark,
Simple heat transfer calculations by an engineer, determines how deep a well has to be to avoid frost conditions, and thus have a functioning system.
Most people who install these HP systems have not a clue, they do not involve a proper engineer, and end up giving heat pumps bad press they do not deserve
The net reaction in a steam methane reformer is CH4 + 2H2O > CO2 + 4H2. Since the CO2 stream is a concentrated byproduct of the reformer, it facilitates capturing and sequestering of the CO2. There really are no technical obstacles to using H2 as a burner fuel or as the fuel for fuel cell cars. It’s just that the whole process is very uneconomic compared to burning the NG directly either as burner fuel or as automobile fuel.
The technical obstacles involved in using H2 as a fuel for burners have been spelled out repeatedly.
Basically it is the difficulty or storing or moving H2 safely.
And, repeatedly wrong, but please provide substance.
Nuclear for electricity, natural gas for heating and cooking and a sprinkle of coal and hydro hear and there….what a wonderful world it would be.
This will be a disaster and the clue is right there in the words ‘world-beating’. Everything the UK government labels ‘world-leading’ will be so only in it being FUBAR.
I always feel a bit ambivalent about the carbon capture&storage debate.
Even if it could be done on an appropriate scale, it is still a huge waste of energy and money. If CO2 is believed to be a problem, then why is burying it underground any better than burying nuclear waste? It will last far longer than the radioactive hazard from untreated radio-isotopes.
On the other hand, should I accept deceiving the ignorant about carbon capture&storage, because the supporters may then be dissuaded from doing something even worse (which is where we seem to be headed at the moment)?
Steam reduced hydrogen is a high-carbon fuel, compared to methane/natural gas, which is available, cheap, and the source of most forms of refined hydrogen. The best low carbon fuel is natural gas.
In the far-off future when there are so many people and power usage is so great that all power must be produced locally, then nuclear will be the only option. Then hydrogen will be produced to levelize power production. Battery cars will be useful as grocery getters but hydrogen will be needed if you are going anywhere.
The more you know about hydrogen the more you recognize that it is not a source of energy and is a terrible way to store energy.
Queensland Government, Australia, has just announced purchase of ten Toyota hydrogen fuel cell cars, the first of many for the government fleet the media release stated.
https://www.toyota.com.au/mirai
Meanwhile in New South Wales Electric Vehicles are being purchased for the government fleet, and buses.
It’s all taxpayer’s monies they are playing with of course.
As a former employer I think this is driven by former BP execs and green crazies. BP wanted to push hydrogen from long ago.
Having watched invisible hydrogen fires slice A 2×4 in seconds and the aftermath of a hydrogenation unit explosion, no thanks.
“Petroleum use and emissions are lower than for gasoline-powered internal combustion engine vehicles. The only product from an FCEV tailpipe is water vapor but even with the upstream process of producing hydrogen from natural gas as well as delivering and storing it for use in FCEVs, the total greenhouse gas emissions are cut in half and petroleum is reduced over 90% compared to today’s gasoline vehicles.”
https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-natural-gas-reforming#
One cannot avoid concluding we are living in an era of collective insanity.
Here we have people proposing to use a gas that is not available in any quantity, to be transmitted on a network which cannot safely carry it, to boilers which cannot burn it, which will be retrofitted with non-existent boilers that can burn it, to be installed by a non-existent work force.
All this with the aim of reducing global CO2 emissions, when it will not in fact reduce UK emissions, and if it did, would not reduce global ones.
To see how insane this is, just think about a typical London or other city street, at the moment supplied with gas from a main grid. How exactly are you going to convert this street to hydrogen? The whole street is going to have to move at once. You are not going to have dual transmission networks. That means tearing up the streets and laying safe piping into the houses.
Fine, done that, now you have to replace all the gas hobs and boilers in the street before switch day. Every single one. This means technicians and expense of course.
But now comes an even greater problem. How do you get the hydrogen to the particular street? The network that feeds the street supplies many other streets in the area. That network is going to have to be upgraded too, more digging up of streets. When you have done that, and you use it to carry hydrogen to our own street, its going to be carrying hydrogen to a huge area. And then, how do you get the hydrogen to the local network which feeds the street? You are not going to have an entirely new long distance feeder grid, are you?
This cannot be done safely, and I doubt if it can be done at all. Its an absolutely huge project. To change the gas supply from one kind of fuel to a different and incompatible fuel, and to do it safely, is huge, even if all you have to do is change out the appliances which use it.
The UK did move in the past from coal gas to natural gas. This involved converting all the appliances. It took about 8 years, and at the peak they were converting or renewing about 2 million a year. Most households then had several devices. Now they would mostly have only boiler and/or hob, so that might be a bit less demanding.
But the huge difference is that when they switched last time, the pipeline network needed no changes. You can carry natural gas just as safely as coal gas over the same pipes. This isn’t true with hydrogen.
Even without converting the distribution network, this was still an enormous project. But when you have to rebuild the distribution network as well it reaches the levels of the impossible, at least in the time periods the UK Government is talking about.
And that is assuming you can even find a source of hydrogen to supply the new network and the new appliances. No one has any idea or plans for how to do that.
They have gone mad.
Feel better? I believe initially hydrogen will be used as a transportation fuel only.
What makes you think it will work any better for that? Just burn the natural gas you start with. Holland has been doing that for decades. They don’t allow the vehicles in underground car parks, though.
Think about the implications for hydrogen – higher pressure, more explosive, more prone to leaks….
I worked great for transportation for airships. Just ask the Hindenburg.
Heat pump converts 1kWh e-power to 3kW heat is balderdash.
It doesn’t convert it, it pumps it. It’s not balderdash. If you make statements like this you are just showing yourself up and exposing this site to ridicule from its opponents.
Do some research into the topic please.