Reposted from NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
OCTOBER 10, 2021
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
Welcome to the real world, Lord!!
Using hydrogen to replace natural gas as a green alternative in boilers is “pretty much impossible”, a minister has admitted, despite the Government planning major trials over the coming decade.
The Government’s plan currently targets the production of 5GW capacity by 2030, which it hopes to use for industry, transport and potentially home heating.
A village will be selected to trial hydrogen in its pipes as a heating alternative by 2025. This will involve the conversion of the local grid and the replacement of devices such as boilers, meters and hobs. A town-scale trial is planned by 2030.
Energy secretary Kwasi Kwarteng has suggested that all homes with gas boilers could potentially be switched to hydrogen, depending on the outcome of trials.
But Lord Martin Callanan, a junior minister in the business and energy department, has admitted that low-carbon hydrogen is unlikely to become a viable alternative.
Describing himself as a “little bit of a hydrogen sceptic”, Lord Callanan said: “If I’m being honest the idea that we could produce enough hydrogen at reasonable cost to displace mains gas is pretty much impossible.
“Technology might get us there, there might be some scientific breakthrough. But it’s more likely that it will end up being used by trains and HGVs, for some industrial processes, rather than for home heating.
“But the official policy is we will see how the market develops and take a view in the mid-part of this decade as to whether it will play a significant role in the home.”
The Government wants hydrogen to provide enough energy for 67,000 homes, or 0.2 per cent of domestic heating demand, by 2030, rising to around 10 per cent by 2035, which could involve blending it into the natural gas grid.
Hydrogen can be made either using methane, with the emissions captured and stored, classed as “blue”, or through electrolysis, considered “green” if renewable electricity is used.
Blue hydrogen is not considered to be a zero-carbon energy source, and requires carbon capture technology that is yet to be deployed at scale.
Creating green hydrogen for homes would use six times as much electricity as direct heat electrification from heat pumps, according to a study last year.
Lord Callanan acknowledged that moving to green heating in homes is “one of the biggest political challenges that we are faced with as a government.”
“It doesn’t get that much publicity, but it’s something that will cost us an enormous amount of money over the next 15 to 20 years.”
The comment that creating green hydrogen for homes would use six times as much electricity as direct heat electrification from heat pumps is an interesting one.
As we know, the running costs of heat pumps is already higher than for a gas boiler. This study indicates that hydrogen boilers could be at least six times higher.
More Unicorn farts. Boris is throwing turds at the wall and seeing what sticks. Nothing he says has any real conviction, or chance of working actually.
Flying pigs are pretty much impossible too.
Nah, flying pigs is easy – landing them in one piece is the impossible bit!
Not really impossible. Just stupid.
More like impossible AND stupid.
Very powerful observations:
The fundamental flaw in the idea of a hydrogen-based energy economy. Being highly reactive, elemental hydrogen, H2, is found in only small quantities in nature on the earth’s surface but is present in a very wide range of compounds.
In other words, the hydrogen is not free for the taking, but rather is already combined with something else; and to separate the hydrogen so that you have free hydrogen to use, you need to add energy. Once you have added the energy and you have the free hydrogen, you can burn it.
But that’s where the Second Law of Thermodynamics comes in. Due to inevitable inefficiencies in the processes, when you burn the hydrogen, you get back less energy than you expended to free it up. No matter how you approach the problem, the process of freeing up hydrogen and then burning it costs more energy than it generates.
Yes that’s true. But there need to be ways of storing energy. I think using windmills and especially solar to produce hydrogen directly is the best use for them. That way their energy is can be used anytime as this way it is their average output that is used, not their instantaneous output.
Hydrogen can be made directly using nuclear reactor heat, without converting to electricity first. The process uses a catalytic cycle and designs are on the market already.
I too am sceptical about using hydrogen in domestic boilers but I am quite keen on hydrogen for vehicle fuel, via a 60% efficient fuel cell.
If you’ve got the nuclear reactor thermal capacity to do pink hydrogen, whynot just make more electricity directly? Sure, hydrogen can be used as a storage medium, but even for transportation, the cryogenic storage of LH2 presents serious challenges.
Natural gas is the ultimate and dependable renewable. It burns clean, burning four hydrogen atoms for each carbon atom. It is already being produced (and used from) landfills and sewage treatment plants. Hog farms produce a lot of it that is not used, All of decaying biomass is a potential source. Even coal is a potential source. Then there is the fact that nature has already produced more than we can use for many years. Burning one carbon atom along with four hydrogen atoms isn’t going to end our world.
The fact that hydrogen is on the table and nuclear isn’t tells the tale. A scattering of nuclear won’t cut it. If society is serious about an electric future, it’s nukes, everywhere.
That, or we all go back to burning wood, kerosene lamps and candles, and cooking in the fireplace, Wharfplank. Not a joke, even if it was a joke once upon a time.
The complete resistance to nuclear power by the Greens betrays what the claime scam is really about.
Hint: it’s not climate.
Well it’s simple really. You make the hydrogen in summer so you can make power in winter when you really need it-
Make hydrogen in summer to power Britain in winter, networks say (msn.com)
“One of the biggest challenges in renewables is how to store the energy that is produced.”
Yeah I know it’s a minor hiccup but they’ll come up with something as tech changes all the time just like Windows 95/98/XP/7/10/11and we all adapt and move on sillys 🙂
Hydrogen can’t be stored in geologic traps (salt formations, etc) like methane. And the largest H2 storage tank in the world sits at Cape Caneveral In Florida for NASA to use as rocket fuel. That world’s largest LH2 tank at Pad 39B has just been finished. The new Pad 39B liquid hydrogen tank will hold 1.25 million gallons of cryogenic LH2. A modern GE LH2 gas tyrubine engineered to run on hydrogen requires about 100,000 gallons/hour to produce 500 MW each hour of operation.
So that world’s largest tank (1.2 million gallons) would last a whopping half day to power a medium size city for 12 hours, then it is empty.
“Lord Martin Callanan, a junior minister in the business and energy department, has admitted that low-carbon hydrogen is unlikely to become a viable alternative.’
As opposed to high carbon hydrogen ?
For the life of me I do not know why solar direct water heating is not being promoted up the wazoo . 40 % of a homes energy costs are for water heating , thats huge ! And solar water heaters are very efficient , far more efficient than PV panels and 10 times more robust and long lasting . I know they will easily supply all the hot water for a household through all of summer and many days during winter .
Hydrogen for domestic use has at least two major difficulties to overcome: H2 is extremely explosive and cannot be contained in most readily available piping systems. I would like to see any proposals to overcome these.