From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Funding to build the UK’s largest hydrogen production facility in Bradford has been confirmed by Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
Bradford Low Carbon Hydrogen, a redevelopment of a former gas storage site, is the largest of 11 green hydrogen projects set to receive a share of £2bn from the government.
The Bradford project, which already has planning permission, is expected to create up to 125 new jobs for the city.
It will have the capacity to produce 12.5 tonnes of hydrogen each day, removing around 800 diesel buses from West Yorkshire’s roads on a daily basis.
The project is being delivered by joint venture partners N-Gen and Hygen, with support from Bradford Council.
Hydrogen production will secure the future of Bradford’s Birkshall site which has a rich heritage stretching back almost 100 years, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.
It was previously home to three large gas holders, with the site producing and storing gas for use by the city’s homes and businesses.
Hydrogen does not emit carbon when burned, meaning it can support the decarbonisation of several sectors, including heavy transport such as HGVs and buses.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpvzkkeg2g1o
So for a hundred million or two, we will get enough hydrogen to power 800 diesel buses!
Bargain!
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Natural gas also does not emit carbon when burned. As usual, the Biased Broadcasting Corporation is totally ignorant of anything to do with science or engineering.
The article says: “Hydrogen does not emit carbon when burned, meaning it can support the decarbonisation of several sectors, including heavy transport such as HGVs and buses.”
It doesn’t say that natural gas does not emit carbon when burned. Also, are there many buses in Bradford, or anywhere ese, that are powered with natural gas? Natural gas seems to be pretty irrelevant to the situation.
When facts get downvoted on WUWT you know its probably time to leave the site.
Natural gas, propane and LPG are made up of hydrocarbons. As such, the chemical reaction when burned results in CO2.
CO2 is a compound composed of carbon and oxygen.
Elemental carbon is a solid at STP occurring in many forms including crystalline (diamond) and amorphous (carbon black).
CO2 shares none of the chemical or physical properties of elemental carbon. At STP, CO2 is a colorless, odorless, inert, non-toxic gas. It is produced by the metabolism of all eukaryotes and is the basis of all photosynthetic food chains.
Using the word carbon when CO2 is meant is a propaganda move intended to confuse people about the subject of discussion. We should push back whenever we hear it.
And they say they “follow the science”.
The purpose is to conflate CO2 with particulate carbon that was (pre-scrubber technology) a detrimental byproduct of burning coal. Technological advancements caged that demon so they needed to create a new one and emotionalize it to be equivalent to particulate carbon from coal.
Maybe… or maybe the author realized he could not write “Hydrogen does not emit greenhouse gasses when burned“, which is what he probably thought he would write. (she? I can’t find a name except Rachel Reeves, who seems not to be the author)
Cant say that. According to Mann et al water vapour is the biggest greenhouse gas there is :-)
I believe it contributes upto 85/89% to all warming…
Ah thanks Walter S. I wondered whether someone had switched all the definitions again. Yes all of what Walter wrote had been true as of yesterday afternoon.
Carbon dioxide contains carbon. When Carbon dioxide is emitted ipso facto carbon is emitted. Its not pernicious its just lazy speaking.
It is not mere laziness in the hands of propagandists
Philip that was an excellent point missed by some. But I think a broader point is that ALL of the energy sources mentioned plus coal, gasoline, etc produce water (H2O) which is supposedly responsible for some 75% of the 33 C warming that is claimed. No matter what they do, outside of nuclear, they produce what they want to stop producing, a GHG. But nobody would follow them if they claimed they wanted to get rid of water.
“It comes as a surprise to many, but water vapor is the most dominant greenhouse gas in the Earth’s atmosphere.” From JPL AIRS
Walter good point. I dislike the reference to “carbon” when CO2 is meant.
Natural gas (mainly Methane) does emit carbon dioxide when burned
CH4 + 2O2=> CO2 + 2H2O.
Natural gas is hydroCARBONs
What is disconcerting is that your false statement gets 22 upvotes presumably from people totally ignorant of anything to do with science or engineering.
Ever heard of soot?
“For a few hundred £million we can power 800 buses”…
I genuinely laughed at that, brilliant. I would be even happier if the idiots throwing this money down the drain understood the folly of their madness.
And who is going to be the ultimate payer of the hydrogen? The bus passengers?
“Tickets, please!”
“Bradford city centre, please.”
“That’ll be £200, sir.”
“Is that for a return ticket?”
“No, sir, the bus is on a one-way trip to bankruptcy…”
I believe bus fares are limited by statute, so it’ll be the taxpayer that picks up the bill.
All moneys spent by government ultimately come from the citizens.
That’s just the capital cost. I’m sure the operation will cost some money to run.
£250k per bus… future inflation could turn it into a good deal or an even worse one.
Um, who was it that thought this through, from start to finish, and decided to proceed with it anyway?
Pols (politicians), or engineers?
Certainly not engineers. It is just those who will believe anything and who are only now finding that not one serious climate forecast has EVER come to pass and that in reality there is nothing to be afraid of regarding climate change
As an engineer I feel comfortable saying everybody else makes dumb decisions because they want something different than me.
Table 12.12, P. 90, Ch.12, WGI, AR6. End of argument.
Whoever it was, delivery of the plant will be down to engineers who will happily take the money for their labours. If something is technically feasible and someone is willing to pay for it, then there will be engineers willing to deliver it. That’s business. Where a job is underwritten by public finance then the risk to the engineers involved if it proves to be an economic disaster is low.
I don’t know which is worse, a battery bus that explodes, or a hydrogen bus that explodes.
At least the battery bus gives you a pretty fire. !!
But it has electrolytes!
LOL!
Isn’t it odd that people think anything with hydrogen involved must somehow be dangerous yet right from way back in the 19thC we have had heating, lighting and cooking from town gas all piped through the streets and into houses. We need to remember that town gas was 60-70% hydrogen and many of the pipes used then are still in use some now lined some not.
Town gas was a mixture of hydrogen, methane, carbon monoxide, and other gases…
Early gas pipes were generally made of cast iron with socket and spigot joints which were packed with hemp and sealed with molten lead.
Yep, that’ll work 😉
Certainly worked in the house I was born and grew up in!
No methane in town gas IIRC. UK was pure carbon monoxide and hydrogen.Traces of hydrogen sulphide as well.Town gas, water gas, coal gas, producer gas all twists on the same theme.
You could catalyse to make methane. but mostly they didnt bother.
Typical composition of the Coal gas is as follows:
Pure hydrogen (H2) is the Houdini molecule. It can escape from anything, embrittles metals, and is a net consumer of energy. It is far more difficult to produce, transport, and use than hydrocarbons like natural gas and liquid fuels.
Pure H2 is more dangerous that natural gas, even that infused with hydrogen.
What! CH4 is something WITH hydrogen and it is dangerous when used incorrectly. Water is WITH hydrogen H2O but it doesn’t burn and is of less concern. All hydrocarbons have hydrogen in the formula. It isn’t the WITH part. It is the only that is of more concern as mentioned by James.
And it was FUCKING dangerous. It was death to breathe it – a favourite way to commit suicide – and explosions with lethal consequences were more common than today.
The only good thing was that you could fill balloons with it and attach fuses to them and let them off over suburban London
UFOS SPOTTED OVER HILLINGDON
Yep we were responsible for that
“and explosions with lethal consequences were more common than today.”
No they weren’t they were very rare, when town gas was replaced by natural gas in the UK explosions emerged as a problem and a national program was introduced to prevent them.
Hydrogen combustion, utilizing oxygen in air from the atmosphere, burns at a higher temperature than natural gas combustion, producing more nitrogen oxide, an actual pollutant. Don’t worry, though, as “emerging” technologies might solve this otherwise alarming problem.
Might?
Might not?
Burning H2 produces H20, the most powerful “greenhouse” gas ever.
Plus
“Access to sufficient water supplies is essential and may need desalination plants as green hydrogen produces concentrated brine as waste, that needs treatment before release.”
National Engineering Centre & Royal Academy of Engineering ‘The Role of Hydrogen in the Net Zero Energy System’ (September 2022)
DA, not sure the quoted part is presented honestly. A set of mostly true statements connected in plausibly deniable cause and effect sentence structure. For example, explaining what this one phrase means would take a few paragraphs to do right:
“green hydrogen produces concentrated brine as waste”
The ideas behind the phrase are doubtless justified, but the phrase itself is not correct without the ideas.
The bias here is quite unbelievable. Reeves’ budget is far, far worse than Liz Truss’ minibudget, but that’s ok; apparently; It’s a greenish budget with lots more cash for mad Red Ed. In fact Reeves’ budget has notched up one suicide already:
John Charlesworth, 78, was found dead at home in Barnsley, South Yorkshire on October 29, the day before the Budget. It was claimed that Mr Charlesworth had been “eaten away” by the thought of his family losing their £2 million estate, which had been in the family for nearly 70 years. And now, his son Jonathan, 46, has admitted: “I’m not sure you could publish what I’d say to (Keir Starmer). He’s got blood on his hands. Adding that the PM is “totally destroying an industry we rely on.”
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/starmer-farmer-son-took-his-life-fearing-budget-inheritance-tax-raid/
Logic and common sense have left the building and are not expected to return for ~5 years..
Story tip
American energy firm pulls out of Labour’s high-tax Britain – ‘Uneconomic!’https://www.gbnews.com/news/american-energy-firm-pulls-out-of-high-tax-britain-uneconomic
“clean energy superpower”
An oxymoron if ever there was.
Wouldn’t it be more sensible to use the first one to prove the value of this, instead of building 11 failed projects in parallel? Oh, sorry, the UK doesn’t do sensible these days.
It hasn’t done sensible for the last 30 years or more.
A apt name perhaps? Hindenbus 😊
How is the hydrogen produced? Will electricity from renewables be used by electrolysis cells?
Or will they extract it from nat. gas?
Their website says electrolysis – presumably from wind/solar. 12.5 tonne/day would require a steady 20 MW of power so they’d need to have ~100 MW of name plate capacity available. Wonder if the cost of the power sources is included in the capital budget. Not sure how they’d keep up during cloudy low wind weather stretches. Probably tap in to the FF grid or something. Just another green boondoggle that will collapse once the subsides end.
Thanks Rick C for doing the actual research.
12.5 mt per day across 125 jobs. That makes it 100 kg per day/job.That is going to be very expensive hydrogen especially after the Reeves budget fiasco. At £75 k per job that is going to cost best part of £9.4 million to produce 4500 mt of hydrogen. That costs around £2100 for wages/ benefits for each tonne of hydrogen produced. Utter bonkers.
As opposed to the £1,600 cost of 1,000 litres of diesel which has a much higher energy density. Do these idiots believe that a bus will go as far on a kilo of hydrogen as it will on a litre of diesel?
How much of that £1,600 is for the diesel and how much is for tax? I’m sure it doesn’t cost nearly that much to produce diesel fuel.
You think the govmint won’t start taxing hydrogen once it’s being used more widely?
My point is that diesel is much cheaper to produce than hydrogen. The tax in England is a killer.
+1 for thinking cost per mile.
Geez, if they’re going to get rid of 800 buses a day, how many buses are in West Yorkshire now?
It’s new math.
They remove 800 buses on one day with hydrogen. The hydrogen is used up in one day, so the produce more hydrogen to remove the same 800 buses. Rinse, spin, repeat.
OT
“Trump on Climate Change”
Expect the price of building factories, etc, to come down as Trump starts to peal away regulations. The current permitting and DEI regs for contractors has been a major hurdle for construction. Not to say that hydrogen will replace anything. Just that the costs of building facilities will no longer be astronomical. The electric charging debacle under Biden was caused b a combination of overzealous environmental regs and DEI requirement in RFPs.
Another friggen waste of good money that will further impoverish the UK people, which are as docile as sheep,
The farmers, recently, seem to disagree they are sheep.
From what I heard this morning, the farmers have some cunning plans which even the dumbest government minister won’t be able to ignore.
THE HYDROGEN ECONOMY WILL BE HIGHLY UNLIKELY
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/the-hydrogen-economy
As part of the quest of having energy sources that produce near-zero CO2 emissions, energy systems analysts have looked at hydrogen as one such source. They see hydrogen as a possible fuel for transportation.
In California, the hydrogen economy movement has received support, in the form of subsidies and demonstration projects, from the state government and environmental groups, often supported and financed by prominent Hollywood actors.
Current Hydrogen Production
Hydrogen is used by the chemical, oil and gas industries for many purposes. The US produces about 11 million short tons/y, or 19,958 million kg/y.
At present, about 95% of the H2 production is by the steam reforming process using fossil fuels as feedstock, mostly low-cost natural gas. This process emits CO2.
Hydrogen for Transportation
Proponents of H2-powered fuel cell vehicles, FCVs, in California think the hydrogen economy will be the future and a good place to start to reduce CO2 emissions from internal combustion vehicles, ICVs, would be to have near-zero-emission vehicles.
Here are examples comparing the fuel cost/mile of an FC light duty vehicle, an E10-gasohol IC vehicle, and an EV:
– Honda Clarity-FCX, using electrolytic H2 in a fuel cell, mileage about 68 mile/kg, or 14.8 c/mile, at a price of $10/kg at a fueling station in California. About $7/kg is electricity cost, and $3/kg is station cost. The H2 is not taxed. The average commercial electricity rate in California is 13.41c/kWh, which ranks 7th in the nation and is 32.9% greater than the US average rate of 10.09 c/kWh.
http://www.airproducts.com/Company/news-center/2017/03/0306-air-products-california-fueling-stations-offering-hydrogen-below-$10-per-kilogram.aspx
http://www.electricitylocal.com/states/california/los-angeles/
– Honda Accord-LX, using E10-gasohol, mileage about 30 mile/gal, or 8.3 c/mile, at a price of $2.50/gal at a gas station in California; this price includes taxes, fees and surcharges.
– Tesla Model S, using 0.38 kWh/mile, at user wall outlet, includes charging and vampire losses of batteries, or 7.6 c/mile, at a price of 20 c/kWh, at user electric meter; this price includes taxes, fees and surcharges.
Electrolytic H2 Production
H2 fueling stations can produce electrolytic H2 at high pressure on site with electricity at commercial electric rates, or H2 can be produced by central plants with electricity at industrial rates (typically lower than commercial rates) and delivered by truck to fueling stations.
The turnkey cost of fueling stations is well over $1 million per site, whereas a multi-bay EV charging station costs about $250,000 per site.
In early 2017, there were (25) H2 fueling stations in California.
FCV drivers must go to an H2 station to refuel.
EV drivers have flexibility, as they mostly charge at home, or at work, or at public places, such as shopping malls.
Read further by opening the top URL
And the NECESSARY electricity comes from where, exactly?
“Hydrogen does not emit carbon when burned, meaning it can support the decarbonisation of several sectors, including heavy transport such as HGVs and buses.”
And all the carbon dioxide will be emitted by the green hydrogen sector.
NO MENTION of Nitrogen Oxides produced …
They can make the Hydrogen in Asia and ship it to London in plastic coated Aluminum cans?
How many solar panels does it take to make one Aluminum can?
How does a London bus driver pronounce “Aluminum”?
London bus drivers wouldn’t know that Americans can’t spell or pronounce aluminium.
It’s actually a bit more complicated than that. Having lived both sides of the pond, getting Degrees in Chemistry in England and then all of my professional life in Canada and the USA, I feel safe in saying that my American colleagues pronounce many words badly (“processes” for example), but the spelling of “aluminum” is debatable.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/aluminum-vs-aluminium#:~:text=The%20American%20Chemical%20Society%20(ACS,and%20aluminium%20used%20everywhere%20else.
Sorry for being a bit of a pedant, but when you’re a science nerd, even pedantry can be interesting.
I still don’t understand why you put a screen on your vehicle where the windshield should be and not in the window openings of your homes.
It would probably be better to mine it on the sun. They could do it at night.
I live about 12 miles from this facility. I just hope I’m out of range when it goes bang. Another thought. Can diesel engined busses run on hydrogen or will they all need new engines?
The thought of compression ignition on hydrogen for some reason fills me with horror!
You can convert a petrol (gas) engine to natural gas. My guess is that’s how they would do it. Storing the hydrogen safely is a huge challenge.
Might use gloplug rather than spark ignition. That’s what the old town gas engines often had
CO2 is not carbon. So a clear and valid definition of decarbonization is seriously needed.
CO2 is carbon. With a pair of oxygen atoms attached.
So using the same argument why not refer to water as oxygen?
These people don’t even have a clear and valid definition of Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity – the main unit of climate change (I think).
Hydrogen facility will definitely open in Bradford
The question is, how long it will be open ?
The question is how long will Bradford be open?
It cuts through the red tape associated with redeveloping a city centre, as some people joked when the IRA blew up the centre of Manchester.
I watched Day After Tomorrow, Soylent Green, and Omega Man back to back.
Funny. Omega Man (1971) is what they wanted us to think Covid was all about.
Day After Tomorrow and Soylent Green are the two, concurrent, yet opposing futures we are doomed to face due to CO2.
FYI, Soylent Green (1973) was set in 2022.
Day After Tomorrow (2004) was based on a SciFi book, The Coming Global Superstorm published in 1999.
If you can’t scare them one way, keep trying until you find a way that works.
Books making a resurgence:
Fahrenheit 451
1984
Let us not forget Logan’s Run (especially the movie) which is what they want human society to become.
We are being hit in all directions.
Brave New World was less exciting than 1984, but fits the state of the world more closely. e.g. We did not need an authoritarian dictator to monitor our thoughts in secret, we freely blather them over the Internet to anyone who will listen to us.
If the fossil fuel emissions from a diesel bus is the issue why not use diesel made from
trees via Fischer-Tropsch? Not perfectly non fossil fuel but close. Lots of dead trees
in my neck of the woods, the FS is planning on burning massive amounts of dead trees
over the next few years as a management policy.
“Hydrogen does not emit carbon when burned”
What a strange sentence. Makes one wonder things like “what are elements?” and “what does burned mean?”.
No mention of where the Hydrogen for this facility will come from? Odd.
Hydrogen is going nowhere, you would get more returns from a betting shop.
Shares in Foresight Environmental Infrastructure (FGEN) and HydrogenOne Capital Growth (HGEN) have tumbled to all-time lows after HH2E, a German green hydrogen developer that both funds back, announced a fall into administration after failing to find financing.
Hydrogen Capital Growth crashed 20%, or 7.8p, to 30p after writing off an £11m investment in HH2E that accounted for 8% of net assets.
This leaves the shares at a 67% discount to net asset value (NAV) with a market value of just £48m. Two days ago the company reduced its NAV per share by 2.7% to 100.8p, but made no reference to the problems at HH2E.
That implies there are 800 hydrogen-powered buses just waiting to go into service. I have doubts… and what’s going to happen to the diesel buses?
Wouldn’t that be offsetting just the weight of 800 diesel buses from West Yorkshire roads?
I don’t see where the news release actually said it was enough to power them, nor how much electrical power would be required for the plant to meet its theoretical capacity. How much will it cost to produce 12.5 MTonnes/day?
How many hydrogen buses and HGVs are there in Bradford? How much will 800 hydrogen buses cost? How many UK jobs will be lost to producing 800 buses in Shenzhen?