From David Turver’s Substack EIGEN VALUES
Introduction
We have covered in earlier articles how the UK has the highest electricity prices in the developed world and very high gas prices compared to international competitors like the US and Canada.
The problem of high energy prices has become mainstream with even the Energy Security and Net Zero Select Committee in Parliament launching inquiry into high energy costs. [Note that I have submitted written evidence to the inquiry, but cannot publish it until they have, so watch this space]. Readers will be dismayed to learn that the Government is now consulting on its latest cunning wheeze to further increase our energy bills by charging the cost of their cherished green hydrogen plans to our gas bills using the Gas Shipper Obligation (GSO).
Green Hydrogen Plans
Of course, hydrogen is a colourless and odourless gas, but hydrogen is assigned different colours according to the method of production. We covered the hydrogen rainbow in an earlier article. Green hydrogen is produced by electrolysis powered by renewables like wind and solar. Blue hydrogen is produced from natural gas and the resulting carbon dioxide emissions are captured and stored.
The last Conservative Government launched its hydrogen delivery roadmap back in December 2023. This called for “up to” 10GW of hydrogen production capacity by 2030 made up of 6GW of green hydrogen and 4GW of blue hydrogen.
The first tranche of this capacity was also announced in December 2023, with 11 projects totalling 0.125GW of capacity being announced in the first hydrogen allocation round (HAR1) at a strike price of £175/MWh (in 2012 prices) or about £244/MWh in 2024 money. By way of comparison, today’s elevated gas price is ~99p/therm or £34/MWh. Green hydrogen will cost about seven times the current UK gas price or ~23 times US gas prices. The Government gleefully announced that these projects would receive over £2bn of revenue support from the Hydrogen Production Business Model (HPBM). The 125MW of contracts awarded in HAR1 is only the tip of the iceberg though because HAR2 is aiming to support seven times that with 875MW of capacity under consideration.
In 2023, then energy secretary Grant Shapps appeared to rule out paying for this very expensive hydrogen though energy bills. But now, the new Government, with Ed Miliband at the helm of DESNZ has launched a consultation on what they term the Gas Shipper Obligation (GSO) to fund the HPBM.
Cost of Gas Shipper Obligation
The Government estimates the cost of HAR1 projects funded by the GSO will add £2.60-£4.50 per annum to domestic gas bills from 2028 to 2037. Industrial gas users can expect their gas bills to go up by 2%.
If we scale this up to cover the ambitions of HAR2 as well, then that could add £20.80-£36 to our gas bills and 16% to that of industrial users. If they are mad enough to deliver the whole 6GW of green hydrogen, then the cost to domestic consumers could be a whopping £124.8-£216 per year and industrial users could see their gas costs almost double.
Of course, there will be a complex system put in place to manage this new charge with attendant administrator which will also increase costs and complexity.Upgrade to paid
Are There Exemptions to the Charge?
In the consultation, the Government raises the prospect of exemptions from the GSO charge, but it is clearly unwilling to grant exemptions for some users because then the charge will have to be spread over fewer users pushing up bills for those people even further. The only exemption they appear to be keen on is for gas used to produce blue hydrogen. They are concerned that pushing up the cost of the feedstock for blue hydrogen will make it uncompetitive.
This means that costs for gas-fired electricity generation will go up too, pushing up our electricity bills as well as our gas bills. Interestingly, they do not discuss the possibility of an exemption for gas-fired electricity with carbon capture and storage (CCUS), so even that form of electricity will cost more too.
Why Are They Doing This?
The introduction to the consultation reads as though it was written by an Extinction Rebellion activist and probably was because one of Miliband’s SPADs was once the coordinator of their legal strategy team. They wax lyrical about fixing the non-existent climate and nature crisis and what a huge opportunity it is to transition to a low-carbon energy system. They even claim to be tackling the cost-of-living crisis, even though the consultation admits that these proposals will increase our energy bills.
We can perhaps look at the latest missive from the Climate Change Committee to get closer to the truth. As Figure 1 shows, they want to reduce the ratio of electricity to gas prices. They can do this by pushing up the price of gas and of course this proposal does exactly that.
However, there are lots of reasons not to do this, not least the collapse of many green hydrogen projects across the world. For instance, the Aurora Green Hydrogen project in Norway was terminated in 2022, citing lack of demand. McPhy’s green hydrogen project in Central Europe was abandoned just seven days after it was announced after the customer withdrew last autumn. Earlier this month, BP withdrew from the HyGreen project as part of its strategic repositioning. Hygreen was supposed to deliver a 500MW plant on Teesside when fully operational. Interestingly, BP’s 1.2GW H2Teesside blue hydrogen project appears to be still going ahead.
In addition, the CCC ruled out hydrogen for home heating and surface transport in its latest Carbon Budget. They also see only a very small role for hydrogen in electricity generation in line with the NESO Clean Power 2030 plan. Industry is not going to volunteer to use hydrogen when there are much cheaper alternatives. It seems the Government expects the market for this extremely expensive hydrogen to bootstrap itself into existence.
Conclusions
We already have the highest electricity prices in the developed world and UK and European gas prices are many times higher than those in the US and Canada. We simply cannot afford any more whacky projects that push up energy costs even more. In fact we should be going in the opposite direction and declaring an energy emergency to bring energy costs down.
The green hydrogen market is collapsing, because nobody wants to use such expensive fuel when natural gas is a much cheaper source of heat or electricity. Yet our Government is still pressing on with its ideological Soviet-style five-year target for a product with no market and wants us to pay for it.
We cannot afford such flights of fancy and need to change course on energy policy now. The focus should be on cheap and abundant energy to save what remains of our industry from total destruction and give relief to families struggling with energy bills.
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The beatings will continue until morale improves!
The insanities will continue until sufficient damage is accrued.
The patient is still moving. Hit him again.
In other news from the UK….
Department for Education data seen by The Telegraph clearly show that this incident actually happened. In 2022-23, a child, aged either three or four, was indeed suspended from a state nursery in this country, after being accused of being transphobic or homophobic.
[…..]
Transphobic tots aren’t as uncommon as you might think, as it turns out. According to the same set of statistics, 94 pupils at state primary schools were suspended or permanently excluded for transphobia and homophobia in 2022-23. These included 10 pupils from Year 1 (five- to six-year-olds) and three from Year 2 (six- to seven-year-olds).
Source: Celia Walden writing in the UK Telegraph.
Can a tot even discern if someone is LGBT ? Sounds like children are being punished for the “sins of their parents”
They’re being punished for someone else’s delusion.
So a curious child asks an innocent question and is punished and tarnished for life.
The left seeks to squash curiosity at an early age. The sooner the tots learn not to ever question authority, the happier those in authority will be.
They’re only supposed to question the “wrong” authority.
Someone needs to watch Uncle Buck, especially the scene where he accosts the school administrator.
Off topic.
Here is the temperature data for March for anyone interested l have recorded here in Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire, England.
Max mean temp
11.75C
Min mean tenp
4.15C
Mean temp
7.58C
This data was recorded with a mercury filled Six’s thermometer in open shade within a urban centre.
Nobody is going to believe human recorded temps. At least until they’ve been homogenized with surrounding readings by a computer program. What you’re doing is so beginning-of-last-century stuff.
/s
The reason l have gone with old school technology is so l can compare 20th century type recording of temperatures with the current electronic method of recording temperatures. So l can discover the impact on what the change in recording methods has had on the temperature record.
What never ceases to amaze me is that the Met Office doesn’t appear to have any parallel measurements of new against old.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but none of the temperature data was calibrated against the old.
I think that is quite intentional. They don’t want us to see the upward step at the changeover and then they adjust the old readings to hide the step.
Then there is the Mann trick. Shift the historical record so it “properly” connects graphically with the modern temperatures.
Don’t be silly, they don’t need any comparisons as they make up 30% of them anyway.
Met Office at Leeming recorded:-
12.4C
2.1C
7.3C
Very similar but actually colder overall.
And with me 250 miles away in the middle of the south coast the MO recorded.
12.0C
3.4C
7.7C
Again, amazingly similar, all things considered.
Well what’s interesting here is how am recording lower daily highs despite been around 20 miles from the sea and in the middle of a urban centre. Both of which should be causing a warming of daytime temperatures that are been recorded, when compared with a temperature recording by the coast. What am currently founding out thanks to my study. Is that the likely cause of this difference, is the fact that highly sensitive electronic thermometers are palace in Stevenson screens outside in the sun.
It’s as l expected, there is a higher recording of daytime temps.
Due to having highly sensitive electronic thermometers housed in Stevenson screens where the warming of the sceen due to been outside in the sun is impacting on the recording of daytime temperatures. But also where the nightly lows are been recording higher due to effects of UHI by been in a urban centre.
This study am currently doing has convinced me the that using the current highly sensitive electronic thermometers that are been housed in Stevenson screens outside in the sun. Are recording artificially high daytime temperatures due to the warming of the Stevenson screen by the sun, so for the electronic thermometers to have any hope of recording the true daytime temps. Then the screens need to be placed in open shade. What am suggesting is that due to the current advancements in electronic temperature recordng. Then having these thermometers palaced in Stevenson screens where the sun is impacting on them through the day. Has become a ineffective and outdated method of getting the true daytime temperatures.
A similar phenomenon was observed when the temperature boxes changed their paint from whitewash to latex.
The people of the Commonwealth would revolt if energy costs were compared to say Texas gas prices.
At least hydrogen for home heating appears to have been ruled out. If instituted, I wonder how many deaths due to hydrogen explosions would have been required to stop that idiocy.
About the same as EV cars parked in garages. Maybe worse.
The UK doesn’t have an energy problem it has a government problem. The sooner you deal with it the sooner your lives can get back to normal.
Unfortunately, I suspect it is too late.
Going to take someone with radical common sense and the balls to kill all the Net Zero anti-CO2 nonsense, to save it…
… and I don’t think anyone like that can ever exist in UK politics.
I often forget about this hydrogen scheming, but Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado, I believe have some plans for a blue hydrogen hub. Its capital ‘F’ foolishness. Expending materials and money in long chains of individually wasteful processes is a rent-seeker’s dream and ratepayer’s nightmare. Perhaps the impetus for green hydrogen is the belief that wind and solar is free energy. I don’t see blue hydrogen is anything more than a bluendoggle.
Still Waiting for that “Hydrogen Highway” in California. They’ve been throwing money at it for twenty years now. Total failure.
Sounds pretty much like all they need do, too shut you down, is NOT publish the information. Or am I wrong??
They will publish some contributions at least. So at that point the unpublished contributions might get an airing via other means… Actually, if contributions like David’s do get published by the Select Committee I think we will see them being reported and discussed in parts of the media The mood is changing.
The mood is changing. A number of recent programs and news items have started to question some of the issues (loss of landscape, impacts to fauna, costs)
they are never going to put up their hands and say “my bad, sorry about all that NZ stuff” …but we will see a gradual rowing-back.
There is no real point to blue hydrogen, which is made by steam-reforming of natural gas (methane). Part of the steam-methane reforming process is endothermic, meaning that the energy available from burning the hydrogen is less than that available in the original natural gas.
If natural gas is burned in a gas turbine to generate electricity, it burns cooler than hydrogen, meaning that the turbine blades can be made with less expensive alloys than a hydrogen turbine.
Hydrogen can be useful as a reactant, for example to remove sulfur from distillate fuels in a refinery. However, it is not very useful as a fuel (low heating value per unit volume), and tends to cause brittle failure in pressurized containers.
It’s much more economical to use natural gas as a fuel than hydrogen.
To make 1 tonne of “green” hydrogen through electrolysis requires 52.5MWh of electrical energy. And using that 1 tonne of hydrogen will deliver 15MWh AT BEST. So ENERGY INVESTED is 3.5x GREATER than ENERGY RETURNED.
But it gets worse.
In the UK over the last 12 months, “renewable” wind and solar generation facilities provided 10.66GW from a combined installed capacity of 50.77GW (solar 18.72GW; and wind 32.05GW assuming a 95% availability).
So these facilities operated at a combined “load factor” – efficiency – of 20.99%, meaning, if you want to deliver 1GW of electricity from wind and solar generating facilities, which have a load factor of 20.99%, those facilities will have to have an installed capacity of 4.76GW – an “overbuild factor” of 4.76.
In summary:
To make hydrogen by electrolysis requires 3.5x the energy that will be gained from using that hydrogen, and to generate the electricity needed for that electrolysis, the installed capacity of wind and solar generating facilities will have to be 4.76x greater than the electricity actually needed.
You get the picture, I hope – generating electricity through wind and solar, and using that electricity to make hydrogen . . . is an exercise in downright disgustingly idiotic profligacy . . . that the government – and it doesn’t matter which crowd of idiots are the government – will expect you and I to pay for.
I think that Miliband must have been educated at the Diane Abbott school of arithmetic. Nothing he comes out with ever makes sense.
We used to think that fables like “The Sky is Falling” and “The Emperor Has No Clothes” were nonsense.