From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
The Telegraph brings news of the latest setback for the green scam industry:
The world’s largest hydrogen producer has abandoned plans to build a £2bn green energy factory in Britain, dealing a blow to the Government’s bid to attract foreign investment.
US-based Air Products has pulled the proposed green hydrogen project in Humberside over claims of government foot-dragging, as bosses attacked a “lack of commitment” by ministers.
Air Products first announced details of the proposed plant in Immingham three years ago, which was set to convert imported ammonia into green hydrogen and employ around 3,000 people.
At the time, it said it was in “positive talks” with ministers and officials, as it vowed to be “an important contributor to the Government’s plans to make the UK a global leader in low-carbon hydrogen”.
However, in a letter seen by The Times to Martin Vickers, Tory MP for Immingham, Air Products revealed it was walking away from the project in protest at a lack of ministerial support.
Suzanne Lowe, the company’s UK boss, wrote: “Current government policy supports a number of blue and green hydrogen production processes but specifically excludes hydrogen production from imported renewable ammonia.
“The decision not to open up key support measures to our hydrogen production pathway leaves us with no viable path to build and operate a large-scale hydrogen production facility in the UK.”
It marks an end to the project, which appeared to have been given the go-ahead in February when planning permission for an accompanying terminal was approved.
However, Air Products has pulled the project just months after also exiting three green hydrogen plants in the US.
Let’s be absolutely clear about this – when they use weasel words like “support measures”, what they really mean is subsidies.
If there was a viable market for their product, they would go ahead and build their factory anyway. The fact that they has also pulled out of hydrogen plants in the US confirms this.
The whole thing is a giant con anyway. They use nonsensical words like “green hydrogen”, but how is their ammonia feedstock made in the first place?
The only bulk production of ammonia is done via the Haber-Bosch process, which combines nitrogen and hydrogen. The only bulk source of hydrogen, of course, is steam reforming natural gas, a process that results in massive emissions of CO2!
So in this upside down world of Net Zero, we make hydrogen from natural gas, emitting lots of CO2, then combine it with nitrogen in another energy intensive process to make ammonia. This is then shipped half way around the world, where in another energy intensive process the hydrogen is then split out again, so we can burn it in exactly the same way as would the natural gas in the first place!
But apparently this will save the planet. I guess even the Mad Miliband has seen through this scam!
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So how much energy does it take to make ammonia in some foreign country, ship it across the world and then process it to make hydrogen? Probably more energy than you would get out of the hydrogen at the end. Not to mention all the problems of using hydrogen as a fuel.
Oh dear!
What a shame.
Never mind.
Plans that Labour refused to stump up for. But this is far from a one-off, and it isn’t just ‘climate’ stuff.
“AstraZeneca has cancelled plans for a £450m vaccine manufacturing plant in Liverpool, blaming a cut in funding from government.
The investment, announced last year in the Tories’ spring budget…“
https://news.sky.com/story/astrazeneca-scraps-450m-vaccine-plant-in-liverpool-after-labour-funding-cut-13300231
As the last Labour government put it on losing the election in 2010…
“’Dear chief secretary, I’m afraid to tell you there’s no money left.”
Last time, it took them thirteen years. This time… less than one. One area money is being spent is in another political sleight of hand. No media has reported it and they will not. The hotel bill for migrants is well over £3 billion per year and more are arriving every day; especially with the summer weather. How can they ‘close down the hotels’ and appear to save money?
“The Home Office is buying up hotels in order to house migrants. Testy Rachel Reeves told Times Radio this morning:
“Well, I’m not going to be providing accommodation. That’s up for the Home Office to do. But the wasteful spending at the moment on the most expensive form of accommodation is a terrible use of taxpayers’ money. And that’s why we’re gonna put it to an end.”
Last night Darren Jones said Labour was putting “capital investment into Government-owned facilities.”
https://order-order.com/2025/06/12/exc-government-buying-up-asylum-seeker-hotels/
Me? I’d recommend using that expensive Navy that appears to be working well for Uncle Sam.
“ROYAL NAVY STRIKES A £550M BLOW TO CARIBBEAN COCAINE TRADE
“This recent operation highlights the Royal Navy’s vital role in maintaining maritime security and upholding international law in the region.
https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk/news/2024/august/25/20240824-hms-trent-latest-drugs-bust-in-the-caribbean
Needless to say, they are all over the place when they aren’t conniving…
“Ministers will restart the approval process for two controversial oilfields on Thursday”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jun/19/uk-ministers-to-restart-approval-process-for-two-north-sea-oilfields
Re the North Sea oilfields, Starmer personally pledged to Equinor that Rosebank would go ahead. The company then ploughed £1.6bn into the development of the oilfield. Labour then cancelled it. Looks like the company’s and Norwegian governments displeasure has worked some magic!
Is it too much to hope that Starmer is starting to realise that mad Ed doesn’t have a clue?
Yes, I’m afraid it is.
The good news just keeps coming.
in other Net Zero activity, the laws championed by Ed Miliband that blocked the oil field development in the North Sea are being amended to allow the two new fields to go ahead.
Stand by for an announcement in the coming months that the fracking moratorium will be lifted or at least extraction of gas from the North Sea will resume.
Reality is slowly dawning as is the need for spinning inertia on our grid system.
Green Jobs Update
Energy Department Staffing Costs Surge By £16 Million Since Red Ed Took Charge.
Labour ministers have for months been talking tough about slimming down the civil service, though the Department for Energy, Security and Net Zero appears to have missed the memo. Figures quietly released show that since Red Ed took over the joint, the department has ballooned in headcount and costs…
In July 2024, DESNZ and its agencies employed 8,984 full-time-equivalent (FTE) staff, with an annual staffing cost of £65.6 million. That includes annual salaries, allowances, gold-plated pensions and consultancy fees. By April 2025, that had surged to 12,548 FTEs – an increase of 3,564 roles. The total staffing bill rose to £82 million, a hike of £16.4 million or 25%. A reminder that Reeves promised in March to cut Whitehall running costs by 15%. Running pricey net zero schemes and managing the comms fallout doesn’t come cheap…
https://order-order.com/2025/06/19/energy-department-staffing-costs-surge-by-16-million-since-red-ed-took-charge/
Well they would do that now wouldn’t they-
High energy costs trigger closure of major UK wind turbine supplier
Labour climate changers have to keep the employment figures looking good or they’ll upset the union base.
Green jobs…
“Miliband promises “green jobs” but cannot answer the criticism that these jobs will cost employment elsewhere in the economy. This has been a point of controversy for the duration of the climate policy agenda, with critics explaining this very simple fact as far back as the mid-2000s. But it fell on deaf ears in the news media, and met a brick wall in Wesminster’s offices of all parties. They each merely repeated the promises of green jobs over, and over, and over.”
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/06/19/ed-miliband-is-losing-the-fight-for-net-zero/
Elsewhere in the economy, green jobs created are way below the numbers of those being lost.
That makes sense. If the department only employs really, really stupid people so as not to show up the boss then you need more of them to raise the total brain-cell count high enough to keep things ticking over.
These days it’s safe to say that being woke – as they most certainly are – they are really dumbed down and stupid.
“US-based Air Products has pulled the proposed green hydrogen project in Humberside…”
Ah, yes, Air Products in Allentown PA. A very well-regarded company with a long history. I interviewed there and received a job offer during my senior year at an engineering school nearby. I chose another offer and moved away. 1978. It pains me to think how many of my contemporaries ended up going along with the “climate” agenda at this company and many others in the decades since.
It was all a fashion trend, and it will end.
Fashions come and go. Some are worse than others. I remember my bell bottoms getting caught in my bicycle chain.
Companies exist to make money, and if there’s money to be made from the climate agenda then few companies will turn down the opportunity. In the current climate (pun intended) an engineer who refuses on principle to work for any company which, actively or passively, follows the agenda will find employment hard to find. But hopefully the agenda will go the same way as bell bottoms.
O/T but possibly the most astonishing single word in a BBC news report on climate ever:-
‘The Earth could be doomed to breach the symbolic 1.5C warming limit in as little as three years at current levels of carbon dioxide emissions.’
Whhhhhaaaaaat! Gloss over the fact that reaching a symbolic limit can mean doom, but for years, we were told by the BBC:-
‘Scientists believe that going beyond 1.5C would see dangerous impacts for people all over the world.’
Someone made the target too low, we reached it too soon. Now what!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63407459.amp
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn4l927dj5zo.amp
The BBC expects you to accept whatever garbage it utters without question. Failure is wrongthink…
” Now what!”
It looks like we’ll be forced to enjoy the warmer winters, cheaper food due to greener agriculture, and cheaper electricity and fuel.
That “target” was reached due to a strong El Niño, which is now easing and likely to drop world average temps by 0.6 degrees over the 2 years following its peak last year. No crisis…we have a couple of hundred years to build enough nuclear power plants, provide cheap enough electricity that people can heat their homes with it, and do many energy intensive processes some of which will produce synthetic liquid fuels to replace the fossil fuels that will have big “finding costs” by then. As long as we don’t let politicians continue to pick “winners” that are dumb or tax revenues for their economy spinning plans.
How utterly crazy! Why not just burn the ammonia, at least this is a convenient way to store hydrogen and transport it, except of course in the form of hydrocarbons.
Makes good fertilizer too. I especially like ammonium nitrate and sulfate.
If you must go the synthetic fuel route, methanol and ethanol are more convenient fuels than ammonia, storable in Jerry cans, for example, and easier to chemically manufacture. And any ammonia you might want to make is much better suited to use as fertilizer with consequential reduction in agricultural fuel consumption.
The Haber Bosch process makes ammonia from …. Methane, aka natural gas, a fossil fuel. Liquify it and ship it to Tyneside and process it into, bingo!, green Hydrogen. Green my a…!
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 electricmeter; 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.
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The support for hydrogen in Cali from Hollywood stars and politicians, merely shows that they were impressed by the electrolysis of water demo in their junior high science class….and their technical and science competency has not actually progressed to include economics since they became “beautiful people”.
That must be a typo. I don’t think gasoline has been $2.50/gal in Cali for decades. Maybe $5.00/gal today or higher. And 30mi/gal for an Accord LX is near the upper limit. maybe with ethanol-free gasolline, but my old LX w/5-speed manual would get nearly 30 in highway driving.
Yep $5.49 per US gallon for 91 octane Premium.
But here, electricity has no carbon footprint at all, because it just comes out of a wall, all on its own.
The whole green renewable energy production coalition was a scam right from the very beginning – just subsidy farming. The most recent versions of the scam are increasingly unworkable, worse than useless but, inevitably, incredibly expensive.
There is a common thread in all these tales of woe.
The UK (and other) government is achieving a Thatcherism.
It is running out of other people’s money!
This “green hydrogen” is yet another thermodynamically net negative Rube Goldberg operation which consumes more fossil fuel energy than it can ever produce. Hydrogen isn’t an energy source, it is just a very inefficient energy storage mechanism.
More good news. The government must get out of the business business. They don’t know a damn thing and as we have seen they only make things worse.
So…here is what I am trying to understand…the goal is to produce CO2 (a supposed trace greenhouse gas) to produce hydrogen, which can then be burned to produce water (an even more important greenhouse gas) in order to reduce greenhouse gas production. So confusing.
Rube Goldberg is smiling.