As the Guardian reports this morning:
About 3 million households in the UK could begin using low-carbon hydrogen to heat their homes and cook rather than fossil fuel gas under government proposals to attract at least £4bn of investment to the hydrogen economy by 2030.
It adds:
The government has published its long-awaited plans for a UK-wide hydrogen economy, which it says could be worth £900m and create more than 9,000 high-quality jobs by the end of the decade, rising to £13bn and 100,000 new jobs by 2050.
And I am not convinced. As they note:
The hydrogen projects under development include “green hydrogen” schemes, which extract hydrogen from water, leaving only oxygen as a byproduct, and “blue hydrogen”, which extracts hydrogen from fossil fuel gas before trapping the greenhouse gas emissions that are left behind.
And at that point the plan ceases to be green and becomes just another mechanism for perpetuating the production of fossil fuels.
First, there is evidence that blue hydrogen produces more emissions than simply burning fossil fuels.
Second, no one knows how to trap the greenhouse emissions as yet: it is a terribly convenient fiction to suggest that they do, to which my response is ‘come back when you know how to do it'.
Third, the government is not in any event clear about who is paying for this.
So this is not a plan.
Nor is it green.
And nor does it appear to be properly costed.
Which pretty much sums up this government's preparedness for COP 26 and the crisis facing us all.
As the Guardian also reports this morning, a survey suggests that 74% of people want governments to take green issues more seriously than they are. That's a proportion big enough, and also small enough, to suggest that most Tories do not share that opinion. And that is the problem we face with a small minority of elderly people in the UK, all self-conceited with their pockets of wealth, happy to see us all go to hell on the back of fossil fuel exploitation so long as that keeps paying them their dividends.
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Agreed – this is public relations – not policy.
If The Government was serious, and looking at the various constraints it faces, it could still
1. Go back to the Oil Crisis of the 70’s and reduce the speed limit to 60mph on Motorways and 50mph on other roads- not only reducing Carbon emissions but road traffic accidents which would clearly reduce pressure on the NHS.
2. Stop Gas Boilers being installed in new homes now and improve the current building regulations
3. Taxes or bans on certain high energy products eg 4×4’s, Hot Tubs and private Swimming pools.
The silence however is deafening
Much to agree with there
And put tax on aviation fuel so that it costs more to travel on planes.
Mandate that the cost of rail travel (now that the railways are de facto nationalised) costs less per journey than one person driving the same route.
Introduce a frequent flyer levy …
I am not an engineer but the only “green” hydrogen is, I suspect, made by electolysis. If so, then why convert electric energy into gas and then pipe it all over the place for heating/cooking when electricity (powering heat pumps) can do those jobs very well?
There is quite possibly a great use for green hydrogen in vehicles and more generally as a “battery” for wind/solar energy storage….. but this requires much more green energy production which should be the focus right now as well as preparing the grid for an “all-electric” future.
Agreed
I am an engineer and unfortunately heat pumps will not be the solution for a large number of (principally older) properties.
Not true
They just need more effort to insulate, but it is possible
Even if true that should not stop us from installing them in the very large number of properties where it would work.
I would add that I have retro-fitted our house with heat pumps to replace a gas boiler. “In theory” there were considerable obstacles – “in practice” they were all overcome. Now, I am loathe to claim a personal anecdote should drive policy but please, try and display a bit of positive thinking!
I have friends who have done it
I am now very tempted
Heat pumps have a place but unfortunately they are most definitely not a simple plug in replacement for gas boilers. You can’t efficiently run them up and down fast with a variable output (more or less) matched to immediate need, like you can a combi boiler. The output for reasonable sized plant is limited, so you need very good insulation; but you also need mechanisms to get heat around and into the building that will work at the low flow temperatures needed for the heat pump to be efficient. Underfloor works well, traditional radiators sized for use with fossil fuel boilers don’t. Domestic hot water can be an issue – the temperatures you want for Legionnaires disease prevention are higher than a heat pump can produce efficiently. There are practical questiosn of size and location too, in many older properties; but mostly the limitations are inherent in the concept and the laws of thermodynamics – design refinements can minimise but won’t ever eliminate them. And, as with hydrogen, any net benefit disappears altogether if they are supplied from non-renewable electricity sources.
Those points are fair
We got a quote for our house and we couldn’t afford it presently – it required replacing most of our radiators and was almost £15,000. It would also require a large fan unit somewhere, and there now is not a great place to put it. But I will revisit at a later date.
I wonder why we in Britain are so against electric heating where heat pumps are unsuitable? It’s simple to fit and maintain, it’s more than 90% efficient, and it already has a working distribution network. Obviously it requires an enormous amount of extra grid power, but it still seems simpler than upgrading the entire gas network, and replacing every boiler with a hydrogen one. It can also be supported through battery storage, vehicle-to-grid, and lots of other things which reduce peak power demands in various ways, and are already quite well understood.
I will preface what follows with the following: I and some younger colleagues spent two man years analysing how distribtuion networks (HV – LV networks) would handle new loads such as heat pumps and electrical vehciles. The analysis covered a number of EU countries and the UK. LV networks (as currently constituted) cannot support penetrations of more than 30% heat pumps – even with very good levels of insulation. Our findings have been tested with various Euro DNOs, they are robust.
This means that short of extending the HV network into the LV network (& ditto EHV into HV network) having high levels of HPs will be difficult. The alternative is re-puposing the gas network to carry hydrogen and installing a mix of H2 boilers and/or fuel cells. The latter produce both heat & elec and provide network support where it is needed – in the LV network. Core conclusion: 50/50 mix of HPs and fuel cells & houses that have: cavity wall insulation, 270mm loft insulation and triple glazing.
Readers will be amused to know that the European Commission have funded a (expensive?) study to replicate what we did. I talked to the person in the Commission supervising the work. Natrually there was a modest level of interest, naturally they had no interest in the detail and naturally we were not invited to paticipate – after all, we are engineers – what would we know.
Where does the hydrogen come from?
Indeed, hydrogen definately has it’s uses, but it’s a hugely inefficient way to store and transport energy, which is why battery EVs are much better for smaller vehicles:
https://insideevs.com/news/406676/battery-electric-hydrogen-fuel-cell-efficiency-comparison/
It does make sense for trucks and planes where the weight of batteries is currently a big constraint.
It also makes sense for storing excess energy for when it’s not needed in the grid, and you’d otherwise be turning wind turbines off. They have tried such things in Orkney, where they have a lot of clever thinking on using renewables in efficient ways.
https://www.orkney.com/life/energy/hydrogen
Blue hydrogen is yet another greenwashing scam by fossil fuel companies – they know if electrolysis becomes widely used and/or more efficient, then we’ll no longer require their products any more. Hence why they are trying to sneak it into this government “strategy” so we continue to suck on the teat of fossil fuels a bit longer.
Renewables champions should push hard to make green hydrogen production have very heavy regulations around how it is created, and ensure that not a single part of the pipeline uses fossil fuels – not the creation, transportation or use of it should emit a single gram of carbon, if it’s to be a realistic alternative. That means the trucks that transport it need to be fuel cell or battery EVs, and the creation needs to be through electrolyis, and the electricity for that needs to come from only renewables.
Precisely. The logic of converting renewably generated electricity, inefficiently into hydrogen to then pipe through a network to be burnt, with infrastructure that will have to modified to handle it, escapes me.
Possibly for heavy vehicles and trains where high energy density is needed and few distribution outlets are needed, but apart from that?
Seems to be little happening on the tidal and wave front which ought to provide at least part of the answer to base load.
I believe tidal is fundamental
The UK Gov apparently funds some R&D for wave and tidal, but, years ago withdrew its funding for the development of efficient and commercially viable applications from that R&D (i.e. getting it to market, which seems preposterous given the Tories devotion to markets). There’s some info from 2018 here:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/19/huge-mistake-britain-throwing-away-lead-in-tidal-energy-say-developers
This lack of UK Gov interest has cost valuable time and caused interesting projects to be shelved (e.g. Swansea Bay Barrage). The Scottish Gov has encouraged growth in this sector and has set up a fund of £3.4 billion, but with very limited borrowing powers, Scot Gov has had to co-partner with largely foreign developers to make progress. Nevertheless, projects are already producing reliable renewable energy from tidal: an array of underwater turbines in the Pentland Firth is feeding into local power supplies and the Grid, and additional arrays are in production for forthcoming installation.
Technology has also been developed using moored turbine ships, but their practical installation and future development appears to have been transferred to the Bay of Fundy as the Canadian and Nova Scotia state Govs have shown a strong interest in the concept:
https://www.engerati.com/energy-storage/flow-batteries-tidal-and-hydrogen-trialled-in-orkney-world-first/
Given the number of fjords with strong tidal races around Scotland’s shores, many of them with easy access to the UK Grid, this technology would seem an obvious power source for Scotland/UK, but there appears there’s no appetite for it in Whitehall. One particularly galling aspect of UK Gov’s lack of interest and the Scot Gov’s lack of borrowing powers and control of its macro-economy, is that the skills and techniques of bringing these products into production have already been transferred outside of Scotland’s economy when new jobs and industries are desperately needed here. Equally galling is that Scotland’s transition to a green power supply has been significantly slowed by the absence of relevant political powers in the Scotland Act that would have enabled much swifter progress. Just another couple of the “Benefits of the Union” we keep hearing about!
A share your astonishment at this negligence
‘Blue’ hydrogen is unproven, and definitely not green. Green hydrogen, from electrolysis, will be limited by renewable energy capacity – capacity that is also needed to meet increased electricity demand.
Green hydrogen will be needed to balance the variability of electricity supply from wind and solar, for low-carbon steel production, for rail where electrification would not be viable, etc. It should not be wasted on heating and cooking (though the main alternative, heat pumps, is not without its problems).
Joined-up thinking need here – not something this government has shown itself capable of.
Put simplistically we use energy in three basic ways. To:
1. Move things (eg Transport)
2. Heat things (eg Buildings)
3. “Power” things (eg Electricity to run machines and gadgets)
There is an additional dimension (think of this as a 3 by 3 matrix). We need to either:
A. Store energy for later use (time shifting) – the shifting across time (hours, days, months) to allow a better matching of generation with use
B. Move energy from the point of conversion to the point of use (Geographical shifting) ie moving energy from one place to another
C. Use energy instantaneously by matching supply with demand (which is what we do with our current electricity grid).
Often A and B occur simultaneously (think of a petrol tank which allows storage and carriage)
Hydrogen may have a small role to play, but only in low scale, short term storage to buffer differences between electrical demand and generation and is very few specialised transport applications. And then, if and only if, it is generated from electrolysis using renewable energy. Hydrogen at best has a small role to play. We should let the fossil fuel industry convince of us of anything else.
It also has a use as a chemical reactant – eg in steel production where it can replace carbon. But that is another story.
At the moment the two main routes to hydrogen production are steam re-formation and electrolysis. (If you want you can add these two routes as a third dimension to our 3 x 3 matrix). Reformation is carbon dioxide intensive, based on fossil fuels and is energy inefficient, and, as Richard says, we have not got proven means of capturing and storing the CO2 produced. CCS has the added disadvantage of reducing yet further the end-end energy efficiency of the process. Electrolysis looks the better route in terms of efficiency but still requires the conversion of electrical energy into chemical energy.
This chemical energy can either be converted into heat through combustion, or back into electricity via a fuel cell (which, effectively is the reverse of electrolysis). Of course there is also the option of burning hydrogen in the thermal power plant to generate electricity or in a combustion engine to generate momentum. Each of these conversions introduces further inefficiency.
Now of course any storage medium has inefficiencies. The round-trip efficiency in batteries is probably not much better. But let’s return to that later.
Looking at Hydrogen as an energy carrier (role 2 above) say, for example, to heat buildings illustrates the point. Renewably generated electricity is converted into hydrogen, hydrogen is piped to hydrogen boilers in the home and burnt, which BTW, still produces Nitrous Oxide. The round-trip efficiency is poor (c60%). An alternative is to use the same electricity to drive a heat pump. Here the round-trip efficiency is significantly greater than 150%, probably close to 300% given the co-efficient of performance of heat pumps. So why would we want to use Hydrogen as a carrier of heat? It is far better to use that same electrical energy in a heat pump.
Now there may be an argument for hydrogen to use as an energy carrier to fuel planes. There is still the efficiency loss but at least Hydrogen does provide higher energy densities (kWh/kg) than batteries. But there seems little point in using hydrogen as a carrier of energy to produce heat as the end service. Electricity is so much better.
So as an energy carrier, or storage medium, for heat, hydrogen does not have a place.
So what about hydrogen as an energy store/carrier for transport? Again, we run into the same sorts of issues of end-to-end efficiencies and/or of carbon intensity. Steam reformation is both energy inefficient and carbon intensive. The end-to-end efficiency of hydrogen production (by reformation or electrolysis), through to carriage and finally to re-conversion into momentum seems far less efficient than use of electricity and batteries as the carriage and storage media.
Can hydrogen work as a short-term buffer to smooth out peaks and troughs in demand and supply? Well yes. Co-locating electrolysis and storage with links to renewable generation could work. Off-shore wind produced electricity used to generate hydrogen could work. We’d need to think through how the re-conversion back to electricity could be achieved. Fuel cells are a possibility, but do they work a grid scale eg generation of 10 or 100MW – 2GW? Conversion via thermal power plants, at efficiencies of 60% or less is also an option, and for small scale buffering eg 10GWh at 1GW the efficiency loss may be a price worth paying. But this is at low scale by grid standards
The fossil fuel industry is pushing Hydrogen as an alternative, I understand their motives -they, particularly the gas industry are facing the prospect of billions £s of stranded assets (the gas distribution system for example).
So does hydrogen have a place in a carbon free world? Well only if produced by electrolysis from renewables and then only in specialist transport applications and at smallish scale (10s of GWhs at 1-10GW?) as short-term storage. It has no role to play in heating. We shouldn’t let the fossil fuel industry tell us otherwise.
It’s possible but it’s not a practical solution. This is one of the (many) things that worry me, having worked in the sector for 30 years I still see no serious attempt by politicians to engage with the complexity of what will need to happen in a relatively short timescale.
Worth making the point that Town Gas had a high hydrogen content, some gas works even had special gasometers for the first ‘cut’ which was very high in Hydrogen and fields laid out alongside for the use of gas balloonists.
It was spectacularly dirty and toxic to boot though
So there are no particular technological issues with hydrogen – and the fatalities in the Hindenburg disaster were killed by the burning diesel fuel not the hydrogen
Much to agree with here.
Green hydrogen (and not ‘blue’) does seem to have a very useful role to play. My hope is that it is a major one, forming stored energy from wind farms and solar. Converted to ammonia for heavy ships – possibly.
As much as I like the high heat from a fossil fuel boiler (oil in our case) we will need to move to heat pump tech in the near future. Having a very old house does make that difficult but we also need to future proof all of the housing stock to cope with what are likely to be wild variations in weather.
It does seem that government approach is, as expected, to allow fossil fuel industry to call the shots – even if it is utterly pointless to turn hydrocarbons into hydrogen, to then burn in a domestic boiler. It follows the pattern that many have called out – natural gas as a gateway to net zero – an utter sham that sets us back many years.
Just imagine what e.g. China might think, if western countries really sorted out a true renewables energy system? Seems to me to make sense economically to get to where it has to be.
I have occasionally wondered why bridges, those where water flows under, have apparently not been considered as possible sources for power generation. Surely it is not beyond the wit of engineers to design something, even if it’s only the humble water wheel, to utilise the flow underneath? It wouldn’t even have to only be over rivers, it could be used in tidal bays or sea lochs just as easily.
Or would that require joined up thinking, and a desire to actually do something instead of just paying lip service?
Thanks Martin, a very interesting summary.
Hydrogen, or hydrogen based synthetic fuels will be essential for some transport options, particularly for long range aircraft, marine propulsion, some difficult to electrify railways and, possibly, heavy goods vehicles. Military and off-road vehicles will also need an energy supply that doesn’t rely on finding a charging point!
For domestic heating, hydrogen doesn’t make much economic sense, but the large variation in domestic heating demand from summer to winter might difficult to sustain using electricity as the heat source. The hydrogen could be produced in summer and stored to meet the winter demand, or it could be imported from countries that can produce excess hydrogen throughout the year. There may also be some high temperature industrial processes that may not be amenable to electrification and hydrogen would provide an alternative to fossil fuels.
A third option that is not mentioned in the Guardian article is turquoise hydrogen, which I had never heard of until today. This is made by pyrolysis of methane and produces hydrogen gas and solid carbon. Apparently, it’s also twice as efficient as electrolysis. Fugitive emissions between the well and the pyrolizer are still a problem, but there’s no CO2 produced, and the carbon is saleable. If the methane feedstock is biogas, the process is CO2 negative.
One of the problems with new and emerging technology is that no-one really knows how well it will work. We can’t build the green hydrogen infrastructure until there is sufficient zero carbon electricity available, and that would be too late. Using blue, or turquoise hydrogen as a stop gap allows the infrastructure to develop as the clean electricity becomes available. It’s unfortunate that we may have to rely of the oil and gas industry in the early days, but it may be necessary.
I think the problem is that natural gas is not a suitable stopgap – it’s just the wrong solution. It produces a mountain of methane just from the extraction process. It’s much less efficient than just burning the natural gas and has very little impact on CO2 emissions – so why bother? We already know how to make green hydrogen, and how much electricity it needs – therefore we can plan for that and begin to do it.
Turquiose hydrogen sounds interesting, but again it’s an idea pitched by oil and gas to maintain their monopoly on the energy supply. They can’t be trusted – they lied and obfuscated about climate change, lied about their role in it, and continue to lie about the possible solutions. Putting the fox in charge of the hen house is pretty naive.
There’s a new report showing they’ve been inaccurate (read: lying through their teeth) about how much methane is actually released from oil wells. It’s long been suspected that the oil company provided figures are inaccurate, because the atmospheric figures were so far off from what the oil companies were saying. And lets face, they’ve little incentive to be honest.
https://www.reuters.com/article/emissions-methane-idUSMTZSPDEH8EU9J79K
What makes sense to me is to utilise all forms of green energy technology, the problem is the government and now leader of the opposition turn to the polluters to solve our problems.
We could of course create hydrogen from using solar power and electrolysis, which could power combustion engines etc when there is no sunlight.
Regarding storing CO2. There are a number of long running projects – Mongstatt in Norway (sub-sea since 2000s) and a Koch CO2 injection into oil fields project (since 1980 – enhanced oil recovery). Both work. Problem with blue-H2 is that the CO2 impact is roughly 6 to 10 times that of green-H2.
In terms of the “strategy”, sadly it shows a profound lack of knowledge concerning renewable electricity growth, the ability of the UK electrical system to absorb RES elec and the increase in “surplus” RES elec as more is pushed into the system. In summary, there is a non-linear increase in surplus RES elec as more RES elec is pushed into the system. Giving numbers – if you have an absorbed 80% RES elec you need to generate 120% of the absorbed amount (this assumes a mix PV + Wind + bit of hydro) system. I have modelled this for both large (country) and small (primary substation) systems. Results are very similar.
Batteries can help – a little. Heat pumps, a bit EVs, a bit. The solution is electrolysers able to address the RES elec “use it or lose it” problem – which will be faced in summer (PV) and winter (wind). The gov’s H2 strategy fails to even recognise the above issues. It is also far too long. Strategies should be 15 to 20 pages – max.
Apologies for the slow response – hols.
Thanks
Lithium-ion batteries get several mentions in this trail but one aspect to them seems to be being ignored – the CO2e emissions generated in producing said batteries. I’m struggling to figure out where in this production process the emissions arise but I suspect that mining the lithium is the biggest part.
The nearest thing to a quantification of these emissions that I can find is as follows:
Imagine two cars, identical in all respects except one has a conventional petrol engine and the other is battery electric. Take the stated range of the electric car (usually 100-250 miles) and multiply that by 200. That tells you the distance you would have to travel in the petrol car to generate the same CO2e emission that are generated in producing the battery for the electric car. That’s 20,000 to 50,00 miles before you’re breaking even, even if you assume all of the electricity you put into your electric car is generated from sustainable sources (which it won’t be).
There are situations where lithium-ion EVs make sense (e.g. short range, stop/start delivery vehicles) but for normal private car usage, forget it. It has to be green hydrogen fuel cells.
If you want to stray away from climate issues, you can also factor in the diversion and contamination of water supplies caused by lithium mining (it takes a about ton of fresh water to extract a pound of lithium) and the horrendous human rights abuses arising from cobalt mining in the Congo.