Tag Archives: green hydrogen

Labour’s net zero grid will require ‘huge sacrifice’, warns energy chief

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From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Reality is beginning to dawn!

Labour’s plan for a net zero grid by 2030 is unrealistic and will require a “huge sacrifice” by the country, a leading power station builder has warned.

Javier Cavada, European boss of Mitsubishi Power, said the rollout of green energy schemes planned by Sir Keir Starmer and Ed Miliband, the shadow energy secretary, would have to move at an unprecedented speed to stand a chance of success.

He also warned it would be prohibitively expensive and questioned whether completely eliminating emissions from gas-fired power plants, which generated one third of Britain’s electricity last year, was a sensible immediate priority.

Asked whether the 2030 target was feasible, Mr Cavada said: “In my years at Mitsubishi and, frankly, my 48 years on the planet, this would be a speed that I have never seen anywhere else.

“Can you do it? You definitely can. But financially? Well, the cost is very large.

“Can the whole country invest into fully decarbonising and can all the industries invest in that? Is everyone so wealthy and so happy to increase the cost of everything?

“You need to create a path that is realistic, that is affordable and is achievable.”

Higher spending on the energy system raises the prospect of households and businesses shouldering increased costs through taxes or bills.

Mr Cavada is the latest energy industry figure to express scepticism about Labour’s plans, which the Conservatives have claimed would risk blackouts. Sir Jim Ratcliffe, the petrochemicals billionaire, said on Thursday that Labour’s net zero grid target was “absurd”.

Labour has insisted its plans are deliverable and will ultimately bring energy bills down.

The Labour manifesto pledges to retain a strategic reserve of gas power stations “to guarantee security of supply” and says it will partly fund green investments by expanding the windfall tax on oil and gas companies.

Electricity demand is expected to rise from around 300 terawatt hours per year today to about 360 terawatt hours by 2030.

The bulk of Britain’s future supplies are forecast to come from weather-dependent renewables such as wind and solar farms, backed up by batteries and nuclear power, but gas-fired power stations will still be needed at certain times to keep the lights on.

However, instead of seeking to eliminate their emissions completely by 2030, Mr Cavada urged future governments to proceed more gradually by blending hydrogen into their fuel.

Mitsubishi Power believes existing gas turbines could burn gas that is 30pc hydrogen with only minor modifications.

Mr Cavada admitted that supplies of hydrogen were currently small and highly expensive as well, but argued that – as with wind and solar power – costs would fall as production was scaled up.

That view is not shared by all experts. Many argue that the energy-intensive process of making “green” hydrogen via electrolysis – where water is separated into hydrogen and oxygen – makes it unsuitable for large-scale use in power plants or for heating.

However, Mitsubishi Power, which manufactures gas turbines, is working on technology to make power plants hydrogen-compatible.

The company is also a key player in so-called carbon capture and is developing chemical plants that can absorb emissions from power stations and factories, so they can be sequestered later underground.

Both hydrogen and carbon capture, also known as abatement, are expected to play a role in Labour’s plans to decarbonise Britain’s energy system, although the party has not set out detailed proposals.

But Mr Cavada warned carbon capture was an expensive solution and said it should only be used at sites that were most difficult to turn green, for example cement factories.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/06/22/labours-net-zero-grid-require-huge-sacrifice-industry-chief

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In fact Cavada still grossly understates the problem.

He talks about the speed of the rollout and cost. But barely touches on the underlying problem of intermittency.

His favoured option appears to be hydrogen, unsurprising given Mitsubishi make the turbines which will be needed to burn the stuff!

But as the Telegraph notes, experts don’t believe green hydrogen is scaleable at this time. Neither id carbon acpture, as Mr Cavada admits.

This leaves us relying on nuclear and batteries, which the Telegraph seems to believe can supply “the bulk of our power”. Apparently the Telegraph’s Industrial Editor is not aware that batteries can only store enough power to last an hour or two.

Updated Hydrogen Costings

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

The cost of producing and installing electrolysers for green hydrogen production in China, the US and Europe — three of the world’s biggest markets — has risen by more than 50% compared to last year, research house BloombergNEF (BNEF) has found, rather than the gradual reduction its analysis had previously indicated.

The main culprit for Western manufacturers has been inflation, which has pushed up the costs of materials, utilities (such as water and electricity) and labour in the US and Europe, said BNEF in its new report, Electrolyser Price Survey 2024.

As a result, average system-level cost (including both stack and balance of plant) is now at a mid-range of $600/kW for an electrolyser made in China, while machines made in Europe or the US are around $2,500/kW.

This makes Western electrolysers four times more expensive than Chinese equivalents, a gap that has not closed at all since the previous report, BNEF noted.

The research house had previously predicted that costs would gradually decline over three years from 2022, as more large-scale projects approached completion.

https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/electrolysers/cost-of-electrolysers-for-green-hydrogen-production-is-rising-instead-of-falling-bnef/2-1-1607220

Green hydrogen, once touted as a saviour of Net Zero, seems to have gone off the radar recently. A few years ago there were wild, unsubstantiated predictions that hydrogen would become so cheap and easy to produce that we could all give up fossil fuels.

Instead, as Bloomberg now report, costs of electrolysers are going up, not down. Moreover the real cost of wind power is also much higher than previously thought, so green hydrogen will be much more expensive as a result.

So let’s take a closer look at these costs.

Back in 2018, BEIS published this report:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hydrogen-supply-chain-evidence-base.

I analysed the report here.

It featured this table:

I gather that PEM technology (Proton Exchange Membrane) is the most likely one to be rolled out. The Base Cost in 2025 was predicted at £500/kW.

A study last October suggested a mid-range cost of Eu727, equivalent to about £630/kW. Bloomberg reckon $600, but this is based on ultra-low Chinese manufacturing costs, almost certainly highly subsidised. Significantly they estimate that European made electrolysers are four times the price.

We can reasonably work on a cost therefore of around £600.

The BEIS study assumed 52.0 kWh/kg H2 in 2025. The energy density of hydrogen , however, is 33.3 Kwh per kg, which means that the electrolysis process only works at 64% efficiency. In other words, 36% of the energy input is wasted.

Previous cost estimates have been based on rock bottom costs of renewable energy, particularly offshore wind, which would have to supply most of the power needed for electrolysis in the UK. As we now know, these costs were never realistic. The Administrative Strike Price of offshore wind for AR6 is now £100/MWh at 2023 prices. Allowing for energy efficiency of only 64%, the energy input cost of hydrogen is therefore  £156/MWh.

On top of that, are operational costs. BEIS reckoned £21/MWh in 2018, which is probably in the range of £30 now.

Already, therefore, we are up to £186/MWh, before adding CAPEX. BEIS estimated this at about £30/MWh in 2018. But this assumed loan interest rates of 5%. Given interest rate rises since then and general inflation, a CAPEX of £60/MWh is not unreasonable.

This therefore gives us a total cost of £246/MWh.

Wholesale prices of natural gas have been ranging between about 55 and 85p/therm this year. The conversion rate is 29.3 kWh/therm, giving a cost of £23.90/MWh, based on a mid-point of 70p.

Anybody still think hydrogen is a good idea?

Labour’s Green Obsession Will Cost £18 Billion A Year

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Labour’s plan to set up the Great British Energy company at a cost of £8.3bn is just part of its wider Green Plan, which is still included in its website:

Make-Britain-a-Clean-Energy-Superpower-1Herunterladen

According to Sky News, it comes with a cost of £23.7bn over five years, equivalent to £870 for every household in the country. But what will we get for the money?

In addition to Great British Energy, which cannot be funded by increases in windfall taxes, as claimed by Labour, we are promised these goodies:

Upgrading of ports is, of course, yet another cost associated with offshore wind. As for green hydrogen, carbon capture and gigafactories, the money will in all likelihood be wasted, and certainly won’t benefit the public.

Transitioning the steel industry will involve wasting billions so that efficient processes are replaced by hydrogen fuelled ones. But the cost of hydrogen is so great that whatever is left of our steel industry will be unable to compete with international rivals.

This list, together with GBE, costs £15.6bn, so the remaining £8.1bn will presumably be allocated to insulation schemes:

Free insulation has been on offer for so many years that it is hard to see there are many homes left who have not had some. But the plan appears to be to hand billions to local councils to spend on council houses.

But why should taxpayers fund this? Let the councils themselves pay for it, and recover the expense by putting up rents.

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In any event, the amount is tiny, and will make very little difference to the UK’s energy consumption. For example, £8 billion would pay for just 800,000 houses at £10000 a time, the sort of amount of money that might make a difference.

And even that would not save £500 a year, given that annual heating bills for the sort of small houses involved are probably little more than £1000. Labour’s promise also implies that everybody will benefit from this saving.

But the most ridiculous claim of all is that “hundreds of thousands of jobs” would be created. At £50000 a job, you’d be looking at a cost of tens of billions a year. And you can double that amount when the cost of materials, travel etc are added on. Quite clearly this money is not on the table.

By the way, the document, which although undated must have been written last year, states:

As we know, this claim from Carbon Brief was only true for a few days.

But then it goes on to claim that energy bills will fall by £1400, based on the high prices still prevalent last year:

It is fraudulent for Labour to continue linking this report prominently on the website, without any qualification that the costings are no longer correct.

Indeed, Labour’s renewable plans will inevitably force up energy bills even faster than under Tory policies. This is what labour promise:

Based on current market prices, the extra wind and solar power planned will be subsidised to the tune of about £13 billion a year. That’s £500 per household, on top of the cost of the Green Plan.

The insane obsession with floating wind power alone would cost £4 billion a year in subsidies, given its strike price of £244/MWh.

Meanwhile, Labour clearly have no plan for when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.

Thank you, Ed Miliband!

Renewable energy is too expensive to make “green hydrogen” — Twiggy goes to Arizona instead

(PRNewsfoto/Frost & Sullivan)

From JoNova

By Jo Nova

Image by Manuel Angel Egea

Only 18 months ago the Australian government gave $14 million dollars to Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest to figure out if his team could build a 500MW electrolyser to make hydrogen gas on an island near Brisbane. It was going to be a glorious Australian green-techno future, the largest hydrogen plant in the world, but it’s missed three deadlines in the last three months to greenlight the project. Instead the Australian company is going overseas.

As Nick Cater points out this part of the made-in-Australia renewable superpower is going to be made-in-Arizona because they still have cheap electricity — a  miraculous 7.5c a kilowatt hour!

Australia’s manufacturing decline is a story of broken promises and failed industry welfare programs

Nick Cater, The Australian

Bowen described the project’s success as “critical” to Australia’s ambition to be a green energy superpower.

It turns out abundant sun was not such a competitive advantage in the manufacture of green hydrogen. Low taxes, fiscally responsible government and cheap and reliable carbon-free energy are far more appealing drawcards for investors.

The future is already being built in Buckeye, Arizona, where Fortescue is investing $US500m ($765m) in a green hydrogen plant it says will be up and running by 2026.

In 2023, manufacturing in Arizona grew faster than in any other state. It includes energy and water-intensive industries such as silicon chip manufacturing, with Arizona coming from nowhere to fourth place among US states.

..It isn’t hard to work out why. Arizona’s top state income tax rate is 2.98 per cent. … For energy-hungry industries such as hydrogen and the IT sector, however, the biggest attraction is the industrial electricity price: 7.47 cents a kWh in Arizona compared to 18 cents in California.

Our electricity prices are twice as high as any hydrogen industry could bear

We are so far out of the running. Last month the boss of Fortescue Energy said he was hoping our prices would fall (by half!), and cites Norway as an example of “cheap renewable energy” as if we could emulate that. It’s a bit rich given that the only renewable energy Norway uses is hydropower (96%). Norway has 31GW of hydropower while we have 4GW and can’t even tack on a 2GW pumped hydro dessert. To put it bluntly, Norway has a thousand fjords and a half million lakes and Australia has no fjords and about fifty salt lakes.

Fortescue says hydrogen hopes rest on a halving of power prices

By Peter Kerr, Australian Financial Review, March 11 2024

Mr Hutchinson [Fortescue Energy boss] told The Australian Financial Review Business Summit that high power prices were the main impediment at Gibson Island. “We’ve been working very, very hard on it,” he said. “But it’s tough based on the current power prices when we’re looking at competing globally. It’s a tough decision.

The company expects to approve a green hydrogen project in Norway this year which would be powered by carbon-free hydroelectricity. “If you look around the world where you can get cheap renewable power, competitive renewable power is below $US30 a megawatt hour,” he said.

The irony is that to make hydrogen he needs the cheap power we used to have on the Australian national grid before we started adding renewables (after 2008 when Kevin Rudd was elected). For twenty years the whole Australian grid price was about $30 a megawatt hour. At a point after 2012, when the carbon tax was added, electricity prices rose up beyond the $50 per megawatt hour price limit that makes hydrogen industry unrealistic, and never came back down.

Once upon a time, Australia had electricity so cheap no one would have bought hydrogen. Now electricity is so expensive, hydrogen might be competitive, except no one can afford to make it.

Like the Penrose impossible triangle, just keep going left and it never makes sense.

REFERENCE

AER quarterly wholesale electricity prices 1999- 2023

Electric Power vs. Green Goals

From The Master Resource

By Steve Goreham

“The green movement calls for a shutdown of coal and gas power plants. At the same time, it demands a switch to electric vehicles, electric home appliances, and green hydrogen produced by power-intensive electrolyzers. This and the AI revolution portend a breakdown of the so-called energy transition.”

Twenty-three states have adopted goals to move to 100 percent clean energy by 2050. State governments propose to retire coal- and gas-fired power plants and adopt wind and solar systems. But these goals conflict with efforts to promote electric vehicles (EVs), electric appliances, and a new application (AI) that will increase the demand for electric power.

The green energy push seeks to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions to fight human-caused global warming. Leaders tell us that without a complete transformation of electric power, transportation, and home appliances to achieve Net Zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, we are doomed to suffer from increasingly severe climate change impacts.

Michigan

For example, Michigan passed Senate Bill 271 on December 29 of last year, as part of its “Healthy Climate Plan.” The bill requires 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2050. Michigan’s electrical power in 2022 was generated by gas (34%), coal (29%), nuclear (22%), with wind and solar at 12%.

Michigan plans to close its gas and coal plants, which provide 63 percent of the electric power, while also retiring nuclear plants. At the same time, the state wants residents to switch to EVs and electric appliances.

The Healthy Climate Plan calls for two million EVs to be on the road by 2030 along with expanded electric-powered mass transit. It calls for replacement of gas appliances with electric heat pumps. But today, more than three quarters of Michigan homes are heated with natural gas. The state is also the largest user of propane fuel for home heating.

Efforts to adopt EVs and heat pumps will produce rising electricity demand and directly conflict with efforts to close power plants. Michigan’s carbon-free electricity goals appear to be impossible to achieve.

In 2022, 60 percent of US electric power was generated by coal and natural gas. About 85 percent came from the traditional generators: gas (40%), coal (20%), nuclear (18%), and hydroelectric (6%). After two decades of subsidies, wind and solar provided only about 15 percent of US electricity.

US demand for electricity has not grown since about 2005. But the push to electrify homes and transition to EVs will usher in a new era of rising power demand.

Almost all states striving for Net Zero by 2050 will run into the problem that Michigan faces. Shutting down coal and gas plants while promoting electric vehicles and heat pumps will produce electric power shortages. The only states that may be able to approach carbon-free electricity are Idaho, Oregon, and Washington, where hydroelectric generators produce most of the power.

ISO – NE Warning

The New England Integrated System Operator (ISO) issued a report in 2022 that looked at four scenarios to decarbonize the New England power grid by 2040. The report projected increases in power demand from EVs and electrification of home and business heating.

Only one scenario could meet state decarbonization goals and rising demand. That scenario called for 84 gigawatts of new wind, solar, and storage, to provide 56 percent of electricity by 2040.

But the ISO concluded that such a wind-, solar-, and battery-dominated system would not be reliable, requiring periodic operator-imposed blackouts. Even with 2,400 gigawatt-hours of battery-energy capacity and system reserve margins that were 300 percent over typical electricity demand, the system would fail for an estimated 15 days, and be at risk of failure an additional 36 days each year.

Wind and solar buildouts also conflict with alarming climate forecasts. Climate warnings call for increasingly severe weather, including stronger and more frequent storms, floods, and droughts. Yet climate-policy advocates demand a switch to intermittent wind and solar electricity sources. Wind and solar typically fail to operate during heatwave, cloudy, rainy, snowy, or stormy weather conditions.

After a transition to electrified energy systems, blackouts would be more severe. When the lights go out, residents won’t be able to cook with an electric stove or drive an EV either.

Other nations also depend upon coal, gas, and oil generators for much of their electricity. Examples of hydrocarbon-produced power in 2022 were Australia (52%), China (64%), Europe (38%), India (77%), and Japan (65%). Switching to EVs and heat pumps while shuttering coal and natural gas generators will not be possible in most countries.

Two additional trends will drive electric power demand. First, the revolution in artificial intelligence (AI) requires data centers to upgrade servers with high-performance computer processors. Data center power consumption will jump by a factor of six to ten over the next decade, rising from about 1.5 percent of world power demand today to approach ten percent of world demand.

Second, governments are pushing to establish a new green hydrogen fuel business to power heavy industries such as steel. Production of green hydrogen from electrolysis of water is very electricity intensive.

The electricity required to drive electrolyzers to produce hydrogen to power a single steel plant with a four-million-ton annual capacity will require solar installations covering an area of approximately 70 square miles. About 5,000 terawatt-hours of electricity would be needed to drive electrolyzers to generate hydrogen for the world steel industry, equaling one and one-half times total non-hydroelectric global renewable electricity generated today.

The green movement calls for a shutdown of coal and gas power plants. At the same time, it demands a switch to electric vehicles, electric home appliances, and green hydrogen produced by power-intensive electrolyzers. This and the AI revolution portend a breakdown of the so-called energy transition.

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Steve Goreham is a speaker on energy, the environment, and public policy and the author of the new bestselling book Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure. His previous posts at MasterResource can be accessed here.

When You Crunch The Numbers, Green Hydrogen Is A Non-Starter

From The Manhattan Contrarian

Francis Menton

This post reports on two new instances of people applying a little critical thinking to the issue of using so-called “green” hydrogen as an essential piece of a future de-carbonized energy system. This is a subject that I have previously addressed, here in a post of June 13, 2022, and here again in my energy storage Report of December 1, 2022.

The two new pieces covered in this post are (1) a February 1 Report for the Manhattan Institute by Jonathan Lesser titled “Green Hydrogen: A Multibillion-Dollar Energy Boondoggle,”, and (2) a February 13 article in the Washington Examiner by Steve Goreham titled “Can the government create a green hydrogen fuel industry?”

If you think that a “de-carbonized” energy system is some kind of urgent priority for humanity, and you put your mind to how to achieve that, it won’t take you long to realize that hydrogen is the only way to get there. OK, there’s nuclear, but environmentalists and regulators have nuclear completely blocked. That means that to be carbon-free, most electricity must come from the wind and sun, and in turn that means need for energy storage far beyond the capabilities of any batteries. Hydrogen is the one and only remaining solution.

And not just any hydrogen. Only “green” hydrogen will do — that is, hydrogen that is itself produced by some carbon-free process. The alternative is to get your hydrogen the way almost all hydrogen is produced today: you “reform” methane (CH4), separating out the hydrogen and discarding the carbon as CO2 into the atmosphere. But this process has the same CO2 emissions as if you just burned the methane (aka natural gas) in a power plant to get your energy in the first place. If the entire goal is de-carbonization, that is clearly not allowed.

Over at the government, their minds move slowly, but they have recently figured out that keeping their energy transition fantasy alive can only be accomplished with vast amounts of green hydrogen. And so they have undertaken to address the issue in the only way they know, which is to throw oodles of taxpayer funding at it. This piece from JPT on October 24, 2023 covers the government’s latest big announcement:

US President Joe Biden and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced that seven regional clean hydrogen hubs have been selected to receive $7 billion in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding in an effort to accelerate the domestic market for low-cost, clean hydrogen. The seven selected regional clean hydrogen hubs are expected to catalyze more than $40 billion in private investment and create tens of thousands of jobs, bringing the total public and private investment in hydrogen hubs to nearly $50 billion.

Note that the government’s big initiative came just about a year after the two Manhattan Contrarian pieces in 2022 explaining why this could never be done economically. But anyway, now that the government funds are flowing, and so-called “infrastructure” is getting built, others are starting to look at whether this makes any sense.

Of the two new pieces covered here, Lesser’s is far the longer and more detailed. He goes through a careful look at all the elements of trying to produce this green hydrogen stuff — building the electrolysis facility, operating and maintaining the facility, buying electricity from wind and solar producers, transmitting the wind/solar electricity to the site of electrolysis, and compressing the hydrogen into a form ready for transit somewhere to be used — and puts assumed cost figures on each piece of the process. He comes up with a total cost range of $2.74 to $5.35 per kg of hydrogen produced. Here is Lesser’s chart:

Note that Lesser comes up with even higher figures of $3.62 to $8.85 per kg of hydrogen if he further adds costs of battery storage of electricity to make it so that the electrolyzers can run all the time and not be dependent on the intermittency of wind and sun. Green hydrogen advocates would dispute whether this is necessary, so let’s leave it out for now. Even without this additional cost, we are at $2.74 to $5.35 per kg for the hydrogen.

Since a kg of hydrogen is good for about 33.3 kwh, that would mean something in the range of 8.3 to 16.2 cents per kwh just for the fuel, without yet considering any cost to get the fuel to a power plant to be burned.

I would comment that some of Lesser’s assumptions are very low, and by “low” I mean favorable to the economic viability of this green hydrogen. Most notably, he has an assumption of an unsubsidized cost of 4 cents per kwh for the wind/solar-generated electricity. Crazy. Here in New York, off-shore wind developers who had bid last year for contracts at about $90-100/MWH (i.e., 9 – 10 cents per kwh) have recently reneged and demanded prices in the range of $150-160/MWH, or 15-16 cents per kwh. If the recent New York demands represent the real cost of wind/solar electricity, then you can multiply Lesser’s figure for the electricity input to produce a kg of hydrogen by 4, adding about $6 per kg, bringing the total cost of a kg to around $9 – 11, instead of Lesser’s $2.74 – 5.35. In cents/kwh that would be about 18 additional cents per kwh, in either the high or low scenario; instead of a range of about 8 to 16 cents, it would be 24 to 32 cents per kwh to make the green hydrogen.

Goreham does not give us such a detailed calculation, but his bottom line is about the same (including a more realistic cost for the wind/solar electricity):

Hydrogen feedstock made from natural gas or coal is inexpensive, with a cost as low as $1 per kilogram. . . . To produce a kilogram of hydrogen by electrolysis, electricity alone costs $3 to $6 per kilogram, resulting in a total cost of at least $5 per kilogram. This makes hydrogen from electrolysis more than five times as expensive as hydrogen made from natural gas or coal.

Goreham’s “at least $5 per kg” for green hydrogen is actually well below Lesser’s figure after we adjust for the cost of electricity from wind and solar generation.

Note that, as I reported on January 12, recent bids in the UK for producing green hydrogen using electricity from off-shore wind came in at about $306/MWH, or 30.6 cents per kwh. Using the conversion factor of 33.3 kwh/kg of hydrogen would make this the equivalent of over $10 per kg of hydrogen.

We won’t really know how much this green hydrogen stuff actually costs until there are some real facilities up and running. But whether it is ten times as expensive as the stuff produced from natural gas, or only five times as expensive, doesn’t really matter. It is uneconomic, and nothing is going to change that. Nobody will ever buy it or use it without government mandates or subsidies or both.

Goreham’s conclusion:

[G]overnments now want to create a new hydrogen fuel industry using market intervention, mandates, and massive subsidies. But physics and economics strongly oppose the development of a green hydrogen fuel industry. Get ready for a spectacular failure of these government-sponsored efforts.

Can the Government Create a Green Hydrogen Fuel Industry?

From Watts Up With That?

By Steve Goreham

Originally published in Washington Examiner.

World leaders promote hydrogen as a possible low-emissions fuel for transportation and industry. Nations have announced hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to support development and supply of hydrogen. But will governments be able to create a new green hydrogen fuel industry?

When hydrogen burns, the only combustion product is water vapor. Net Zero advocates, such as the International Energy Agency (IEA), propose that green hydrogen be used as fuel in place of natural gas and coal in industry and transportation. But the problems with existing hydrogen technology are many.

For all practical purposes, a hydrogen fuel industry does not exist today. Ninety-five million tons of hydrogen are produced annually by steam methane reforming using natural gas or by coal gasification methods. But the vast majority of hydrogen is not used as fuel. It is used on-site as feedstock for industrial processes.

Chemical and refining industries, for example, use hydrogen to generate ammonia or methanol. The steel industry uses hydrogen as a reducing agent to produce direct reduced iron. Hydrogen feedstock made from natural gas or coal is inexpensive, with a cost as low as $1 per kilogram.

Instead of using natural gas or coal, hydrogen advocates propose to use wind and solar electricity to produce “green” hydrogen by electrolysis of water. They also propose to create a new hydrogen fuel industry and to ship hydrogen around the world through pipelines or ships. But hydrogen from electrolysis is very expensive to produce and very difficult to transport.

To produce a kilogram of hydrogen by electrolysis, electricity alone costs $3 to $6 per kilogram, resulting in a total cost of at least $5 per kilogram. This makes hydrogen from electrolysis more than five times as expensive as hydrogen made from natural gas or coal.

Nevertheless, nations are rushing to try to establish a leadership position in a new green hydrogen fuel industry. The Biden administration has awarded grants to firms to establish seven regional hubs to produce green hydrogen. Germany, India, and Japan have announced national strategies to produce and export hydrogen. Forty-one countries now have a green hydrogen strategy in place.

More than 280 billion in government subsidies have been announced to try to create a green hydrogen industry that, according to the IEA, totaled only a miniscule $1.4 billion in 2022. Advocates propose to use hydrogen fuel in heavy industry, transportation, and even homes.

Cement, chemicals, plastics, and steel industries are urged to use hydrogen fuel in furnaces and other energy-intensive processes. To date, these efforts have been experimental. Little green hydrogen exists to fuel these industries. In addition, the amount of electricity needed from wind and solar systems to drive electrolyzers to produce green hydrogen for heavy industry is huge.

It has been estimated that the incremental renewable electricity needed to produce hydrogen fuel just for the steel industry is larger than the world’s total current output of renewable electricity. The amount of renewable electricity needed to drive electrolyzers to produce hydrogen for the chemical industry is three times as large as what is needed for steel.

Hydrogen vehicle fleets remain tiny. In 2022, only 70,000 hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles operated across the world, compared to more than 30 million electric vehicles and about 1.5 billion gasoline or diesel light vehicles. Hydrogen fuel use is small but growing in niche markets, such buses, trains, and factory forklifts. But the performance of hydrogen vehicles is spotty.

California has a network of 65 hydrogen fueling stations, the only such network in the US. But after tens of millions of dollars in state subsidies, only about 12,000 hydrogen cars drive on California roads, less than one of every 1,000 vehicles. An ongoing hydrogen fuel shortage in southern California makes it hard to refuel vehicles. Hydrogen vehicle fuel remains more expensive than gasoline and hard to find.

Not only is green hydrogen expensive to produce, but hydrogen is difficult to transport. Hydrogen must be supercooled to -253degrees Celsius to liquify it, or it must be super-pressurized to 700 atmospheres, about 300 times the air pressure in your car tire. Even at 700 atmospheres of pressure, hydrogen at a filling station requires storage tanks with seven times the volume of gasoline to store the same energy.

Hydrogen pipeline networks do not exist and transporting hydrogen by ship is also very expensive. For the world to use hydrogen fuel, production, pipeline, and ship transport industries would all need to be established. This is unlikely to happen in most people’s lifetimes.

Some have even advocated the use of hydrogen for home heating. But hydrogen is nature’s smallest molecule, is prone to leaks, and will ignite with low levels of energy such as static electricity. Some years ago, lighting stuck our house, damaging appliances and causing a leak in our natural gas line. We soon smelled gas and were able to repair the leak without further damage. Had that been a hydrogen line, the leak would likely have exploded or burst into flame, destroying our house. Hydrogen lines to homes and gas stations involve dangerous safety risks.

Today, hydrogen is used on-site, but governments now want to create a new hydrogen fuel industry using market intervention, mandates, and massive subsidies. But physics and economics strongly oppose the development of a green hydrogen fuel industry. Get ready for a spectacular failure of these government-sponsored efforts.

Steve Goreham is a speaker on energy, the environment, and public policy and the author of the new bestselling book Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure.

Unions Want £12Bn To Make Green Steel

From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

h/t Gareth Beer

Tata’s plan for greener steel would see a four-year shutdown in Wales but unions and locals are adamant there is another way

For more than a century, the steelworkers of Port Talbot have poured molten metal: it has been the lifeblood flowing through the heart of their coastal south Wales town.Rising between Swansea Bay and the heather-clad hills of west Glamorgan, the plant’s steaming chimney stacks have shaped not just the skyline but the history, economics and even culture of the community.“People’s fathers and grandfathers are steelworkers,” says Gavin John, who owns Afan Ales, a craft beer shop in the town centre. “It’s ingrained in you from a young age: once you’re older you can get a job at the steelworks and you’re made.”

Many of his regulars work at the steelworks or one of its suppliers, or have family who do. The plant, which employs more than 4,000 people in a town of about 32,000, is emblematic not just of the community but of the entire steel sector, and even of the vestiges of UK industrial prowess.

Trade unions and industry figures say this year is shaping up to be a crunch one for Port Talbot and for British steel, a “crossroads” from which the sector will either limp on in managed decline or thrive anew.

Unite, Britain’s biggest trade union, is about to present the government with a £12bn plan that it says can ensure a phoenix-like renaissance. The blueprint, a summary of which was shared with the Observer, is a response to several perceived threats.Indian giant Tata Steel, which has owned the site since 2007, is expected to announce plans to mothball its blast furnaces for four years while it builds a greener, cheaper electric alternative. In November, Tata postponed official confirmation of the closures, which unions say could cost 2,500 jobs directly, and hundreds more in the wider community.

But industry sources believe the stay of execution was temporary, with the axe falling early this year. This would be controversial given that Tata’s plan involves £500m of taxpayer subsidy.

In Scunthorpe, the UK’s only other blast furnace site, a similar £1.25bn plan is raising questions over the future of about 2,000 workers. That plant’s owner, Chinese firm Jingye, rescued British Steel in 2020, promising a “new chapter” in UK steelmaking. It, too is expected to ask for £500m in government support.

Both Jingye and Tata want to build electric arc furnaces, which offer the ability to recycle scrap steel using clean electricity. Blast furnaces rely on coking coal, which emits large amounts of carbon.

In the meantime, Britain would be the only major economy in Europe and the G20 with no ability to make steel from scratch in a blast furnace, relying instead on imported steel for the aerospace and automotive sectors and to make hundreds of miles of railway track.

Unite believes the eco-friendly switch can be made without devastating communities through job cuts, or letting the blast furnaces go cold.

Under Unite’s proposals, the government would invest £12bn over 12 years to spur a steel renaissance which, it says, would pay for itself in 10 years via increased tax receipts. Its plan would keep the blast furnaces open during a transition to fully decarbonised steelmaking involving electric arc furnaces and direct reduced iron furnaces (DRIs). DRIs can use green hydrogen – extracted from water using renewable energy – rather than gas, to make virgin steel.

Unite’s plan is broader and, crucially, proposes a 40% subsidy for the crippling energy costs that have made UK steelmaking an exercise in burning money in recent years.

British manufacturers pay 86% more for their energy than competitors in Germany and 62% more than in France, and charges for connection to the National Grid are particularly high. The move to green steel will require even greater electricity usage, says Unite, so industry must be prioritised for upgraded connections to the grid.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/07/port-talbot-fights-to-keep-furnaces-burning

So there we have it.

Taxpayers must stump up another £12 billion, and also subsidise electricity costs, both as a direct consequence of Net Zero.

As for that “green hydrogen”, where on Earth is that supposed to come from? We have no surplus wind power to speak of, and won’t do for a long time to come. And when we do, it will be so expensive that it too will need subsidising.

And when all of this is done, the UK steel industry still won’t be competitive with China.

Yes, we can impose import tariffs, but that will simply put up costs for the products that use steel.

Would it not make more sense to build some new, modern blast furnaces, which are by far the cheapest way to make iron and steel?

Inside the Hydrogen Fuel Project Bubbles

From Science Matters

By Ron Clutz

The map above from IEA shows almost 2000 hydrogen fuel projects around the world, intending to replace hydrocarbon fuels to save the planet.  They dream of being operational by 2030 claiming that real world obstacles will be overcome if enough taxpayer dollars are thrown at the problems.  The whole notion is fantastic (in the literal sense) for reasons detailed in a previous post.

Replace Carbon Fuels with Hydrogen? Absurd, Exorbitant and Pointless

But realities be damned, there’s virtue to be displayed, money to be made and no accountability for failure, so the charade will go on.  On the map are some bubbles off the coast of Canadian maritime provinces, so let’s take a peek into how these projects are conceived and realized. Rod Nickel reports at the Globe and Mail Canadian wind-hydrogen project delayed one year in race to first European exports.  Excerpts in italics with my bolds and added images.

Green Hydrogen Project in Atlantic Provinces Delayed

One of Canada’s first projects to produce emissions-free hydrogen with wind energy has delayed its start by one year because operator World Energy GH2’s European customers need more time to develop special infrastructure to handle the product, the company said.

The delays illustrate the difficulties companies face in introducing a nascent product to replace high-emitting forms of fuel for transport, industry and homes. [The background post above notes how hydrogen makes containers and conduits brittle, not to mention its explosive potential.]

Have we learned nothing from the Hindenburg Disaster?

Half a dozen companies are advancing projects in the gusty Atlantic provinces of Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia to harness winds to power production of Canada’s first exports of emissions-free hydrogen. Canada signed a non-binding agreement in 2022 to ship green hydrogen to Germany starting in 2025.

But World Energy GH2, an affiliate of Boston-based renewable fuels producer World Energy, won’t make that timeline, managing director Sean Leet told Reuters.

“The offtakers are not going to be ready to accept product within 2025, actually not until 2027,” Leet said, referring to buyers who would pre-purchase some of the project’s hydrogen.

The challenges for prospective buyers involve developing new technology to ship, further process and transport the hydrogen by pipeline at its last destination, Leet said.

World Energy GH2 now hopes to start production in late 2026, he said. It requires approval from Newfoundland’s environmental department and strong pre-purchase interest to attract financing before starting production.

Those buyer commitments hinge on the Canadian government
finalizing details of a tax credit for up to 40% of the
capital cost of building hydrogen plants, Leet said.

The company intends to build three onshore wind farms in Newfoundland to power production of 250,000 metric tons per year of hydrogen, at a total cost of $12 billion.

Advocacy group EnviroWatch NL, however, questions the efficiency of building wind turbines in Canada to produce hydrogen that will ultimately generate power for Europe thousands of kilometres away.

EverWind Fuels is on track to start production in Nova Scotia in 2025, said CEO Trent Vichie.  Its plant, a converted fuel storage facility, would eventually produce 1 million metric tons annually of ammonia, a compound that is a practical form of transporting hydrogen.

EverWind, which declined to disclose the project’s capital budget, expects to strike firm buyer agreements in the first half of 2024, a spokesperson said, and has memorandums of understanding to sell hydrogen to German power companies Uniper and E.ON.

The Canadian government agreed in November to loan EverWind $125 million to build its project, which still requires provincial approval of its wind farms. EverWind’s hydrogen plant has already received environmental approval.

Germany-based ABO Wind is applying for permits and land for a Newfoundland onshore wind farm that will provide electricity to produce hydrogen for Braya Renewable Fuels’ refinery as early as 2027, Robin Reese, director of development for ABO Wind Canada said.

Newfoundland selected EverWind, World Energy GH2, ABO and Exploits Valley Renewable Energy Corp in August to proceed with their wind-hydrogen projects on government land.

U.S.-based Pattern Energy plans to secure European buying agreements in mid-2024 and start construction in 2025 for its wind-hydrogen project on private land in Newfoundland, Canada country head Frank Davis said.

Some Skeptical Comments on the article

EnviroWatch is asking the right question. Why use all this great wind energy to electrolyze water to make hydrogen to convert it (presumably) to ammonia for shipping to Europe to produce energy. It makes absolutely no thermodynamic sense whatsoever. I highly doubt ANY of these projects get built. To quote Susan Powter from the 90s, “Stop the insanity!”.

It makes no economic, thermodynamic or business sense. But it’s great politics.

I’m not thinking Billions but rather Trillions to be wasted on wind power before the world comes to its senses! Twenty- thirty years of spending. Reminds me of the treasure supposedly buried at Oak Island!

Problem is, the alternatives are all expensive mega-projects. Darlington was 5 years late and $10 billion over budget, and we haven’t built a new nuclear plant since then (30 years ago). New hydro dams have similar problems. Wind is small and cheap enough to actually get built in large numbers. Have to expand the energy supply somehow.

The actual Darlington nuke plants were 20% over budget not bad for a first of a kind. The rest was caused by government foolish delays in a high interest rate environment. The next 8 Candu’s were built on time in under 4 years and on budget at under $2/watt average the latest just completed in India.

The $25B refurb project is also on time and under budget.

Actually wind is of little use in Canada as it disappears in summer doldrums and winter cold snaps but maximizes during springtime when hydro flows max out. Its intermittancy makes it 10 times the cost of Candu. 

GOREHAM: World Leaders Ignore Growing Safety Issues With Green Energy

By STEVE GOREHAM

The nations of the world are pursuing an unprecedented energy transition. Efforts are underway to force a shift from coal, oil, and natural gas to renewable energy sources by 2050. But key elements of the proposed transition suffer from major safety issues, specifically batteries for electric vehicles and electricity storage and hydrogen fuels for industry. 

Most energy sources involve safety risks. Gasoline cars can explode or burn, especially after collisions. Natural gas pipelines and processing facilities have been known to explode or combust. Nuclear power plants have caused famous disasters like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima when cooling systems have failed. But green energy is bringing a new dimension of safety problems to society. 

A transition from gasoline and diesel vehicles to electric models is a major part of the green energy revolution. President Joe Biden, other political leaders, and the International Energy Agency call for electric vehicles (EVs) to completely replace internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles by 2050. EVs with high-capacity batteries are new technology that is rapidly gaining market acceptance. Automakers compete to increase EV range by introducing larger and more powerful batteries.

But battery fires may threaten the EV revolution. 

Lithium batteries in cell phones and other portable electronic devices are banned from commercial airline baggage compartments because of fire risk. Batteries in electric cars contain graphite, metals, and other materials bathed in flammable electrolytes with thousands of times more energy than your cell phone battery. 

Electric cars spontaneously combust. Earlier this year, a father from Elk Grove Illinois was about to pull onto Highway 99 when he felt his Tesla start shaking. He pulled to the side of the road and exited his car, just before it burst into flames. He was unable to save the child car seats from the back of the car and was glad that his children were at home. 

This summer, a Florida car owner had her vehicle in for servicing and was given a Mercedes EV as a loaner. The loaner was parked in her garage and not charging when it burst into flames. The flames and smoke caused heavy damage to her home.

BMW, Ford, GM, Hyundai, and Tesla electric cars have all experienced problems with battery fires. In the most visible case, GM recalled all 141,000 Chevrolet Bolts produced between 2016 and 2021. In August, electric truck maker Nikola announced a recall of all 209 of its heavy electric trucks because of battery fires. 

In total, the rate of EV fires does not exceed the fire rate for ICE vehicles. But EVs can ignite unexpectedly when charging overnight in the garage or even when just parked in the driveway, locations where gasoline-powered cars typically don’t catch fire. 

Battery fires are very hard to extinguish. They can burn for hours while fire departments douse them with water, and even re-ignite after the fire appears to be out. Some fire departments have resorted to lifting the flaming EV and dropping it into a huge tank of water to extinguish the flames. 

Grid-scale batteries are being deployed by utilities in Australia, the U.S., and other nations. These are huge batteries, which provide electricity storage to back up wind and solar facilities. When wind and solar systems generate excess electricity, it can be stored in batteries and released when the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining. But grid-scale batteries also have issues with self-ignition.

Today, grid-scale batteries store only about one millionth of the electricity that the world uses annually, but many of the few batteries that have been deployed already have suffered major fires. Batteries have burst into flames in Arizona, California, New York, Australia, and the United Kingdom. Grid-scale battery fires result from thermal runaway, caused by mechanical damage, poor air conditioning, or overcharging.

What is the current leading cause of accidental fires in New York City? The answer isn’t cooking or smoking. It’s fires caused by e-bike lithium batteries. Batteries on e-bikes spontaneously burst into flames when charging or just sitting idle. After ignition, the batteries burn with a high heat and set fire to storage areas or whole buildings, sometimes killing or injuring residents. 

According to the New York City Fire Department, e-bike fires jumped from 44 in 2020 to more than 200 this year. The fires caused 10 deaths and over 200 injuries in the city during the past two years. 

Green hydrogen, produced from electrolysis of water, is also proposed as a new fuel for the energy transition. Leaders call for a hydrogen economy to reduce emissions and fight global warming. Hydrogen is touted as a transportation fuel and a replacement for natural gas and coal in heavy industry. More than $280 billion in subsidies have been committed globally to develop green hydrogen.

But hydrogen exists in nature only in compounds. Pure hydrogen is very reactive and takes only a low level of energy in the presence of oxygen to burst into flames. The world’s rush to deploy hydrogen fuel may become a major safety hazard.

In 1937, the airship Hindenburg exploded in Lakehurst, New Jersey. The explosion ended 35 years of efforts to deploy hydrogen airships. More than two dozen airships exploded from 1908 to 1937 from accidental hydrogen fires, killing hundreds of passengers and crew. The world decided hydrogen airships were too hazardous to continue their use. 

But green energy advocates now call for a network of hydrogen pipelines, public hydrogen fueling stations for vehicles, and even the use of hydrogen to heat homes. These systems will need to compress hydrogen to 700 atmospheres of pressure, making leaks probable. And unlike natural gas, hydrogen leaks are prone to spontaneous combustion and resultant explosions and fires.

Vice President Kamala Harris recently announced $1 billion in grants for electric school buses. But the number of electric bus fires around the world is growing. God forbid we start seeing spontaneous fires in electric buses full of children.

It’s clear that world leaders are ignoring the growing safety problems of green energy. But these fears are being pushed aside in favor of Climatism, the fear of human-caused global warming.

Steve Goreham is a speaker on energy, the environment, and public policy and the author of the new bestselling book Green Breakdown: The Coming Renewable Energy Failure.

Originally published in Daily Caller.