A False Hydrogen Economy
The Scottish Government wants to develop a hydrogen economy. But there are many flaws in the proposals.
Barry Dalgleish
In December 2020, the Scottish Government launched its Hydrogen Policy Statement, along with a raft of proposals. The problem with this report is that it is loaded with unsubstantiated assertions and fallacies. This particular statement is problematic:
The technology to produce hydrogen is well understood and already routinely applied in industry and when coupled with carbon capture and storage (CCS), large scale hydrogen production can be achieved with ultra-low carbon and even negative emissions when using biomass.
CCS is unproven at a large scale. It is therefore unknown whether large scale hydrogen production can be achieved with CCS. And biomass does not produce negative emissions. The fallacy is repeated:
When hydrogen is produced from a bio-energy feedstock and combined with CCS it can deliver negative emissions. This is an example of a Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) technology.
It goes on to mention Direct Air Capture (DACCS), which is a vague unproven concept. Indeed much of this report appears to regurgitate UK Government policy, as we will see. These points will be picked up later and backed up by evidence.
The report elaborates on hydrogen as an energy store. That is viable to a certain extent. But there are issues with hydrogen storage. The key policy here is pivoting hydrogen as solution to decarbonisation. And as noted above, this is linked to UK policy:
Many of the regulatory and legislative levers required to enable the emergence of a
hydrogen economy in Scotland are determined at a UK level. We welcome the UK
Government’s 10 Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution, published in
November 2020, which set out a target to generate 5GW of low-carbon hydrogen
production capacity by 2030 for industry, transport, power and homes, and an aim to
develop the first town heated entirely by hydrogen by the end of the decade. A UK
Government Hydrogen Strategy is expected to be published in the Spring of 2021.
All this links into a global consensus to focus significantly on hydrogen infrastructure. Accompanying this report was the Scottish hydrogen: assessment report, which is really just a selection of scenarios outlining what sort of shape Scotland’s hydrogen economy could take.
All in, the policy document outlined above is very disappointing. The question is, has the policy shifted since its publication? The answer would be provided by the SG’s Hydrogen action plan: draft, published in November 2021. According to FOE Scotland, this plan will ‘let fossil fuels in by the back door’. The answer to the question is - not really. It regurgitates the myths presented in the Policy.
The key points noted in the Plan include expansion of on and offshore wind capacity. This would provide the main energy source for green hydrogen production. A just transition away from fossil fuels would also accommodate hydrogen, with ‘up to 300,000 jobs’ supported ‘across all skill levels by 2045’. Also elaborated upon is CCS and the use of bioenergy. Again the fallacy is stated that:
When hydrogen is produced from a bio-energy feedstock and combined with CCS it can deliver negative emissions. Negative emissions technologies will play a critical role in meeting emissions reduction targets.
The Plan also cites the transport sector as an important market as well as providing heating systems. But the only viable low carbon version is green hydrogen, produced from renewable energy sources through the electrolysis of water. As we’ll see later, this will be most effective by using excess unused energy production at night from wind energy utilising hydrogen as a storage medium.
The Plan outlines a somewhat surreal case study outlining INEOS’s plans to invest £1bn ‘to continue its decarbonisation of operations at its Grangemouth site.’ Apparently INOES has established a ‘net zero roadmap’ to facilitate a full switch-over to hydrogen with CCS.
Most of the funding for Scotland’s hydrogen ‘revolution’ will come from the Emerging Energy Technologies Fund (EETF), worth £180m, of which £100m will be allocated to hydrogen projects.
This then is the gist of the Plan. As noted above, there are issues with many of the proposals cited in these documents. What is the evidence against? This author has previously done a study on hydrogen and some of the false solutions to the climate crisis. Here I reproduce some of the key points.
The Hydrogen Myth
First we need to look more closely at CCS. A briefing from Center for International Environmental Law (CEIL) outlines how most of the CO2 already captured is injected into oil wells to enhance oil recovery, which ‘exacerbates global warming by boosting oil production and prolonging the fossil fuel era.’ CEIL notes:
Existing CCS facilities capture less than 1 percent of global carbon emissions. The 28 CCS facilities currently operating globally have a capacity to capture only 0.1 percent of fossil fuel emissions, or 37 megatons of CO2 annually. Of that capacity, just 19 percent, or 7 megatons, is being captured for actual geological sequestration.
CEIL outlines problems with transport and storage of CO2, involving a network of pipes transporting high pressure, low temperature CO2. As this video illustrates, a pipeline rupture could be catastrophic:
The explosive rupture of a pipeline and its associated shockwave pose immediate physical risks to nearby people and property. In areas closest to the pipeline, a release of CO2 can quickly drop temperatures to minus 60°C, coating the surrounding area with super-cold dry ice. At high concentrations, CO2 is a toxic gas and an asphyxiant capable of causing “rapid ‘circulatory insufficiency’, coma and death.”
Then there is the energy penalty of CSS, which according to a paper published by Harvard University, could be as high as 40%. Other Research from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has demonstrated that the predominate method of CO2 storage, isn’t as effective as first thought.
The study showed that CO2 coming into contact with brine deposits in underground rock formations — important for the solidification process into solid carbonates — actually causes the CO2 to solidify on first contact, creating a barrier to further CO2 disposition.
Next is the ‘hydrogen rainbow’. There are five different shades of hydrogen; Grey, Brown, Black, Green and blue, with blue being the most heavily touted as ‘low carbon’. A detailed paper from Cornell university, How green is blue hydrogen? explains.
Most hydrogen (96%) is processed from fossil fuels in a process called steam methane reforming (SMR) of natural gas:
heat and pressure are used to convert the methane in natural gas to hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The hydrogen so produced is often referred to as “gray hydrogen,” to contrast it with the “brown hydrogen” made from coal gasification.
Blue hydrogen is grey hydrogen with CCS plugged into it. Its basically all the shades of grey hydrogen passed through the prism of CCS to produce a sparkling blue version. Given that grey hydrogen is the dominant form, with some brown and black, which is derived from coal (brown comes from lignite high coal. Black comes from black coal), this is where almost all of the blue hydrogen will come from. And it does have a footprint. Even if some of the CO2 is captured, there is also a methane footprint. It requires a lot of energy under high pressures to produce.
Fugitive emissions plays a significant part in the methane footprint, accounting for up to 3.5% of the gas used in production. Taking everything into account, the overall footprint of both grey and blue hydrogen is higher than any other fossil fuel, as this table from the Cornell paper shows:
The notion that blue hydrogen is a clean, low emission fuel is therefore misleading. That leaves green hydrogen then as the only alternative. But just like blue hydrogen, the scale for production isn’t available yet. The report notes:
Society needs to move away from all fossil fuels as quickly as possible, and the truly green hydrogen produced by electrolysis driven by renewable electricity can play a role. Blue hydrogen, though, provides no benefit. We suggest that blue hydrogen is best viewed as a distraction, something than (sic) may delay needed action to truly decarbonize the global energy economy, in the same way that has been described for shale gas as a bridge fuel and for carbon capture and storage in general. We further note that much of the push for using hydrogen for energy since 2017 has come from the Hydrogen Council, a group established by the oil and gas industry specifically to promote hydrogen, with a major emphasis on blue hydrogen.
Given that the Plan advocates using hydrogen in transport, a paper from the Proceedings of the IEEE, highlights the shortcomings of using hydrogen as a fuel. Does a Hydrogen Economy Make Sense? poses a question that, according to author Ulf Bossel, is a resounding no.
The key point is that:
the energy problem cannot be solved in a sustainable way by introducing hydrogen as an energy carrier. Instead, energy from renewable sources and high energy efficiency between source and service will become the key points of a sustainable solution.
Bossel presents clear analogies using figures that demonstrates the differences in energy efficiency between hydrogen fuel and direct electrical use. The infrastructure involved in mass producing hydrogen would be immense, with a network of power plants purpose built for producing hydrogen.
High energy input is required to produce hydrogen. Then there is the stages in between, involving cooling, storage, transport and finding space to store at point of use. All these stages require high energy use.
The following infographic shows the energy loses incurred between a vehicle using hydrogen fuel cells and a electric vehicle powered directly from the grid.
To conclude:
Fundamental laws of physics expose the weakness of a hydrogen economy. Hydrogen, the artificial energy carrier, can never compete with its own energy source, electricity, in a sustainable future.
Finally there is the question of using biomass as a negative energy source. This is something that has been unfolding in Drax power station in Yorkshire, that has been converting over to bioenergy. This conversion has been underpinned by UK Government policy combining bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). A study commissioned by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has unpicked this policy. This is based on the idea that:
carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology to a biopower plant will create a ‘carbon negative’ power station (i.e., resulting in a net removal of CO2 from the atmosphere). ‘Carbon negative’ power generation would help to offset emissions from hard-to-decarbonize sectors and deliver the Government’s commitment to zeroing out net economy-wide emissions by midcentury.
…Scientists are clear that this simplistic picture of bioenergy and BECCS is flawed. In particular, biopower generated from forest biomass without carbon capture is rarely carbon neutral.
In addition:
much of the wood burned for electricity in the UK is cut down and shipped in from ecologically sensitive forests overseas, destroying habitats and endangering wildlife. And unlike solar and wind, large-scale wood-burning for power emits dangerous air pollution that causes an array of health harms. Wood pellet mills likewise release unsafe air pollution, at times at levels that violate plant permits and U.S. law and are overwhelmingly cited in low-income communities and communities of color. Drax has been cited multiple times for serious air quality breaches at its U.S. pellet mills, most recently in February.
The reason that biomass is cited as carbon negative is down to a carbon accounting trick outlined by the IPCC. This is explained in a report by the The Transnational Institute (TNI):
the result of this IPCC guidance is that a large proportion of the emissions caused when biomass is burned for energy generation are not accounted for at all. This omission is apparently justified in the name of avoiding possible double-counting, with under-reporting of emissions considered preferable to over-reporting. This loophole in the IPCC methodology is exploited to the full by EU Member States and energy utilities, who are converting coal-fired power plants into massive biomass burners, causing equally massive emissions that go unreported.
What all this points to is the Scottish Government digging a large hydrogen hole for itself if it goes down the road towards large scale blue hydrogen production. The only viable method for producing genuine green hydrogen is using excess renewable energy and utilsing direct renewable electricity for powering other sectors where possible.
Of particular relevance to Glasgow is the development of the Whitelee Renewable Hydrogen Project just south of the city, as outlined in the Plan. This will produce green hydrogen from the wind farm. An estimated 8 tonnes of green hydrogen will be available early 2023. In addition, Glasgow City Council is deploying hydrogen fuel gritters and bin lorries. It would appear then that the hydrogen revolution is already underway, but it is unlikely that much of the fuel being used will be derived from green hydrogen. Glasgow’s claims of being zero carbon or carbon neutral - along with the rest of the country - need to be taken with a pinch of salt.