From the Daily Skeptic
Chris Morrison
All this “green” hydrogen is dangerous stuff. In addition to being handled with great care or prone to explosion, its higher combustion temperature produces more harmful nitrogen dioxide than natural gas. Nitrogen dioxide is a nasty pollutant linked to asthma and other major illnesses in children. Additionally, hydrogen is the lightest gas and can easily escape into the atmosphere—a newly published scientific paper shows that each pound of hydrogen generates 37 times more heat than carbon dioxide over 20 years. This is because hydrogen is oxidized by hydroxyl radicals, leading to the formation of tropospheric ozone and stratospheric water vapor. Both are so-called “greenhouse” gases, the effects of which alarmist scientists are keen to exaggerate. If you are worried about atmospheric pollution and greenhouse gases, then promoting hydrogen is a very bad choice indeed, despite all past observational evidence that the “greenhouse” effects of these gases “saturate” at some level.
If green hydrogen were a poor man's car, London Mayor Khan wouldn't hesitate to impose a hefty Ulez tax on it. Imperial College may provide a “statistic” stating that hundreds of thousands of people will die.
But it’s increasingly clear that hydrogen is the only play left to back up unreliable wind and solar. Batteries are useless considering their high price, limited lifespan, and the large amounts of earth crust required to be excavated. Don't forget that they can explode and burn out of control if not handled with care. Carbon capture seems like a perfect opportunity for fools to give up their money to chase a ridiculous dream. People must be keen to have an effective solution to reduce carbon dioxide2 Gases removed from the atmosphere were never invented because removing 60% of the trace gases would kill all plants and humans on Earth.
An interesting paper has just been published in a peer-reviewed journal Energy Science and Engineering The report reviews the “challenges” of delivering hydrogen using existing natural gas systems. The conclusion was that, given hydrogen's physical and chemical properties, “it is not an effective decarbonization tool for use in homes and buildings”. Hydrogen is said to leak from pipelines three to four times faster than natural gas and, as suggested, campaigners have a hard time justifying the claimed impact on the atmosphere.
The paper is interesting because it appears to be the work of the Environmental Defense Fund, an influential activist and campaign think tank funded by the Green Blob. In short, it’s another example of how even fervent net-zero circles are losing out on a lack of backup power from wind and solar. It is worth noting that this time will not be too early, because in countries such as the United Kingdom, Miliband is still madly planning to “decarbonize” the power grid by 2030.
The authors believe that using hydrogen in existing natural gas systems “would have significant impacts on security, energy supply, climate and costs”. Mixing hydrogen with natural gas only reduces CO2 emissions slightly2 emissions, and transitioning to full hydrogen is impossible without major retrofits and replacements. The authors don't put a price on this, but note that even if technical and “economic barriers” (a polite term for unimaginably large sums of money) are overcome, “serious safety and environmental risks remain.”
Concerns have also been raised about the manufacturing process used to produce hydrogen. There are more than 1,000 proposed projects aimed at scaling up zero- and low-carbon hydrogen, but each “clean” production method is said to present “challenges”. “No single approach is universally beneficial to the climate,” they point out.
Last year, an influential Royal Society report singled out batteries as a viable electricity storage solution for unreliable wind and solar power. But in the absence of any alternative support, the Royal Society turned to hydrogen as a possible solution. The report envisions giant dissolved salt caverns capable of storing “green” hydrogen for decades. Salt caverns would leak hydrogen anyway due to loss of permeability, but they only exist in a few locations in the UK, requiring a vast network of specialist pipelines to carry the gas to the turbines which are on constant standby. Specialist pipes will cost billions of pounds and will always leak and pose a danger to anyone nearby. At that time, Francis Menton Manhattan bucks the trend noted that the authors' “quasi-religious commitment” to a fossil-free future led them to minimize and deflect attention from key cost and feasibility issues.
Bottom line – there are no cost-effective, viable, reliable and scalable alternatives to hydrocarbons available or likely to be available in the near future. If uncompromising ideologues like Ed Miliband at the UK Department of Energy are allowed to continue wreaking havoc on the energy needs of modern industrial society, blackouts and strict rationing will be inevitable.
Chris Morrison is daily skepticof Environment editor.
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