A hydrogen strategy that makes sense
Intro #
This is an excerpt from a tiny newsletter that I used to send to friends when I was intensely learning about climate change. In this issue, I looked at hydrogen. Many people pitch hydrogen as the solution to decarbonising heating and transportation. A quick look at efficiency and cost figures shows that this makes no sense except for rare edge cases. And yet, many countries plan to radically expand their hydrogen infrastructure. Why? Because hydrogen requires roughly the same machinery as fossil fuels, so fossil fuel companies lobby the government very hard to include it in our Net Zero plans.
However, there are some places where we will need hydrogen as a feedstock for making chemicals and steel. Currently, all of this hydrogen is made from fossil fuels. To decarbonise, we need to make green hydrogen, produced using 100% renewable energy, cost-competitive with grey hydrogen made from natural gas. This will require a clever hydrogen infrastructure rooted in fact, and some amount of technological innovation. I link to papers that show what this may look like. Enjoy!
Resources #
"Hydrogen for heating? A comparison with heat pumps (Part 1)" by Hydrogen Science Coalition - this article has been making rounds on social media. The gist of it - hydrogen makes no sense for heating, because the round-trip efficiency is a sixth that of a heat pump. Yet, UK, EU and US governments still plan on building extensive hydrogen infrastructure (UK plans to get 20-35% of all energy from hydrogen by 2050). Why? See below.
"Hijacking the recovery through hydrogen" by Recovery Watch - Hydrogen infrastructure - boilers, pipelines etc. - works with natural gas. By builidng it, we're locking in billions in capital and extending the lifetime of gas as a fuel for heating and transport. Fossil fuel industry gets it, so they push heavily for the inclusion of hydrogen in decarbonisation plans. This report describes how they lobbied it into the EU 'green COVID recovery' fund. Some examples: the Strategic Vision for Portugal's recovery was written by Antonio Silva - the CEO of Partex, an oil and gas company. Emma Navarro used to oversee European Investment Bank's lending to Spain. Three months after leaving EIB, she was appointed to the executive board of Iberidola - Spain's largest energy company. France's 'Conseil national de l’hydrogène', which implements their hydrogen strategy, includes execs from Total, Engie and Air Liquide. The article has more examples if you're interested.
"What would it take for renewably powered electrosynthesis to displace petrochemical processes?" by de Luna et al. - the answer is 60% process effficiency and electricity costs below 4 cents/kWh. Wind/solar already deliver electricity for less than 4 cents in many places. Some technologies (e.g. CO and formic acid production) show 40-50% efficiency in the lab, but they have not yet been demonstrated at scale. If we manage to make it work, CO2-negative chemical products are on the horizon. Possibly sooner than we think, if the cost of solar continues to drop, as predicted by Handmer below.
"12 Insights on Hydrogen" by Agora Energiewende - In contrast to the lobbyists above, analysts say things like: "There is no credible financing strategy for hydrogen use in households", "Gas distribution grids need to prepare for a disruptive end of their business model", and "The potential future market for hydrogen vehicles is shrinking daily". Hydrogen makes sense for some hard to electrify industrial processes (e.g. ammonia and steel production), but, for everything else, it's inferior to direct electrification. If you can use electricity to do your thing, hydrogen simply adds an inefficient conversion step.