AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
Blue hydrogen4/10/2023 We use to heat our homes, cook food and produce electricity – into hydrogen.īecause it uses fossil gas, this way of makingīut don’t worry, say fossil fuel companies. This is made by converting fossil gas – the fuel Hydrogen’, but is otherwise known as fossil hydrogen. Want to produce a certain type of hydrogen, which they are calling ‘blue Hydrogen emits only water at the point of consumption, not climate-wreckingĬO2, so it’s being talked up as a way of helping to solve the climate emergency.Ī major problem is that fossil fuel companies Cover photo by Federico Beccari on Unsplash.Already exist that could switch parts of our energy system from fossil fuels to Research into green hydrogen, the truly sustainable option, is being put on hold to allow for the blue counterpart’s development, and this is a terrible mistake. Still, in the near-term (~10 to 20 years), blue hydrogen’s system will only result in a net increase in CO2 emissions per unit of energy produced. EOR creates the vast majority of the demand that keeps carbon capture existent, an absolute necessity considering it is an essential feature of climate adaptation plans. Unfortunately, carbon credits aren’t enough to incentivize simple carbon capture and storage. For the sustainably-minded, this simply defeats the purpose. According to IHS Markit, 88% of reused CO2 is dedicated to “gaseous” use, or the extraction of more fossil fuels in a process called enhanced oil recovery (EOR). The current gas infrastructure will continue to flourish, while we commit to an expensive, time-consuming non-solution.īlue hydrogen’s most redeeming feature, carbon capture, also comes with an asterisk. What does it say about the fossil fuel industry’s call to heat all houses with hydrogen? Just this: blue hydrogen’s heavy reliance on natural gas makes this little of a transition. This skews institutional assessments of CH4’s contribution to global warming, making it seem like blue hydrogen’s fugitive emissions aren’t as bad as they seem. When adjusted to a 20 year period, CH4 traps 84-86 times more heat than CO2. This is a strange frame of reference considering CH4’s half-life in the atmosphere is only around 12 years! Half of it at least is completely inactive for 88 of the 100 years, naturally decreasing its warming potential over the time-period. Methane (CH4) is considered to have 28-34 times the warming potential of CO2, though this is over a 100-year period. How did this slip past our nets? There are a few reasons, but first and foremost, how we estimate methane’s warming potential. In fact, the greenhouse gas footprint of blue hydrogen is more than 20% greater than simply burning natural gas or coal for heat. In the study’s base set of assumptions, blue hydrogen’s emissions are only 9% – 12% less than grey hydrogen over a 20 year-period of activity. They found that fugitive methane, seemingly a detail in the equation, actually ends up making blue hydrogen anything but a low emission process. Robert Howarth from Cornell University and Mark Jacobson from Stanford University produced the first peer-reviewed look at the life-cycle emissions of blue hydrogen, accounting for both the CO2 produced by the reaction, and importantly, the fugitive, unburned methane. In fact, a study in August took a closer look, and the results were shocking. We can expect hydrogen to be commonplace in the global energy mix by the end of the decade, but many scientists have warned that it is far from a silver bullet. Carbon pricing has also made the classical grey hydrogen more expensive, while blue hydrogen’s CCS has made it more competitive. Finally, green hydrogen is obtained by splitting water atoms with electricity from renewable sources only, making it very expensive, though very “clean”.īlue hydrogen is considered more viable thanks to its lower cost and acceptably low emissions, and plans for its development have proliferated across North America, Europe and the Middle East. Blue hydrogen is the same as grey hydrogen, but with integrated carbon capture and storage (CCS), thus considered to be a low-emission alternative. Grey hydrogen’s output and energy density.īrown hydrogen is made identically but with gasified coal instead of natural gas, which releases quite a bit more CO2.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |