Scientists Warn a Poorly Managed Hydrogen Rush Could Make Climate Change Worse

March 01, 2024

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by Kari Lydersen (Energy News Network) A growing body of scientific research is highlighting the indirect ways hydrogen could worsen climate change — and critics say the risks are largely being ignored by the federal government. -- As the federal government rolls out billions of dollars in subsidies to produce hydrogen fuel for use in vehicles, factories and power plants, a growing body of evidence is undercutting its clean credentials.

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Meanwhile, scientists and advocates are warning that the government’s rush to scale hydrogen has not adequately considered the fuel’s climate risks, including the potential of leaked hydrogen to prolong the heat-trapping impact of methane and act as a greenhouse gas itself when it creates water vapor in the upper atmosphere.

Multiple studies have also found burning hydrogen in power plants increases formation of nitrogen oxides (NOx), a pollutant that causes smog, harms public health, and also contributes to warming.

Hydrogen is “an indirect global warming gas,” said David Schlissel, an analyst who has testified before the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and numerous state commissions on energy issues. “It increases the lifetime of methane in the atmosphere. And if you burn it in a power plant, you produce a lot of NOx, which leads to smog.”

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The Just Solutions coalition released a report last month by the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research exploring the emissions and water use implications of increasing our reliance on hydrogen for fuel and power.

Similar concerns and findings were revealed in recent research by Cornell University scientists and by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, where Schlissel is an analyst.

Different uses, different concerns

When pure hydrogen is combined with oxygen in hydrogen fuel cells, electricity is produced and the only byproducts are water vapor and heat.

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Pure hydrogen today is produced mostly from natural gas, resulting in carbon emissions. If that carbon is sequestered, it is known as blue hydrogen. If hydrogen is produced from water in a process powered by renewables, known as green hydrogen, theoretically few greenhouse gas or other emissions result.

But advocates have questioned the viability of large-scale carbon sequestration as well as the ripple effects of diverting renewable power to make hydrogen from water.

And then there are the more complicated ways that hydrogen could increase greenhouse gas and public health-harming emissions, scientists and community leaders say.

Even if hydrogen production, combustion and fuel cell use does not directly release greenhouse gas, it could contribute to climate change because of the way it interacts with or affects other elements in the atmosphere.

If hydrogen is to be used for everything from power generation to fuel cells to industrial processes, it will need to be produced at hydrogen plants and then usually transported and stored. Similar to natural gas, there’s ample potential during this process for pure hydrogen to “leak” into the atmosphere.

When that happens, pure hydrogen can have a complicated effect on the concentration of the powerful greenhouse gas methane in the atmosphere, an effect that hasn’t been adequately considered in federal policy, explains nuclear engineer Arjun Makhijani, co-author of the IEER report and author of Mending the Ozone Hole, by MIT Press.

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Also, when hydrogen is released into the atmosphere, some of it ends up transforming into water vapor in the stratosphere. While water vapor in the lower troposphere does not cause warming, vapor higher up in the atmosphere creates a greenhouse effect of its own. This is thought to account for about 30% of the warming potential of hydrogen, IEER reports.

Meanwhile when combusted to produce electricity or power industrial processes, hydrogen burns very hot. That heat drives oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere to form NOx, a pollutant that creates smog and harms public health while also contributing to global warming. This effect is considered to represent about 20% of the warming potential of hydrogen, IEER reported.

When hydrogen is blended with natural gas for use in heating or electricity generation, the formation of NOx can be significantly greater than when gas alone is burned, multiple studies have found.

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“Burning green hydrogen in a gas plant to make electricity is like using a Rube Goldberg machine to strike a match. You take all this zero-carbon energy from solar and wind, use it to power an energy-hungry electrolyzer to make hydrogen, then burn that hydrogen in a gas plant to make a significantly smaller amount of electricity than you started with.” ( Lauren Piette, a senior associate attorney in the clean energy program for Earthjustice)

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Currently the GREET model uses a 100-year methane-impact metric, which makes methane’s potency appear lower in comparison to carbon dioxide than if it is measured on a 20-year scale. Since methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas in the short-term, the impacts of hydrogen production that reduces carbon dioxide emissions but leads to methane increases must be measured on a shorter time scale, the experts say.

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Schlissel, like other experts and advocates, said it’s possible that hydrogen produced from water, powered by renewable energy, could be a viable and emissions-reducing way to power steel-making, heavy transportation or other hard-to-decarbonize sectors. But he’s frustrated that the federal government is investing so heavily in hydrogen when other solutions exist. READ MORE

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Excerpt from North American Clean Energy: Greater clarity on tax credits and a commitment to rigorous rules on certification are two critical components in the effort to make clean hydrogen a viable and productive force in the U.S. energy mix, a new industry report from U.S. law firm Troutman Pepper has found.

The report, Fueling Up: How to Make U.S. Clean Hydrogen Projects Happen, draws upon the views and expertise of a range of sector specialists to explore what proactive steps must be taken to transform clean hydrogen’s vast potential into a practical reality.

The report argues that - in addition to the above - the U.S. should boost exports to provide additional routes to market, bolster domestic manufacturing for hydrogen technologies, and prioritize ‘backbone’ infrastructure to reduce project risk.
The Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law have generated considerable commercial interest in American clean hydrogen projects. But the legislation, and implementation of those regulations, come with complexities and caveats that require navigation.

One such issue is tax credits. Designed as incentives to encourage companies to produce clean hydrogen, helping them transition from early-stage development and planning to construction, the arrival of proposed IRS regulations on Section 45V in December 2023 have been considered too stringent by many, offering up more questions than answers.

For hydrogen to be considered ‘clean’ and eligible for credits it must meet three criteria: additionality, time matching, and deliverability. These “3 Pillars” require that hydrogen facilities cannot draw power from a source more than three years older than the hydrogen project, electricity producing hydrogen must be generated within the same hour as the hydrogen, and the electricity source and hydrogen facility must be in the same geographical area, as defined by the DOE’s transmission needs analysis.
Concerned by the perceived strictness of the regulations, many developers and utilities are halting progress, warning that it will drive up costs and make it harder to get projects funded and constructed in this nascent sector, as they cautiously await further clarity from the IRS on its finalized rules.

Meanwhile, off-takers are asking for improved clean hydrogen certification standards to offer transparent reassurance that they are getting the product they think they are. To stimulate demand, the Biden Administration made $7 billion available to support seven regional clean hydrogen production hubs across the country, encouraging users to transition from gray to clean energy sources.
However, businesses inclined to follow this route, such as chemical and metal producers, oil refineries, and transportation and utility companies, are feeling uneasy about the potentially ambiguous nature of hydrogen classifications. Faced with directives to reduce their environmental impact, businesses are struggling with a lack of visibility, guidance, and uniform certification to verify how green any available fuel actually is.

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Fueling Up: How to Make U.S. Clean Hydrogen Projects Happen can be downloaded here. READ MORE