State of Hydrogen

October 05, 2021

Print This Article Share it With Friends

by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) If you missed the recent HydrogenConnect session, here’s your chance to check out the exclusive Digest State of Hydrogen presentation — who’s doing what, where, how and with whom in hydrogen. In today’s Digest, from the why hydrogen question to what the colors of hydrogen mean, future hydrogen tech trends, the latest pathways, and more. READ MORE

DigestConnect 071521 Hydrogen Today, what color is your hydrogen? There’s black, brown, purple, grey, pink, blue and especially there’s green. We'll review the paths - electrolysis, plasma gasification, photolysis and more. Where is the cost advantage - what is ready at scale? Our special guest was Dave Austgen who will be introducing Nanoplazz and their striking alternative technology to water-splitting which, it may turn out, beats electrolysis on the costs WATCH MORE

Biden-backed ‘blue’ hydrogen may pollute more than coal, study finds -- Infrastructure bill includes $8bn to develop ‘clean hydrogen’ but study finds large emissions from production of ‘blue’ hydrogen (The Guardian)

How green is blue hydrogen? (Energy Science and Engineering Journal)

In-depth Q&A: Does the world need hydrogen to solve climate change? (Carbon Brief)

For Many, Hydrogen Is the Fuel of the Future. New Research Raises Doubts. (New York Times)

HYDROGEN BOOST: Governments and private investors have only found a quarter of the $1.2 trillion needed in hydrogen investments to help reach global net-zero emissions, the International Energy Agency reported Monday. (Politico's Morning Energy)

Project Syndicate -- Opinion: Explaining why ‘green hydrogen’ is our best (maybe only) option for getting to net-zero carbon by 2050 and halting climate change (MarketWatch)

ACCELERATING A COMPREHENSIVE HYDROGEN VALUE CHAIN IN THE PORT OF HAMBURG: AIR PRODUCTS AND THE HAMBURG PORT AUTHORITY SIGN MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING (Hamburg Port Authority)

Excerpt from The Guardian: But a new study has found surprisingly large emissions from the production of so-called “blue” hydrogen, a variant being enthusiastically pushed by the fossil fuel industry and probably falling under the definition of clean hydrogen in the Senate bill.

Blue hydrogen involves splitting gas into hydrogen and carbon dioxide and then capturing and storing the CO₂ to ensure it doesn’t heat the planet. But this process involves the incidental release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and uses a huge amount of energy to separate and then store the carbon dioxide, some of which escapes anyway.

This means that the production of this hydrogen actually creates 20% more greenhouse gases than coal, commonly regarded the most polluting fossil fuel, when being burned for heat, and 60% more than burning diesel, according to the new paper, published in the Energy Science & Engineering journal. READ MORE

Excerpt from New York Times: But a new peer-reviewed study on the climate effects of hydrogen, the most abundant substance in the universe, casts doubt on its role in tackling the greenhouse gas emissions that are the driver of catastrophic global warming.

The main stumbling block: Most hydrogen used today is extracted from natural gas in a process that requires a lot of energy and emits vast amounts of carbon dioxide. Producing natural gas also releases methane, a particularly potent greenhouse gas.

And while the natural gas industry has proposed capturing that carbon dioxide — creating what it promotes as emissions-free, “blue” hydrogen — even that fuel still emits more across its entire supply chain than simply burning natural gas, according to the paper, published Thursday in the Energy Science & Engineering journal by researchers from Cornell and Stanford Universities.

“To call it a zero-emissions fuel is totally wrong,” said Robert W. Howarth, a biogeochemist and ecosystem scientist at Cornell and the study’s lead author. “What we found is that it’s not even a low-emissions fuel, either.”

...

Over the past few years, the natural gas industry has begun heavily promoting hydrogen as a reliable, next-generation fuel to be used to power cars, heat homes and burn in power plants.

In the United States, Europe and elsewhere, the industry has also pointed to hydrogen as justification for continuing to build gas infrastructure like pipelines, saying that pipes that carry natural gas could in the future carry a cleaner blend of natural gas and hydrogen.

While many experts agree that hydrogen could eventually play a role in energy storage or powering certain types of transportation — such as aircraft or long-haul trucks, where switching to battery-electric power may be challenging — there is an emerging consensus that a wider hydrogen economy that relies on natural gas could be damaging to the climate. (At current costs, it would also be very expensive.)

...

In Washington, the latest bipartisan infrastructure package devotes $8 billion to creating regional hydrogen hubs, a provision originally introduced as part of a separate bill by Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, a major natural gas producing region. Among companies that lobbied for investment in hydrogen were NextEra Energy, which has proposed a solar-powered hydrogen pilot plant in Florida.

Some other Democrats, like Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, have pushed back against the idea, calling it an “empty promise.”

...

Today, very little hydrogen is green, because the process involved — electrolyzing water to separate hydrogen atoms from oxygen — is hugely energy intensive. In most places, there simply isn’t enough renewable energy to produce vast amounts of green hydrogen. (Although if the world does start to produce excess renewable energy, converting it to hydrogen would be one way to store it.) READ MORE