Dangerous stuff all this ‘green’ hydrogen. Apart from a tendency to explode unless handled with extreme care, its higher combustion temperature can produce more harmful nitrogen dioxide than natural gas. Nitrogen dioxide is a nasty pollutant and has been linked to childhood asthma and other major ailments. Furthermore, hydrogen is the lightest of gases and escapes easily into the atmosphere – where a newly-published science paper suggests, pound for pound, it produces 37 times the warming of carbon dioxide over a 20-year period. This is because hydrogen is oxidised by the hydroxyl radical leading to the formation of tropospheric ozone and stratospheric water vapour. Both these gases are so-called ‘greenhouse’ gases and alarmist scientists are keen to exaggerate their effect. If you are worried about atmospheric pollution and greenhouse gases, despite all past observational evidence that suggests the ‘greenhouse’ impact of the gases ‘saturates’ at certain levels, then promoting hydrogen is a very bad look indeed.
If green hydrogen was a poor person’s car, London Mayor Khan would have no hesitation in slapping a hefty Ulez charge on it. Obliging Imperial College might be relied on to provide a ‘statistical construct’ pointing out that hundreds of thousands of people will die.
But as is becoming increasingly clear, hydrogen is the only game still standing in town to back up unreliable wind and solar. Batteries are useless given their horrendous expense, limited lifespan and requirement to dig up vast quantities of the Earth’s crust. Not forgetting their tendency to explode and burn uncontrollably if not handled with care. Carbon capture appears to be an excellent opportunity for fools to be parted from their money chasing a ridiculous dream. One must fervently hope an efficient scheme to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere is never invented since removing 60% of the trace gas will lead to all plant and human life dying on Earth.
An interesting paper has just been published in the peer-reviewed journal Energy Science & Engineering which reviews the “challenges” with using the existing natural gas system to deliver hydrogen. It concludes that in considering hydrogen’s physical and chemical properties, “it is not an effective decarbonisation tool for use in homes and buildings”. Hydrogen is said to leak from pipes at a rate up to three or four times more than natural gas and, as suggested, the claimed effect on the atmosphere will not be easy for activists to excuse.
The paper is of interest since it seems to be the work of the Environmental Defence Fund, a highly influential Green Blob-funded activist and campaigning think tank. In short, it is another example of the penny dropping in even fanatical Net Zero circles about the lack of back-up energy for wind and solar. Not before time, it might be noted, since in countries like the U.K. there is still Miliband madness in the air with plans to ‘decarbonise’ the electricity grid by 2030.
Using hydrogen in existing gas systems has “major consequences for safety, energy supply, climate and costs”, argue the authors. Blending hydrogen with natural gas offers only small reductions in CO2 emissions, while a transition to full hydrogen is not possible without significant retrofits and replacements. The authors steer clear of putting a price on this but note that even if technical and “economic barriers” – the polite term for unimaginably large sums of money – are overcome, “serious safety and environmental risks remain”.
Concern is also expressed about the manufacturing process to produce hydrogen. There are noted to be more than 1,000 proposed projects aimed at scaling up zero and low-carbon hydrogen, but there are said to be “challenges” associated with each “clean” production method. “No method is universally beneficial to the climate,” they note.
Last year, an influential report from the U.K. Royal Society kicked batteries into touch as a viable electricity storage solution for unreliable wind and solar. But lacking any alternative back-up, the Royal Society turned to hydrogen as a possible solution. The report envisaged dissolving huge salt caverns capable of decadal storing of ‘green’ hydrogen. Salt caverns, which anyway would leak hydrogen through permeable loss, are only available in a few places in the U.K., so a huge network of specialist pipelines would be needed to move the gas to turbines on constant standby. Specialist pipelines that would cost billions of pounds and would invariably leak and present a danger to anyone in the vicinity. At the time, Francis Menton of the Manhattan Contrarian noted that the authors’ “quasi-religious commitment” to a fossil-free future led them to minimise and divert attention away from critical cost and feasibility issues.
Bottom line – there is no cost effective, feasible, reliable and scalable replacement for hydrocarbons available, or likely to be available, in the near future. Blackouts and severe rationing will be inevitable if uncompromising ideologues like Ed Miliband at the U.K. Department of Energy continue to be allowed to wreak havoc with the energy requirements of a modern industrial society.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Chris Morrison, have you seen this? A paper with evidence that the sun affects the climate, not carbon.
https://x.com/NikolovScience/status/1825929760175739247
And we had the recent papers by Kubicki et al that set the saturation point for CO2 to affect the atmosphere at 300ppm – we currently have 400ppm.
Which leaves ECS as the only possible “culprit” – and estimates of this get lower by the year
“it is not an effective decarbonisation tool for use in homes and buildings”——-But along the coast from where I live in a town called Buckhaven over 200 residents have been having hydrogen piped into their houses to replace gas central heating. They were given free boiler etc. One resident according to a friend who lives in that scheme has refused to accept the bribe because he did his sums and realised that the cost of the hydrogen would be excessive. There was also an article in the Herald that reported the company installing this would not release safety data. —-Go figure.
Philipsfield Secondary Modern, 1st year Physics lesson:
“Now class, today’s challenge revolves around our previous discussions about conservation of energy –
Would it be more sensible to take a highly concentrated form of energy – petrol – to directly power cars or instead use a weak and unreliable form of energy – wind – to generate electricity which would in turn be used in the highly energy-intensive process of extracting hydrogen from water, this leaky and volatile substance eventually being used to power an entire new fleet of vehicles which everyone would be obliged to buy to replace their current ones with?”
The teacher looked at the sea of bemused faces before cracking into a broad grin “Trick question, of course!”
Green hydrogen will be created by the electrolysis of water using “spare” wind and solar electricity. Then it will be stored to provide ‘battery’ back-up when the wind and solar electricity is not available, whereupon the green hydrogen will be burnt in gas-fired power stations to produce electricity…. emitting ‘green’ CO2.
Now class: write a 200 word essay on the scientific and economic idiocy of this project.
My essay: The whole concept is fantasy, science fiction and economic nonsense! There my synopsis powers must be great! The other 190 odd words would simply describe the idiots behind all this in very unpleasant terms.
Re stratospheric water vapour … surely we just need to develop a satellite constellation of giant dehumidifiers and put them into orbit … powered by solar panels … pipe the captured water back into the ocean. C’mon man, use science creatively!
No, no!. There’s too much water in the Pacific already. António said so. Have to pipe it to the Moon instead.
Already in hand. Those ‘planned’ huge orbiting solar panels can be used to focus on the stratospheric water vapour and boil it off into space.
Water vapour in the stratosphere would gradually form huge clouds of ice and already be there. There is no water vapour at -60C or lower! All the water collects at about 20,000 feet or less as you will have noticed if you travel by plane. Water state changes are controlled by temperature, ie. steam, water vapour, liquid, ice. The air is very dry when the temperature is below zero, now why is that? Because water vapour condenses to water at 0C.
Let us imagine that the UK solves the problems of making Green hydrogen, and the problems of distributing it and burning it safely and creates working hydrogen storage caverns (oh come on, that’s only three impossible things and you should have finished breakfast already)…
Brilliant: we’ve solved our ‘fossil fuel problem’.
However, what of the rest of the world? Many countries won’t be as lucky as the UK to have geology suitable for hydrogen storage. They will either have to give up the Green madness* or they will develop some other as yet unknown technical ‘solution’ to energy generation, distribution and consumption. If we go down the salt cavern storage road we’ll be in a technological dead end; we need to adopt a ‘solution’ which can be applied worldwide.
The new technology to pursue is fusion – it’s only 30 years away they say. Meanwhile we have a good working technology in natural gas.
*Of course, to actually give up the Green madness other countries would have to have been paying a bit more than lip-service to it.
Fusion has been ‘only’ 30 years away every year of my life since I was about 15 years old – I’m now 71. It is the energy of the future and always will be.
Spot on.
But fusion power is more realistic than hydrogen storage under Cheshire.
You have to handle hydrogen with extreme care to get it to explode. Let it loose in the atmosphere and it’s so light it will escape the Earth into space. The Hindenberg burned it didn’t go boom. People typically trap it in an upside down test-tube to create an explosive mixture of hydrogen and oxygen.
Such anti-science alarmism.
The alternative version of the Hindenberg is that it was shot at with an incendiary bullet, fired by a Moe Berg.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360319922056440
The linked article seems to suggest that it is fairly easy to ‘get it wrong’ with hydrogen.
Must have taken a lot of fire-lighters then to get the Sun going.
Hydrogen gas is highly flammable and forms an explosive mixture in air in concentrations of between 4% and 74%.
In a confined space such as a kitchen or living room – I think you will get your ‘boom’ due to the rapid compression of the air, should it ignite, just as you do with natural gas, but it will ‘boom’ at lower concentrations in air than natural gas.
Hydrogen gas cannot defy gravity and fly off into space: Exhibit A – that big ball of hydrogen in tte sky called the Sun.
“Blackouts and severe rationing will be inevitable”.
Rationing is a feature of the system, not a bug.
And what has this to do with green hydrogen? Is hydrogen from other sources and better?
Tomorrow we will reveal how organically grown tobacco damages your health.
a modern industrial society
The mistake is to think that this is what Militwat wants.
And from this article clearly the Millipede has no clue whatsoever about how his utopia can be achieved.
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/stark-sends-out-sos
It is a mistake to assume Socialists want to replace what exists with something better – destruction of what we have is the reward.
Just like vandals who destroy a bus shelter or park bench, they don’t want to replace them with something better, it’s just the sheer joy of destroying that thrills.
All in all, hydrocarbons look like a good alternative to renewables. Better cars and lorries, there when needed, less environmental impact, way cheaper, tiny footprint, pipework there for gas, grid there for electricity.
This is huge, surely! How can the media not be shoving this under the nose of glazed-over nutcases like Miliband? But they won’t – and even if they do, the glow of the Soros billions will outshine it.
If there is no climate emergency, why even bother to discuss hydrogen?
‘There is no cost effective, feasible, reliable and scalable replacement for hydrocarbons.’ Eh? Has CM never heard of Small Modular Reactors? They tick all his boxes. Oil for most forms of transport, gas for heating and cooking, SMRs to produce electricity – job done.
Good article, but those of us who say this kind of thing to Government are regularly cancelled. The lack of scientific knowledge in Government, the CS etc. is astounding, and the lack of interest even worse. This should all be put to Millibrain in a prime time TV programme at least half an hour long, so that he might understand! No chance the BBc though, they are worse if that is possible.
Marvellous article. Another dead end for the Net Zero madness.
Bravo.
Superb article clearly showing the deliberate catastrophe being engineered by these fraudsters.
For anyone interested, here’s a link to the many graphs etc I have collected re AGW over the years
https://www.mediafire.com/file/uo35er4g4lzni0e/Images.zip/file
And also Javier Vinos series on the sun and climate, published on Judith Curry’s blog
https://www.mediafire.com/file/dnvi9tpchuddyl5/NatureUnbound.pdf/file
323 pages long – but written with the lay person in mind