‘White’ hydrogen’s elusive potential

January 15, 2025

STEVE DRURY, in this article reposted from his Earth-logs blog, writes about the potential of “white” (naturally occuring) hydrogen as an energy carrier. With some comments from me (Simon Pirani) at the end 

The idea of a “hydrogen economy” has been around for at least six decades, its main attraction being that when hydrogen is burned it combines with oxygen to form H2O [water]. It might seem to be the ultimate “green” energy source, but it is currently being touted by governments and petroleum companies in what is widely regarded as “greenwashing”.

The technology favoured by that axis uses steam reforming of the methane that dominates natural petroleum gas, through the reaction:

CH4 + H2O  → CO + 3H2

It’s actually not much different from producing coke gas from coal, which began in the 19th century and is now largely abandoned. Because carbon monoxide (CO) reacts with atmospheric oxygen to form CO2 [carbon dioxide] this process is by no means “green” and is properly referred to as “grey” hydrogen.

Workers at one of Hydroma’s hydrogen exploration wells at Bourakebougou, Mali. Photo from Hydroma web site

Only if the CO is stored permanently underground could steam reforming not add to greenhouse warming. That puts the approach in the same category as “carbon capture and storage”, with all the possible difficulties inherent in that technology, which has yet to be demonstrated on a large scale. Such hydrogen is classified as a “blue”. 

Colour coding hydrogen is described nicely by the British National Grid. They give another six varieties. Green and yellow hydrogen are produced by electrolysing water using wind or solar power respectively. The pink variety uses nuclear power in the same fashion. Black or brown hydrogen is that produced by coking coal or stewing-up brown coal (lignite) which amazingly are contemplated in Australia and Germany.

There is even a turquoise variety can be produced if methane is somehow turned into hydrogen and solid carbon using renewables. There is another category (white) which is hydrogen produced by a variety of natural, geochemical processes.

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Labour embraces Saudi Arabia’s dystopian ‘energy transition’

December 20, 2024

The Labour government is helping to dress up Saudi Arabia’s criminal fossil fuel expansion drive in “green” colours.

As the prime minister flew to Riyadh, the Saudi capital, this month, his office told stories about hydrogen and carbon capture – technologies used by the Kingdom to pose as a friend of the “energy transition”.

Protest in Australia. Photo by Matt Hrkac. See “The top photo” at the end

Keir Starmer and his colleagues hope that, in return for this “green” PR, Saudi Arabia will invest some of its vast oil wealth in the UK’s own technofixes.

Simultaneously, the government made a guarantee worth billions of pounds to the oil companies BP and Equinor, to stifle a legal challenge to Net Zero Teesside, their risky carbon capture project, and the expansion of gas production that goes with it.

The government’s dystopian friendship with Riyadh is underpinned by policies that will add substantially to Saudi fossil fuel exports, and to the billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere when they are burned.

Saudi policy provides for a 60% increase in gas production by 2030, a 25% expansion of its fossil-fuelled power generation capacity and a doubling of its oil-to-chemicals processing capacity. There are no plans to cut the Kingdom’s oil production, the third highest in the world behind the US and Russia[1] – and no signs that it intends to abandon its decades-long obstruction of intergovernmental climate agreements.

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Community action kills off hydrogen greenwash plan

July 12, 2023

Community mobilisation in Whitby, Merseyside, has forced the UK government to drop plans to test hydrogen heating in 2000 homes there.

Lord Martin Callanan, energy security minister, announced in a tweet on Monday that the trial had “no strong local support” and would be scrapped.

Campaigners against the hydrogen-for-homes scheme in Whitby, Merseyside. Photo from HyNot facebook feed

The decision follows months of campaigning by Whitby residents, who feared that the HyNet scheme to convert the gas grid to hydrogen would bring a greater risk of explosions, nitrous oxide emissions and uncertainty.

They were strongly supported by the HyNot campaign group – and by energy systems researchers who oppose hydrogen for home heating. They point out that a combination of insulation and electric heat pumps is four or five times more energy-efficient than hydrogen, and effectively reduces fossil fuel use.

Jan Rosenow of the Regulatory Assistance Project and Tom Baxter of Strathclyde University, who are among the many specialists who have lambasted the government’s approach, spoke at a virtual public meeting in Whitby called by residents in November last year.

The government’s plan has obstructed the use of tried, tested and truly carbon-free technologies, such as heat pumps, for the sake of a survival strategy for oil and gas companies.

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India: ‘Hydrogen Mission’ must not become expensive greenwash

April 11, 2023

By Pritam Singh and Simon Pirani

The National Green Hydrogen Mission adopted by the Indian government in January is a major policy initiative, and it is a sign of the poverty of Indian politics that it remains so election-obsessed that has not been subjected to the public debate it deserves.

The absence of any critical evaluation by India’s opposition parties of this initiative, which has major implications for India’s development path, is staggering.

Student climate protesters in Delhi, 2019. Photo by Vikas Choudhary

The Indian government is poised to offer energy companies subsidies to set up hydrogen “hubs” – but  how this fits with climate policy and social justice goals remains unexplained.

As part of the  Hydrogen Mission, companies such as Reliance and Indian Oil will be invited to bid for cash from a 20,000 crore rupee ($2.4 billion) fund.

There will also be money for manufacturing electrolysers, needed to make “green” hydrogen, and subsidies for fertiliser and steel makers to buy it.

But the Hydrogen Mission has been surrounded by hype that raises unjustified expectations.

Prabhat Kumar, an external affairs ministry official, claimed recently that hydrogen could be “our main source of energy in future”. But that will never happen.

Even if the government meets its ambitious target of producing 10 million tonnes of “green” hydrogen each year, that would still only provide about one-fifteenth of the energy that India gets from coal.

The very idea that India will become a major exporter of hydrogen, which runs through all the government’s documents, is questionable.

India may need 6 million tonnes/year of “green” hydrogen to displace the “grey” hydrogen it uses now, for fertiliser manufacture and in oil refineries.

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India: ‘Green Hydrogen’ project could undermine climate and social justice goals

March 27, 2023

By Pritam Singh and Simon Pirani

Given the climate emergency our planet earth is facing, with accelerating global heating and devastating biodiversity loss, any initiative by a government which proclaims its aim as “greening the economy” deserves critical examination for both its importance and limitations.

Adivasi people starting a 300 km march to the state capital, in October 2021, to protest at proposed coal mines in the Hasdeo forests, Chhattisgarh, India. Photo from Adani Watch web site

Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s announcement, on India’s 75th Independence Day, of the government’s plan to launch a National Hydrogen Mission is one such initiative by an emerging economic power in the global economy.

Its stated purpose was to make India a production and export hub for green hydrogen. This is also believed to be linked to India’s aim to reduce its reliance on oil from Russia and the Middle East which has come into the limelight during the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

That hydrogen is a problematic green energy resource as an alternative to fossil fuels is not generally recognised. This obfuscation characterises Indian government’s “green” hydrogen mission too.

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Different types of hydrogen

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe, but for commercial use on earth it is produced either (i) from fossil gas, usually by steam reformation, or (ii) by the electrolysis of water. Electrolysis technology splits the hydrogen from oxygen in water.

More than 98% of hydrogen used commercially is “grey” – produced from gas. Left-over carbon is joined with oxygen and released into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Global hydrogen production’s carbon footprint is about four-fifths the size of the aviation sector’s.

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Communities question hydrogen hype

December 16, 2022

The UK government’s climate-trashing plans to use hydrogen for home heating are starting to come up against resistance by communities.

Residents of Whitby on Merseyside – one of two sites the government is considering making an experimental “hydrogen village” – protested last week about the tide of greenwash from Cadent Gas in support of the plan.

Whitby residents’ protest last week. All photos from HyNOT twitter feed

The villagers demonstrated in the freezing cold at Cadent’s Hydrogen Experience Centre, against the proposal to turn their homes over to hydrogen heating without proper consultation.

Louise Gittins, leader of Cheshire West and Chester council, told the crowd: “I don’t want anyone forced into doing this. I’ll take what you’ve said on board.”

Cadent, which owns the local gas distribution network, plans to convert 2000 Whitby households to hydrogen for heating – despite opposition to such uses by engineers and energy researchers. They say that fitting electric heat pumps, and retrofitting insulation, is more energy-efficient, and contributes far more effectively and rapidly to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The government supports hydrogen for home heating – in line with energy companies’ wishes, and against the advice of engineers and scientists in numerous reports. It will decide next year which residents to use as guinea pigs for its “hydrogen village” experiment; its two options are in Whitby and Redcar, north Yorkshire.

The government has also funded studies for Northern Gas Networks’ H21 project, which would convert more than 15 million homes from gas to hydrogen. And just this week it has launched a consultation about offering “hydrogen-ready” boilers to homes – which would damage more effective, electricity-based routes to decarbonisation.

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Europe’s hydrogen greenwash is the last thing Ukraine needs

August 12, 2022

The European Commission, cheered on by fossil fuel companies, is promoting a plan to put exporting hydrogen to Europe at the centre of Ukraine’s post-war recovery. The plan reeks of greenwash and neocolonialism, and should be scrapped, Simon Pirani writes.

Tripilska heat and power plant near Kyiv. Photo by Matvey Andreyev / Creative Commons

Hydrogen is extracted from fossil gas and is used in oil refining and industrial processes. It has a huge carbon footprint, as left-over carbon is released into the air.

Hydrogen lobbyists say that in future the gas will be “blue” (with the left-over carbon captured and stored) or “green” (made by electrolysis – passing an electric current through water). But even “green” hydrogen, the only carbon-free kind, gulps down huge quantities of renewable electricity. Plans to export it from Ukraine – which will need that clean electricity itself for decades to come – are little more than cynical profiteering in wartime.

Hydrogen may be used in future in industrial sectors that are hard to decarbonise, such as steelmaking, fertiliser production and long-distance transport. But the picture painted by lobbyists, of its widespread use for residential heating and urban transport, is dangerously counter-productive.

It undermines effective climate policies in the interests of fossil fuel companies – who see hydrogen as a survival strategy, because it can be made from gas, and uses similar infrastructure and technologies.

Where the plan came from

The European Commission’s Fit for 55 decarbonisation policy, published in 2021, featured a plan to generate “green” hydrogen from thousands of electrolytic cells in Ukraine and north Africa, and export it to European countries. This idea was lifted wholesale from a plan proposed by Hydrogen Europe, an industry lobbying group, the year before.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February, far from offering pause for thought about plunging resources into a speculative technology, accelerated the hydrogen import plan.

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Hydrogen: green gas or greenwash?

June 1, 2021

In this 8-minute video from the Sheffield Festival of Debate, Harpreet Kaur Paul, Tom Baxter and Simon Pirani talk about whether hydrogen can play a part in the transition away from fossil fuels, and why it is being pushed by companies who want to slow that transition down.

To read more, try these People & Nature articles:

■  The hydrogen hoax (December 2020)

■   Hydrogen for homes is a terrible idea. We should fight it (October 2020)

■  Leeds trades unionists: zero-carbon homes can help tackle climate change (September 2020)

□ Follow People & Nature on twitter … instagram … telegram … or whatsapp.

Or email peoplenature[at]yahoo.com, and I’ll send you updates

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