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+--- Thread: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread (/thread-4986.html)
Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread - Mav - 03-07-2023
Again, big emitters like oil and gas companies are sitting on an absolute gold mine! But strangely enough, they flare the methane or, as with the Turkmenistanis, just release it directly into the atmosphere. Something doesn’t add up, does it?
Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread - Mav - 03-07-2023
I’m not guidable, or should I say I won’t take you on as my guide.
Is hydrogen really a clean enough fuel to tackle the climate crisis?, The Guardian.
Quote: It’s already used for rocket fuel, but it is now being pushed as a clean and safe alternative to oil and gas for heating and earthly modes of transport. Political support is mounting with almost $26bn of US taxpayer money available for hydrogen projects thanks to three recent laws – the Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act and the Chips Act. Hydrogen is politically hot, but is it the climate solution that its cheerleaders are claiming?
Why all the hype about hydrogen?
The short answer is that the fossil fuel industry sees hydrogen as a way to keep on drilling and building new infrastructure, and has successfully deployed its PR and lobbying machines over the past few years to get policymakers thinking that hydrogen is a catch-all climate solution. Research by climate scientists (without fossil fuel links) has debunked industry claims that hydrogen should be a major player in our decarbonised future, though hydrogen extracted from water (using renewable energy sources) could – and should – play an important role in replacing the dirtiest hydrogen currently extracted from fossil fuels. It may also have a role in fuelling some transportation like long-haul flights and vintage cars, but the evidence is far from clear. However, with billions of climate action dollars up for grabs in the US alone, expect to see more lobbying, more industry-funded evidence and more hype.
…
Blue hydrogen is what the fossil fuel industry is most invested in, as it still comes from gas but ostensibly the CO2 would be captured and stored underground. The industry claims to have the technology to capture 80-90% of CO2, but in reality, it’s closer to 12% when every stage of the energy-intensive process is evaluated, according to a peer-reviewed study by scientists at Cornell University published in 2021. For sure better than nothing, but methane emissions, which warm the planet faster than CO2, would actually be higher than for grey hydrogen because of the additional gas needed to power the carbon capture, and likely upstream leakage. Notably, the term clean hydrogen was coined by the fossil fuel industry a few months after the seminal Cornell study found that blue hydrogen has a substantially larger greenhouse gas footprint than burning gas, coal or diesel oil for heating.
…
What’s at stake?
In addition to $26bn in direct financing for so-called hydrogen hubs and demo projects, another $100bn or so in uncapped tax credits could be paid out over the next few decades, so lots and lots of taxpayers’ money. Fossil fuel companies are also using hydrogen to justify building more pipelines, claiming that this infrastructure can be used for “clean hydrogen” in the future. But hydrogen is a highly flammable and corrosive element, and it would be costly to repurpose oil and gas infrastructure to make it safe for hydrogen. And while hydrogen is not a greenhouse gas, it is not harmless. It aggravates some greenhouse gases, for instance causing methane to stay in the atmosphere for longer.
“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest in actual zero-emission solutions, but could be a disaster if the federal government pours scarce resources into infrastructure and technologies that could make the climate crisis worse and cause further public health harms,” said Sara Gersen, clean energy attorney at Earthjustice. “Sowing confusion about hydrogen is a delay tactic, and delay is the new denialism.”
Is there any role for hydrogen in a decarbonised future?
Yes, but a limited one – given that it takes more energy to produce, store and transport hydrogen than it provides when converted into useful energy, so using anything but new renewable sources (true green hydrogen) will require burning more fossil fuels.
According to the hydrogen merit ladder devised by Michael Liebreich, host of the Cleaning Up podcast, swapping clean hydrogen for the fossil fuel-based grey and brown stuff currently used for synthetic fertilisers, petrochemicals and steel is a no-brainer. The carbon footprint of global hydrogen production today is equivalent to Germany’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, so the sooner we swap to green hydrogen (created from new renewables) the better. This could also be useful for some transportation, such as long-haul flights and heavy machinery, and maybe to store surplus wind and solar energy – though none are slam dunks for hydrogen as there are alternative technologies vying for these markets, said Liebreich.
But for most forms of transport (cars, bikes, buses and trains) and heating there are already safer, cleaner and cheaper technologies such as battery-run electric vehicles and heat pumps, so there’s little or no merit in investing time or money with hydrogen. Howarth said: “Renewable electricity is a scarce resource. Direct electrification and batteries offer so much more, and much more quickly. It’s a huge distraction and waste of resources to even be talking about heating homes and passenger vehicles with hydrogen.”
Looks like the fossil fuel industry will get its teeth into clean energy funding one way or the other in the US and here with the Latrobe Valley blue hydrogen plant. The fossil fuel industry is like a vampire - unless you put a stake through its heart, it’ll survive any attempt to limit climate change. Just as the cigarette companies moved seamlessly to vapes.
Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread - Baggers - 03-07-2023
(03-07-2023, 11:19 AM)Mav link Wrote:I’m not guidable, or should I say I won’t take you on as my guide.
Is hydrogen really a clean enough fuel to tackle the climate crisis?, The Guardian.
Looks like the fossil fuel industry will get its teeth into clean energy funding one way or the other in the US and here with the Latrobe Valley blue hydrogen plant. The fossil fuel industry is like a vampire - unless you put a stake through its heart, it’ll survive any attempt to limit climate change. Just as the cigarette companies moved seamlessly to vapes.
Not unlike the nicotine delivery industry. Once they couldn't advertise any longer, and the durries fell out of favour, they went into the patches, vapes, gum, oral spray and lozenge nicotine delivery industries. (the number of folks addicted to the 'cures' is pretty outrageous).
Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread - LP - 03-07-2023
(03-07-2023, 11:05 AM)Mav date Wrote:Again, big emitters like oil and gas companies are sitting on an absolute gold mine! But strangely enough, they flare the methane or, as with the Turkmenistanis, just release it directly into the atmosphere. Something doesn’t add up, does it?You are confusing an engineering / science issue with an issue of politics, economic and law.
If climate change is a genuine issue, then why do the percentage efficiencies matter to you so much you oppose all better technologies, an emission cut is an emission cut isn't it?
What is the obsession with backing one solution?
btw., The latest science from those institutes you like to quote has an updated version of climate change, why aren't you quoting that, is it because they are saying your SolarPV is no longer enough? Cornell, Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, they recently started sprouting a need for nuclear(fusion or fission), because they now claim emissions must be negative, in fact they have put negative emissions policies in place for their own operations..
Business, especially big business, doesn't just setup and do what it likes, it has to be issued licences and permits. The example I gave about ethanol shows just how restrictive and myopic bureaucracy can be, even when there are immediate solutions to massively reduce a waste the bureaucracy opts for the status quo under pressure from a minority that spreads fear.
You can look over there if you want, we all can, but it's just more of the same!
Why is that minority spreading fear, the major opposition to many projects is not generated because they are infeasible, but fundamentally because they are a feasible alternative to something else, because it's fundamentally a battle for fund$ not a battle of technology.
The renewables sector needs politicians to keep thinking there are no alternatives or else the subsidies will dry up and the true cost of renewables will be exposed to the general public slowing uptake. They are frantic to find a non-rare earth alternative to continue SolarPV uptake, because if they fail they know the politicians will turn to technologies they fear like hydrogen and nuclear. But institutes like Harvard and Cornell are starting to question the viability of SolarPV, simply because of resource issues, it turns out that if you really do the sums on what is required to SolarPV to 80% market saturation there simply isn't enough rare materials easily accessible in the earth crust to do it at a viable cost level.
Some engineers and scientists are even touting nuclear connected to desalination plants as a alternative source, producing many of the rare materials as a by-products. To most involved in the industry this is a der Fred moment, but it would be political poison for the industry if it came out and stated it has a dependency of nuclear to reach it's targets. You will even find half-baked ideas to autonomously mine the seabed for mineral precipitates, this is primarily to meet a demand driven by SolarPV and Wind turbine production, worrying about the damage some existing imperfect process causes seems fairly trivial, and opposing improvements in those process is outright sponsoring environmental vandalism! :o
I was involved in a project a few years ago that developed some new materials processing techniques, that were designed to be sustainable from the ground up. The process eliminated every type of industrial waste from a certain industrial process, was cheaper to run, and made zero use of rare resources. Yet it failed, not because it didn't work, but because in the EU political funds to oppose change were almost 1000% higher than those allocated for the development of technology. It failed because lawyers made themselves richer out of opposing change than adopting it, leeching off a EU$120M annual fighting fund designed to "preserve EU jobs" in Eastern block countries. It seems that even in the woke EU pollution is OK as long as it is NIMBY, the same as here it seems.
Just like with COVID, when the moment there were viable treatments or vaccines available, the politicians blinked and the government funding dried up, the public had to pay directly. The same might happen to SolarPV, and that is the founding fear of much of the opposition to all the other solutions.
Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread - Mav - 03-07-2023
I’m all for more information about the latest scientific opinions about renewables but please link or quote rather than just giving a broad brush summary that always seems to be a bit self-serving. By the way, the study from Cornell was from 2021 but the lead author was quoted in The Guardian article which is fresh as a daisy. And yet his views don’t evidence the shift you suggest.
I’m sure you’ve given us your honest opinion about what stopped the project in which you were involved. But it seems to me that you aren’t great at providing a dispassionate analysis of the business case of projects. You have a cockeyed optimism that any weakness in a project can be overcome if only science is left alone to do its thing and the economic issues can be ignored. Yet reality has a way of hitting people in the face. I still can’t understand why you just wave your hand when oil and gas producers act contrary to your assurance that methane is a gold mine. They just burn it or release it. But apparently producers of blue hydrogen will be stunned by their good fortune and exploit methane byproducts to the hilt. Yes, there are those who think they can make Turquoise Hydrogen a thing, but it’s yet to be proved at scale (and the real world effect on the markets for those byproducts has yet to be seen). But why wouldn’t that be trumpeted far and wide by this Latrobe Valley project if that were even in contemplation? Imagine the favourable press you’d get boasting of turning methane into gold …
In your world, there’s only 1 type of conspiracy at play here. Apparently, bureaucrats, lawyers and economists are being pressured into blocking brilliant projects that use coal and the like by those nasty and all-powerful greenies. Won’t anyone help the poor fossil fuel industry when it just wants to work for the common good? Fear not, the fossil fuel industry is the one with the clout here, not the greenies. They pretty much have the conservative parties in the US and here on their payroll. And playing the victim is so on trend for conservatives even when they are the ones who have the power. And let’s face it - they have deep pockets and can pressure governments with almost unlimited advertising budgets (especially around elections) and lobbying efforts.
But you are right when you note there’s a battle for funding. The fossil fuel industry can crowd out green solutions if its “clean” solutions can suck in government funding. That’s especially so in Victoria as we have coal to exploit and a regional area that was dependent on coal-fired power. Once the government gets behind blue hydrogen, the die is cast as the infrastructure will be built around where the coal is rather than where the water is that green hydrogen production requires.
But we come back to the central weakness in the business case for blue hydrogen. How does it make sense to provide vast quantities of power to that industry just so it can produce a much smaller amount of power for largely overseas users? The energy loss involved in the process is staggering. It’s also bizarre that we would produce green electricity so we can avoid generating emissions only to use it to produce a lesser amount of power while releasing greenhouse emissions. And as the Cornell study showed, even if only green electricity is used in the process the emissions generated would be larger than if we just kept on using coal and petrol as we are now. That’s ripe for satire. If only the writers behind Yes, Minister were still around.
Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread - LP - 03-08-2023
[member=122]Mav[/member], generalising the case whether the debate is economic, technical or scientific isn't valid. There is no one answer to suit all cases, some may imagine there is, but that is the problem it's imagination not reality.
The case for fossil fuel sourced hydrogen as a foundational source for a hydrogen economy is a prime example. Many want to paint it as the one and only path forward, and so assert that is a good enough reason not to pursue hydrogen in total as a solution. It's a flawed argument, based on a false premise, a conspiracy wanted to justify a political position. I don't know anybody in the industry making such assertions, in fact pretty much everyone I talk to claims the exact opposite, that the plan is to migrate to clean hydrogen sources as rapidly as possible. This makes the papers you list a bit ludicrous, the figures might be accurate but they are creatively twisted for political purposes.
Whether you like it or not, hydrogen economy is here to stay, it's one of only a handful of viable energy storage and transport solutions for a large sector of the modern economy. Given you are wealthy enough you can install a converter / generator at home right now and be free of the grid, recharge your EV and also heat your home, with power reserves far beyond those economically achievable by the best cost equivalent batteries or other alternatives. Flow batteries might one day become available, but at this time there is no available option although they are being worked on.
Hydrogen makes up about 75.2% of the matter in the visible known universe, it will never run out, it's also the ultimate source of the light harvested by SolarPV! :o
PS; Repeating, hydrogen from methane is already done at scale, with minimal greenhouse emissions, the fact that it isn't been done on a wider scale is the real environmental crime. If it was subsidised like SolarPV and given the same political will it would proliferate rapidly.
Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread - Mav - 03-08-2023
Again, the fossil fuel industry is very keen to avoid becoming a fossil itself. If it can generate new markets by catalysing methane and win positive coverage for doing so while neutralising a major criticism, it will. The industry can subsidise such efforts itself as it has deep pockets. The fact that it isn’t being done speaks for itself.
(03-08-2023, 12:35 AM)LP link Wrote:PS; Repeating, hydrogen from methane is already done at scale, with minimal greenhouse emissions, the fact that it isn't been done on a wider scale is the real environmental crime.If that’s true, that would be significant. Can you please provide details so I can look into it?
Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread - LP - 03-08-2023
(03-08-2023, 01:03 AM)Mav date Wrote:If that’s true, that would be significant. Can you please provide details so I can look into it?Most commonly, pretty much any major smelter or steel mill does this already, where did you think all the knowledge about steam reformation comes from?
Large scale agriculture gets onboard as well but from what I can tell not here in Australia, by large scale I mean of Elder's IXL scale not just the local big dairy farmer, corporations that are held accountable for emissions implement this as almost a first step. I can't tell you how many or who but I'll be gobsmacked if some aren't using part of the emissions captured to generate electricity and earning feed in tariffs as part of the process.
For example, despite the Australian parent company folding back in 2018, CFCL's fuel cell technology (a CSIRO Invention) continues on in Europe and has become a major player in turning captured emissions into heat and power in northern European locations. Locally there was a whole pilot suburb developed using the technology, I can't tell you what happened to it, I believe it was out west of Melbourne somewhere to take advantage of captured emissions from Melbourne Water. In total there were about 300 homes.
Scale is not a problem, political and corporate will is the biggest issue. For CFCL the biggest potential investor was the energy industry, but in the absence of legislation how do you get them to invest in a technology that removes customers from the grid. They get to sell the single consumer a gadget that costs about the price of a small car, and they are basically gone from the grid forever powered by what is currently classified as waste. If CFCL was still about, they would be as big of a player in southern regions outside of metropolitan areas as wind energy. But they aren't and they probably won't ever be because the IP is now privately held. So should we abandon a technology locally because Australia is big and it's not valid for the tropical end?
Just an aside, a single CFCL Device was about the size of a fridge, and if installed in something like a dairy farm could generate enough power and heat from captured emissions to power the whole farming operation and perhaps even still have surplus to sell back to the grid. But unlike solar, there was no legislation so no feed in tariff, the energy you made but did not use was returned to the grid for free! The energy providers would not buy in because they lose a customer, and the customers would not buy in because there was no requirement and no return, then solar and wind turns up with legislation that requires profit-sharing.
I know the people in CFCL were left stunned, it was like being beaten to death with a velvet sledgehammer, people were the puzzle they could not solve, the technology was dead easy!
Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread - Mav - 03-08-2023
So, none that involve blue hydrogen producers or oil and gas producers. That says it all, doesn’t it? Again, why doesn’t the fossil fuel industry lead the way by showing how profitable and clean it is to make things out of their methane byproduct? Are they hanging out for more government subsidies?
Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread - LP - 03-08-2023
(03-08-2023, 03:06 AM)Mav date Wrote:So, none that involve blue hydrogen producers or oil and gas producers. That says it all, doesn’t it? Again, why doesn’t the fossil fuel industry lead the way by showing how profitable and clean it is to make things out of their methane byproduct? Are they hanging out for more government subsidies?They are corporates and they want certainty, to do this stuff at scale costs money, and you need long term certainty to make the figures work for a ROI.
When a mill, smelter or dairy farm goes down this path, including the licensing and compliance, they do so at a level that services their own interest, but perhaps the issue is more about percentages. There is a lot of argy bargy about how many tonnes of methane gets discarded or accidentally spilled, but what is it as a percentage of the bigger production figure. Which was the point I was getting to earlier about effects, longevity and relative ratios. Maybe if you are coal mining for your power plant the methane emissions aren't even on the right scale to register on the graph!
Even if at scale it's a blip on the graph, it might be a significant resource for other markets. I bet those that continue to operate generating methane do something once a market for the end product is established and it has some intrinsic value to them, I suppose that comes about when demand exceeds the amount we produce. They won't want to do what Redcycle did and develop massive amount of product without a customer to sell it to!