And yet you don’t deal with the fact that the creation of methane byproduct isn’t calibrated to the level needed to satisfy demand; instead it will be proportional to the entire amount of hydrogen produced by the process you admire. It’s unlikely that demand for methane will be exactly equal to the methane byproduct and you haven’t provided any grounds to believe there won’t be excess supply. We’ve seen that already with the Red Cycle plastics fiasco. Where the collection of problematic material is divorced from the ability of businesses to convert it into another product, you end up with a storage problem.
And this all assumes that the existing production of methane will cease. But that’s optimistic. It’s not as though oil production in various countries was shut down in favour of importing oil from countries which could produce it more cheaply. The US has been hellbent on reaching oil self-sufficiency and if its own mining operations create methane gas byproduct that’s captured and used, that’s going to continue unabated. Can you imagine Australia telling the US Govt to cut the production of methane because we’re producing more blue hydrogen? Good luck with that …
If there’s an excess, one would expect the rate of excess supply to be constant or increasing as more blue hydrogen is produced. That will mean ever increasing amounts of methane to eliminate.
Of course, governments will try to find ways to convert the methane into something useful, if only to justify the continued use of blue hydrogen processes. Again, look at the Red Cycle program. It was wonderful PR for Woolies and Coles and governments that were subsidising the program that all their plastic packaging was converted into park benches and the like rather than being dumped in landfill but there was a practical limit that undercut that messaging. As the low-hanging fruit is exhausted, funding new uses for methane would become a subsidy with the taxpayer footing the bill. There are practical limits to how much methane can be used in this way.
So what will happen with the excess? Are there really enough empty spaces underground to store massive amounts of methane along with massive amounts of carbon dioxide? Is there no end to that magic? Can we build huge containers for it? Or do we burn the methane and then bury the carbon dioxide in the endless natural storage compartments below the surface.
Maybe we could just make sure the EPA is looking the other way when there are accidental releases of methane by the blue hydrogen producers or when CCS fails. After all, too much regulation would be bad for business.
And this all assumes that the existing production of methane will cease. But that’s optimistic. It’s not as though oil production in various countries was shut down in favour of importing oil from countries which could produce it more cheaply. The US has been hellbent on reaching oil self-sufficiency and if its own mining operations create methane gas byproduct that’s captured and used, that’s going to continue unabated. Can you imagine Australia telling the US Govt to cut the production of methane because we’re producing more blue hydrogen? Good luck with that …
If there’s an excess, one would expect the rate of excess supply to be constant or increasing as more blue hydrogen is produced. That will mean ever increasing amounts of methane to eliminate.
Of course, governments will try to find ways to convert the methane into something useful, if only to justify the continued use of blue hydrogen processes. Again, look at the Red Cycle program. It was wonderful PR for Woolies and Coles and governments that were subsidising the program that all their plastic packaging was converted into park benches and the like rather than being dumped in landfill but there was a practical limit that undercut that messaging. As the low-hanging fruit is exhausted, funding new uses for methane would become a subsidy with the taxpayer footing the bill. There are practical limits to how much methane can be used in this way.
So what will happen with the excess? Are there really enough empty spaces underground to store massive amounts of methane along with massive amounts of carbon dioxide? Is there no end to that magic? Can we build huge containers for it? Or do we burn the methane and then bury the carbon dioxide in the endless natural storage compartments below the surface.
Maybe we could just make sure the EPA is looking the other way when there are accidental releases of methane by the blue hydrogen producers or when CCS fails. After all, too much regulation would be bad for business.