No comment on your surprise that excess methane would be burnt? I thought you’d said that was nonsense because there’s no O in methane and it would be catalysed anaerobically …
No comment on the fact that more methane is produced as a byproduct than can be transported and sold? Don’t they know they’re literally burning money as there’s an infinite demand for the end products of catalysis which can be sold for a King’s ransom?
It’s interesting that you talk so admiringly about the conversion of 92.8% of the methane. How efficient, you say. But you don’t worry about the fact that this conversion produces carbon dioxide, one of the most problematic greenhouse gases. And the 7.2% that isn’t burnt is methane that’s released into the atmosphere and methane is just as troublesome as carbon dioxide. Sometimes efficiency isn’t such a wonderful thing. Ruthless regimes have unfortunately been very efficient over the years. Let’s focus on what is being achieved rather than how efficiently it’s being done.
Maybe any approval of blue hydrogen plants should be conditioned on those plants suspending production as soon as they are producing excess methane. Rather than producing methane as a set percentage of the blue hydrogen produced while trying to maximise blue hydrogen production (and then scrambling to get rid of it all), hydrogen production should depend on how much methane can be sensibly catalysed. That would throw a spanner in the works. And it wouldn’t be a bad idea to condition approval on a demonstrated ability to bury carbon dioxide in a successfully operating large-scale CCS system rather than accepting optimistic promises or buying carbon credits. I’m betting that would be another spanner in the works.