Thread by @janrosenow

Is hydrogen overhyped? Who is pushing it?

Excellent piece by @jcollingridgeST @thesundaytimes
demonstrates that lobbying by vested interests is behind the recent craze around #hydrogen. 1/7

thetimes.co.uk/article/energy…

This confirms what @heatpolicyrich @exeterepg @UKERCHQ and others uncovered in their 2020 paper on how incumbents resist electrification. 2/7

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

The article shows that oil giants such as Shell, BP and Norway’s Equinor have staked their futures on fossil gas as a less-polluting alternative to oil. Now they hope that by stripping the carbon from their methane to create hydrogen, they can ensure a market for it remains. 3/7

Also gas network companies promote the role of hydrogen amid concern that their pipelines, worth billions of pounds, risk becoming stranded assets as gas is phased out. 4/7

And lobbying seems to pay off. Hydrogen was mentioned 18 times in parliament in 2015; last year it was mentioned 392 times. An all-party group on hydrogen is funded by Shell, Cadent, Scotia Gas Networks and Northern Gas Networks, as well as boiler-makers Baxi and Bosch. 5/7

But hydrogen is not the silver bullet we are being told says @baroness_brown @theCCCuk “using electricity directly is always going to be better than turning electricity into hydrogen and using the hydrogen”. 6/7

This is because “for replacing fossil gas in homes with hydrogen you would need enormous quantities of hydrogen ... that would be an expensive thing to do”. @baroness_brown @theCCCuk 7/7
thetimes.co.uk/article/switch…