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…
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Existing policy is insufficient to deliver on the target and falls short by close to 50%. The gap is even larger to the @theCCCuk trajectory required for net zero. 2/7
We will need a policy package consisting of 4 elements:
1) financial support especially for low-income households
2 structural reform of bills and stamp duty 3) regulatory backstop in early 2030s 4) all of this underpinned by robust governance framework
The EU’s hydrogen strategy is out laying out a European vision for hydrogen. THREAD euractiv.com/section/energy…
1/ Key sectors for using hydrogen identified in the strategy include industry (e.g. steel, chemicals), shipping and aviation. This is sensible as few alternatives exist for decarbonising these sectors.
2/ The Hydrogen Strategy assumes a lot of hydrogen from gas reforming with CCS will be needed as hydrogen from renewable electricity won’t be available fast enough to meet demand. Risk here is lock in as so-called blue hydrogen is not zero carbon.