Thread by @AukeHoekstra

In the past week I've been involved in some highly charged discussions on BLUE HYDROGEN.
In this thread I'll summarize what I've learned.
I'll link to threads but not ad hominems.

TL;DR
I think not all blue hydrogen is bad but it's much worse than I thought

First off: hydrogen in itself is not a bad idea at all. Here's @mliebreichs hydrogen ladder showing where it's a good idea.

We are talking about BLUE hydrogen here:
you take methane (=CH4=natural gas) + H2O
you make CO2 (that you bury with CCS) + H2

https://twitter.com/MLiebreich/status/1426900737313984514?s=20

Sounds great! But... in the process from well to burial of CO2 some CH4 escapes.

The ruckus started with this scientific study from @howarth_cornell and @mzjacobson showing with 3.5% leakage and a 20 year time horizon blue H2 is WORSE than burning CH4.

https://twitter.com/AukeHoekstra/status/1425919149604282375

And as they said in their abstract: even if you take 1.5% leakage the advantage relative to grey hydrogen is lower than 25%.
(Grey hydrogen means you don't store the CO2 using carbon capture and storage aka CCS.)

The media was all over it.

I especially liked the article of @HirokoTabuchi in the @nytimes who really knows what's she's writing about

https://twitter.com/HirokoTabuchi/status/1427254005793755139

But of course this caused pushback from people working/advising on (blue) H2 like @david_joffe & @gnievchenko

They pointed out the emissions assumed by @howarth_cornell and @mzjacobson were much too high if you took the best tech (ATR) and produced the H2 next to a low leakage well. Which - they argued - the EU is clearly planning to do.

And I think this is the reason this got a bit out of hand. In the US, drilling for fracking gas is causing a climate change HELLSCAPE with *millions* of abandoned wells leaking CH4. Blue H2 in this context is incredibly harmful. MORE so than in the study.

https://twitter.com/AukeHoekstra/status/1427737526744268809?s=20

But it's ok in the EU then? Not so fast!
First off we have CH4 leaks here too.

https://twitter.com/AukeHoekstra/status/1427731063137259520?s=20

And producers are lying about their emissions worldwide.

https://twitter.com/AukeHoekstra/status/1427295694298263553?s=20

Also the EU imports a lot of gas from countries with high upstream emissions. Can we just take a low leakage well and count that leakage when we haven't 100% eliminated gas from Russia and the US that leaks like hell? (Hint: EU import half of it's gas.)
energymonitor.ai/policy/why-an-…

It reminds me of discussions on EV emissions: do they drive on the solar from your roof or on the average mix?

I usually advocate the average mix and that means the upstream emissions from gas imported from Russia and the US increases emissions from your blue hydrogen project.

I admit this depends on how you look at it. But for me it's like palm oil or rapeseed: if you take away one piece of land for that, someone will cut down some nature to make up for demand elsewhere. Biofuels and fossil fuels are part of a global trade system. No escaping it.

Finally: #dieselgate showed EU regulatory capture (where the regulators become the lap-dog of the industry they should control). The palm oil fiasco showed a lot of naivety. So I think EU (and US) regulators will let producers 'get away with it'.
So I'm sceptical of blue H2.
/end

Clarification: I didn't mean @david_joffe and @gnievchenko are blue hydrogen enthusiasts/lobbyists. E.g. I like @gnievchenko's integrity, objectivity, and curiosity. Just wanted to mention them (without linking to ad hominem threads) since they pointed out not all blue H2 is bad.