1) Hydrogen appears to be currently peaking on a “hype cycle” i.e., the current expectations are inflated far beyond its likely impact.
2) Clearly, the fossil fuel industry has a vested interest in maintaining its existing business model, and its strong support for blue hydrogen is primarily driven by self-preservation rather than climate protection concerns.
3) We have seen this before: when the coal industry came under pressure to reduce emissions, it promised clean coal.
Significant policy support was subsequently offered, and clean coal attracted a lot of attention from policymakers.
4) After years of pilot projects and substantial public investment in coal power plants with CCS, only a single commercially operating facility remains—one 115 megawatt unit of the Boundary Dam Power Station in Saskatchewan, Canada.
5) But its primary purpose is to provide a low-cost source of carbon dioxide to the Weyburn Oil Field for enhanced oil recovery.
6) It is notable that most current CCS facilities support fossil gas processing, and the majority are using the captured emissions for enhanced oil recovery.
7) After 30 years of public support and multiple pilot projects, CCS has little to show.9 CCS has not developed as expected, and the CCS that does exist now is mainly supporting increasing fossil fuel extraction.
8) This cautionary tale offers some important lessons for blue hydrogen. Claims by the fossil fuel industry that capturing emissions is feasible and can be done fast need to be carefully examined.
9) Of course, the past is not necessarily a good predictor of the future. Perhaps blue hydrogen will develop in line with expectations; perhaps not. Higher carbon prices could make investments more attractive, in Europe carbon prices have lately exceeded €60 per tonne of CO2.
10) But if we can learn anything from the history of clean coal, then it is this: great expectations and promises by the fossil fuel industry and governments do not necessarily guarantee delivery of fossil-based, low-carbon technologies.
11) The unavoidable residual emissions mean that even though blue hydrogen might achieve significant carbon reductions compared to existing fossil fuel use, it will still contribute to GHG emissions as shown by recent @CREDS_UK analysis.
12) Claims that oil and gas could be replaced with hydrogen like-for-like are highly questionable. In 2020, 458 EJ of oil, gas, and coal were consumed globally. In comparison, just 10 EJ of hydrogen were produced of which 0.7% is from renewables or CCS.
13) Green hydrogen should be prioritized over blue while ensuring that green hydrogen is truly green and based on renewable electricity.
14) If policymakers want to ensure that blue hydrogen delivers the expected emissions reductions it will be important to have sound regulation in place. Emissions performance standards require robust estimates of leakage and capture rates.
1) Banning fossil fuel heating by 2035: The document is not entirely clear what is being planned. It talks about setting an 'ambition' but it remains unclear whether this means setting an outright ban of installing new fossil fuel heating systems.
2) The document also talks about the 'aim' to phase out new natural gas boilers by 2035 and highlights the potential for further policy. Further detail needs to be seen before we can be confident that 2035 is a hard regulatory stop.
🚫Ban of fossil heating systems to be installed after 2035
This is a huge step. The UK is the first country in the world doing this and it replicates what we have already for petrol and diesel cars. Details to be seen yet but a big step forward.
💷£450m grants for heat pumps
The current funding policy for heat pumps will run out next year and has been generous. £450m over 3 years translates into 30,000 heat pumps per year. That’s not enough to get us on track to 600,000 per year and supports current installation levels.
1) It is widely accepted that heat pumps will play a major role for decarbonising heating. But their running costs are usually higher than gas boilers. This is because we put most of the climate policy costs on electricity and almost none on fossil fuels.
1) Let’s take a step back to understand what’s going on here. The Energy Company Obligation (ECO) is a long-standing energy efficiency programme. The first variation of its kind started in 1994. 10 years ago I wrote my PhD thesis on it @ecioxford. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
2) ECO (or the Supplier Obligation as it is also known) has always supported installing new fossil fuel boilers. Especially during EEC 1+2 and CERT millions of condensing boilers were installed. This led to very large energy savings. centrica.com/media/1635/bg_…
The UK hydrogen strategy is finally out. My take on it in this thread. gov.uk/government/new…
1) The hydrogen strategy rightly identifies hydrogen as a key ingredient for the energy transition especially in areas such as power, industry and parts of the transport sector.
2) As my quote on @BBCNews says “But, as the strategy admits, there won’t be significant quantities of low carbon hydrogen for some time. We need to use it where there are few alternatives and not as a like-for-like replacement of gas.” bbc.com/news/science-e…
Not only can we afford the costs of net zero but we will have to. The alternative is a disastrous and very costly future. Excellent piece by @jameskirkup@SMFthinktank@spectator.
1) The climate deniers lost the battle around the evidence base and failed with their attempts to discredit the science more than 10 years ago.
2) Unable to challenge climate science the deniers have now turned to the costs of net zero as the new battleground. On a weekly basis they attack policies driving decarbonisation as being unaffordable.