Yves right here. Submit creator Danielle Paradis seems to imagine readers are down the curve on the bogus claims made about blue hydrogen as a inexperienced power supply, though she does make that time late within the piece. By the use of background, take into account:
Touted as clear, ‘blue’ hydrogen could also be worse than gasoline, coal, researchers say Science Every day
By Danielle Paradis, an Indigenous (Métis) journal author, journalist, editor, educator, and podcaster who lives in Treaty 6 (Edmonton, Alberta) and has written for Canadaland, Chatelaine, Toronto Star (Edmonton), Gig Metropolis, BUSTLE, Canadian True Crime Podcast, and The Sprawl. Initially revealed at DesmogBlog
Premier Jason Kenney, Power Minister Sonya Savage, and Affiliate Minister of Pure Gasoline and Electrical energy Dale Nally in Edmonton in October 2020. Credit score: Alberta Newsroom (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Speak to fossil gasoline execs, authorities ministers, and trade reps lately they usually’ll all inform an analogous story: Blue hydrogen is the clear gasoline of the longer term that may assist Canada and the world get to net-zero emissions. It’ll energy all the pieces from airplanes to long-haul vehicles and can even warmth our properties.
Canadian media has known as blue hydrogen, which is produced from pure gasoline and has its emissions captured, “a key half” of the nation’s emissions-reduction technique and “pretty clear” — a declare that echoes an infographic from ATCO, a serious Canadian power firm, that stated blue hydrogen produces “almost zero emissions.”
The Canadian authorities is relying closely on this gasoline supply to ship the guarantees in its net-zero emissions targets. In December 2020, the federal government launched a hydrogen technique that means that fast enlargement of the hydrogen trade — together with “large-scale blue hydrogen manufacturing” by 2030 — might assist the nation “obtain our net-zero purpose all whereas creating jobs, rising our financial system and defending the atmosphere.”
Opening remarks from Honorable Jonathan Wilkinson.
“Unlocking the potential of hydrogen is an important a part of our authorities’s plan for a sustainable and financial future.”#hydrogenexpo pic.twitter.com/DLIG0Bohis
— Canadian Hydrogen Conference (@HYDROGEN_EXPO) April 26, 2022
Alberta, lengthy the center of Canada’s oil and gasoline trade, is banking on hydrogen, too. “It was actually beginning to settle in that we had most likely had the final [oil and gas] growth,” then-Mayor of Edmonton Don Iveson advised the Narwhal in early 2021. Hydrogen tantalizingly represents continued jobs and funding within the area.
Earlier this 12 months, Edmonton hosted the inaugural Canadian Hydrogen Conference, which was sponsored by metropolis and regional authorities, numerous Alberta-based enterprise pursuits, and Canadian and worldwide fossil gasoline corporations. Town will even be dwelling to a hydrogen hub that paints a rosy image of a future during which “buses, trains, heavy vehicles, dwelling heating, and farm gear all run on zero-emissions hydrogen” and the gasoline will “guarantee long-term financial competitiveness because the world shifts in direction of a low-carbon future.”
“Our province is securing our future as a powerhouse in clear power manufacturing,” claimed Premier Jason Kenney final summer season when saying Alberta’s $1.3 billion funding within the Edmonton hydrogen hub.
The issue with this blue rhapsody? It’s not what it appears.
The oil and gasoline trade is relying on each governments and the general public shopping for into blue hydrogen, which has been known as a $100 billion greenback alternative and was featured at a gasoline trade convention earlier this 12 months. To gasoline this hype, the trade has produced inaccurate or deceptive info that claims a mixture of hydrogen as a gasoline supply and carbon seize will make blue hydrogen the power useful resource of the longer term.
Kenney is a long-standing critic of local weather science and booster of claims that foreign-funded environmental teams are undermining Canadian fossil gasoline pursuits. But, as DeSmog’s new map of hydrogen lobbying actors in Canada reveals, among the many greatest beneficiaries and proponents of Alberta’s blue hydrogen push are U.S. firm Air Merchandise, Shell, Toyota, and France Hydrogène.
Credit score: Michaela Herrmann, Gaia Lamperti, Danielle Paradis
Blue Goals, Grey Realities
Hydrogen can retailer and carry power, and most hydrogen is created through the use of warmth and stress to transform fossil fuels to hydrogen and carbon monoxide and dioxide. That is sometimes called “grey hydrogen.” It’s the addition of carbon seize and storage (CCS) to entice the CO2 that, in flip, makes some hydrogen “blue.” It’s additionally attainable to extract hydrogen from water utilizing electrolysis and renewable power, leading to “inexperienced hydrogen.” Nevertheless, inexperienced hydrogen is prohibitively costly to make, and as of 2019, accounted for simply 1 p.c of hydrogen manufacturing.
Due to the obstacles to inexperienced hydrogen — the one type of the gasoline that’s really “clear” — blue hydrogen has been getting rising quantities of consideration as an power supply that may assist us transition away from coal, oil, and gasoline. Actually, Canada’s net-zero emissions technique hinges on hydrogen being the clear gasoline of the longer term.
This week UAE Power leaders are in Canada to take part in @HYDROGEN_EXPO and meet revolutionary Canadian corporations within the Hydrogen house. 🇨🇦-🇦🇪 collaboration in clear power is already very robust, and there’s nice potential for brand new partnerships.@MarcyGrossman @JPLinteau https://t.co/Q7mrhMwI7T
— Canada within the UAE (@CanadainUAE) April 27, 2022
Since 2019, there was a renewed focus for a Canada-first power technique and a homegrown answer to local weather change that may positively affect different elements of the world. When Alberta’s Premier Kenney ran for workplace, a key a part of his marketing campaign was the promise to analyze the alleged affect of international funding in undermining the area’s power trade. The ensuing report into “anti-Alberta Power Campaigns” discovered a path of international cash however no proof of wrongdoing or criminal activity. The report additional discovered that it couldn’t be determinedwhether international funding for environmental campaigns was solely accountable for killing or delaying oil and gasoline tasks.
Paradoxically, the hydrogen fervor has international fingerprints throughout it. The multinational power firm Enbridge, alongside Canadian power firm TC Power, have been concerned in pushing hydrogen in Canada. Shell is engaged on making a carbon seize and storage (CCS) facility in Alberta. Nikola Company, an American entity, is working with TC Power to discover joint growth of hydrogen hubs in america and Canada. And Air Merchandise and Chemical substances Inc., an American firm, is a part of the multi-billion-dollar plan to construct Edmonton’s hydrogen hub, which will even depend on CCS to sequester a reported 95 p.c of its CO2 emissions.
Blue Is the New Greenwashing
Regardless of the keenness for hydrogen from the power trade and sectors of the Canadian authorities, local weather scientists are rebuffing the concept that blue hydrogen is a clear gasoline. Methane — a greenhouse gasoline greater than 80 instances extra highly effective than CO2 — that’s vented or leaked within the manufacturing and transportation of pure gasoline wouldn’t be captured by CCS. And doubts abound about how efficient CCS know-how is.
“The one argument for blue hydrogen is, ‘let’s maintain the fossil gasoline trade in enterprise,’” stated Mark Z. Jacobson, the director of Stanford College’s ambiance/power program. The declare by oil and gasoline corporations that blue hydrogen is clear is missing verified knowledge on methane emissions and ignoring the infrastructure wanted to supply the gasoline, he defined.
In 2021, Jacobson and Robert W. Howarth revealed a peer-reviewed research in Power Science and Engineeringlooking on the lifecycle of blue hydrogen’s greenhouse gasoline footprint.
“Removed from being low carbon,” they wrote, “greenhouse gasoline emissions from the manufacturing of blue hydrogen are fairly excessive, significantly as a result of launch of fugitive methane.”
There’s additionally a usability drawback. “The one actual helpful purposes of hydrogen are long-distance heavy transport and metal manufacturing,” Jacobson advised DeSmog. In terms of vehicles or family heating, he defined that hydrogen is a much less environment friendly gasoline supply than battery storage.
In accordance with the 2021 research, 96 p.c of hydrogen is at present generated from fossil fuels.
A separate research by researchers together with Joule Bergerson from the Division of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering on the College of Calgary, concluded that blue hydrogen can solely be thought of low-emission if the pure gasoline provide alongside all the provide chain, together with extraction, storage, and transport, stays underneath 0.5 p.c.
Nations reminiscent of Norway, the UK, and the Netherlands declare to have met these targets, however Jacobson stated that it is a declare supplied with none proof. A research revealed earlier this 12 months discovered that oil and gasoline infrastructure in New Mexico’s Permian Basin was releasing greater than six instances extra methane than beforehand estimated by the EPA.
In Canada, there’s vital proof that the oil and gasoline trade is underreporting methane emissions in Alberta. In accordance with the federal authorities’s official greenhouse gasoline stock, methane at present accounts for 13 p.c of Canada’s GHG emissions. Environmental Protection Canada studied a report by GreenPath, an Alberta-based power companies firm, and the Alberta Power Regulator, in addition to infrared video footage and located that the emissions have been 60 p.c increased than reported, and gear is routinely malfunctioning and leaking methane.
Your complete basis of Canada’s technique for attaining net-zero emissions rests on the widespread adoption of hydrogen. However, more and more, that imaginative and prescient for the longer term appears unsure.
“Issue within the inevitable leaks of methane from the extraction and processing of the pure gasoline feedstock (round 3.5 p.c for Alberta), and the idea of manufacturing clear hydrogen from pure gasoline appears to be like more and more uncertain,” Martin Bush, a renewable power advisor, wrote in Coverage Choices.
