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Yves right here. Publish creator Danielle Paradis seems to imagine readers are down the curve on the bogus claims made about blue hydrogen as a inexperienced vitality supply, though she does make that time late within the piece. By means of background, think about:
Touted as clear, ‘blue’ hydrogen could also be worse than gasoline, coal, researchers say Science Each 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 printed at DesmogBlog
Premier Jason Kenney, Power Minister Sonya Savage, and Affiliate Minister of Pure Fuel and Electrical energy Dale Nally in Edmonton in October 2020. Credit score: Alberta Newsroom (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
Speak to fossil gas execs, authorities ministers, and trade reps today and so they’ll all inform the same story: Blue hydrogen is the clear gas of the longer term that may assist Canada and the world get to net-zero emissions. It’ll energy the whole lot from airplanes to long-haul vehicles and can even warmth our houses.
Canadian media has referred to 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 significant Canadian vitality firm, that mentioned blue hydrogen produces “almost zero emissions.”
The Canadian authorities is relying closely on this gas supply to ship the guarantees in its net-zero emissions objectives. In December 2020, the federal government launched a hydrogen technique that implies that speedy enlargement of the hydrogen trade — together with “large-scale blue hydrogen manufacturing” by 2030 — may 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 guts 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] increase,” then-Mayor of Edmonton Don Iveson advised the Narwhal in early 2021. Hydrogen tantalizingly represents continued jobs and funding within the area.
Earlier this yr, Edmonton hosted the inaugural Canadian Hydrogen Conference, which was sponsored by metropolis and regional authorities, varied Alberta-based enterprise pursuits, and Canadian and worldwide fossil gas corporations. Town may even be house to a hydrogen hub that paints a rosy image of a future wherein “buses, trains, heavy vehicles, house heating, and farm gear all run on zero-emissions hydrogen” and the gas will “guarantee long-term financial competitiveness because the world shifts in the direction of a low-carbon future.”
“Our province is securing our future as a powerhouse in clear vitality manufacturing,” claimed Premier Jason Kenney final summer season when asserting 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 referred to as a $100 billion greenback alternative and was featured at a gasoline trade convention earlier this yr. To gas this hype, the trade has produced inaccurate or deceptive data that claims a mix of hydrogen as a gas supply and carbon seize will make blue hydrogen the vitality 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 gas pursuits. But, as DeSmog’s new map of hydrogen lobbying actors in Canada exhibits, 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 Desires, Grey Realities
Hydrogen can retailer and carry vitality, and most hydrogen is created through the use of warmth and strain 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 lure the CO2 that, in flip, makes some hydrogen “blue.” It’s additionally attainable to extract hydrogen from water utilizing electrolysis and renewable vitality, leading to “inexperienced hydrogen.” Nonetheless, inexperienced hydrogen is prohibitively costly to make, and as of 2019, accounted for simply 1 % of hydrogen manufacturing.
Due to the boundaries to inexperienced hydrogen — the one type of the gas that’s really “clear” — blue hydrogen has been getting rising quantities of consideration as an vitality 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 gas 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 area. 🇨🇦-🇦🇪 collaboration in clear vitality is already very sturdy, and there’s nice potential for brand spanking 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 vitality technique and a homegrown resolution to local weather change that may positively influence different components of the world. When Alberta’s Premier Kenney ran for workplace, a key a part of his marketing campaign was the promise to research the alleged affect of overseas funding in undermining the area’s vitality trade. The ensuing report into “anti-Alberta Power Campaigns” discovered a path of overseas cash however no proof of wrongdoing or criminal activity. The report additional discovered that it couldn’t be determinedwhether overseas funding for environmental campaigns was solely chargeable for killing or delaying oil and gasoline initiatives.
Paradoxically, the hydrogen fervor has overseas fingerprints throughout it. The multinational vitality firm Enbridge, alongside Canadian vitality 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 the US 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 may even depend on CCS to sequester a reported 95 % of its CO2 emissions.
Blue Is the New Greenwashing
Regardless of the passion for hydrogen from the vitality trade and sectors of the Canadian authorities, local weather scientists are rebuffing the concept blue hydrogen is a clear gas. 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 expertise is.
“The one argument for blue hydrogen is, ‘let’s maintain the fossil gas trade in enterprise,’” mentioned Mark Z. Jacobson, the director of Stanford College’s environment/vitality 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 gas, he defined.
In 2021, Jacobson and Robert W. Howarth printed a peer-reviewed examine 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, notably as a result of launch of fugitive methane.”
There’s additionally a usability downside. “The one actual helpful functions of hydrogen are long-distance heavy transport and metal manufacturing,” Jacobson advised DeSmog. In relation to automobiles or family heating, he defined that hydrogen is a much less environment friendly gas supply than battery storage.
In accordance with the 2021 examine, 96 % of hydrogen is presently generated from fossil fuels.
A separate examine 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 the complete provide chain, together with extraction, storage, and transport, stays below 0.5 %.
Nations akin to Norway, the UK, and the Netherlands declare to have met these targets, however Jacobson mentioned that this can be a declare offered with none proof. A examine printed earlier this yr 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 presently accounts for 13 % of Canada’s GHG emissions. Environmental Protection Canada studied a report by GreenPath, an Alberta-based vitality companies firm, and the Alberta Power Regulator, in addition to infrared video footage and located that the emissions have been 60 % greater than reported, and gear is routinely malfunctioning and leaking methane.
Your entire basis of Canada’s technique for reaching 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 % for Alberta), and the idea of manufacturing clear hydrogen from pure gasoline seems to be more and more uncertain,” Martin Bush, a renewable vitality guide, wrote in Coverage Choices.
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