The government’s decide to replace fossil gas with “blue” hydrogen to assist meet its climate targets could backfire after US academics found that it’s going to cause more emissions than using gas.
In some cases blue hydrogen, which is formed from fossil gas, might be up to twenty worse for the climate than using gas in homes and heavy industry, due to the emissions that escape when gas is extracted from the bottom and split to supply hydrogen.
The process leaves a byproduct of CO2 and methane, which fuel companies decide to trap using carbon capture technology. However, even the foremost advanced schemes cannot capture all the emissions, leaving some to enter the atmosphere and contribute to global heating.
Professors from Cornell and Stanford universities calculated that these “fugitive” emissions from producing hydrogen could eclipse those related to extracting and burning gas when multiplied by the quantity of gas required to form the same amount of energy from hydrogen.
Robert Howarth, a Cornell University professor and co-author of the study, said the research was the primary to be published during a peer-reviewed journal to get bare the “significant lifecycle emissions intensity of blue hydrogen”.
The paper, which can be published in Energy Science and Engineering, warned that blue hydrogen could also be “a distraction” or “something which will delay needed action to really decarbonise the worldwide energy economy”
The researchers recommended attention on green hydrogen, which is formed using renewable electricity to extract hydrogen from water, leaving only oxygen as a byproduct.
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This may be a alarm to governments that the sole ‘clean’ hydrogen they ought to invest public funds in is actually net zero, green hydrogen made up of wind and solar power ,” Howarth said.
A spokesperson for the united kingdom government said hydrogen would be “essential for meeting our legally binding commitment to eliminating the UK’s contribution to global climate change by 2050” and promised further details within the government’s forthcoming hydrogen strategy, which is predicted next month.
“Independent reports, including that from the global climate change Committee, show that a mixture of blue and green hydrogen is according to reaching net zero but alongside the strategy, we’ll consult on a replacement UK standard for low-carbon hydrogen production to make sure the technologies we support make a true contribution to our goals,” the spokesperson said.