One Proton, One Electron
OK, we’ve laid some foundations, and if you’re still with me, I think you are beginning to get a sense of who I am and how I think. It’s time to tiptoe into some more dangerous waters - it’s time to talk about hydrogen.
This is bound to get me into trouble…
In the clean energy movement, hydrogen has developed an almost cult-like following; the likes of LinkedIn are full of chambers extolling the benefits and excitement about the future of the most elemental of elements. I’m not saying they are wrong, I’m saying we need to apply some critical thinking to these investments, and I’m saying there are still fundamental challenges to overcome.
Full disclosure: I am a chemical engineer by trade, so I understand the value of hydrogen in chemical process. Heck, you could probably have lopped six months off my first degree if you didn’t need to steam reform methane to produce hydrogen at the front of the Haber process. I understand the appeal as an energy carrier, I understand that the problems of containment are tough, but solvable.
Yet, fundamental problems remain. There are notes at the bottom to back up the following assertions if you’d like to (echoing a favourite phrase of many people who don’t give the impression that they know what it actually means) follow the science.
Production of green hydrogen requires a *lot* of clean water, in itself a scarce commodity in many places (especially those with enough sun for significant solar)
An ‘energy transition’ implies the replacement of one form with another. If the method of replacement is through hydrogen, the energy input required increases significantly. Like, threefold.
Schroedinger’s cat paradox does not apply to investment dollars (working on the assumption that the investment dollar is already leveraged, as it always is).
The challenge of the first point I think is self-evidently true. Whilst this is typically under-reported, I believe it to be solvable. I’m going to carry a comparison with gas through this post, so let’s assume that finding a source of clean water is similarly difficult to finding gas.
Point 2 is more difficult. A H2 project recently caught my eye in the US that consumed 290MW of allegedly (it’s grid connected, so it has the gas-fired insurance policy) renewable power to produce 90 tonnes per day of green liquid hydrogen, or about 33,000 tonnes per year. A certain LNG project I know well consumes about 2.5 times less power to produce more than 2 million tonnes per year of LNG. Plus LNG has a higher physical density and energy density, i.e. tonne for tonne, it’s more compact, caries more energy, and is easier to transport.
#3 is the killer. Every dollar is a choice and can be used for good, frivolity, or ill. We’re seeing enormous amounts of capital flow into hydrogen projects, and I fear that they may just be the latest place that capital goes to die. What’s worse, your tax dollars are probably encouraging it. We’re also seeing a spectacularly low flow of capital into “conventional” projects (thank you financiers who think dollars are the only thing that matters. That’s on the list for a future post too).
Let’s start a thought experiment. GloboEnerCorp (GEC) is the UN-owned energy monopoly (*shudders*… what a horrible thought). But hang with me here… and just for fun, let’s appoint Elon Musk as Chairman and CEO, and Mark Carney as CFO. How much do they invest in Hydrogen? You’re invited to the capital allocation committee meeting; bring popcorn.
Mark has helpfully made good use of the Glasgow conference to put together a syndicate of Canadian and Kiwi banks, backed by COP-certified securities, to leverage all seven shades of the GEC balance sheet in order to pile a lot of someone else’s money into hydrogen infrastructure.
Elon furrows his brow. Always the straight talker, after taking me to task on my gross oversimplification of the below Copenhagen Interpretation and reminding everyone that he has actually switched his rockets to run on LNG instead of Hydrogen (that part is actually true), he says:
EM: “So… you’re suggesting I should invest to produce green power, that will be used to produce hydrogen, that will be used to produce less useful power than I produced in the first place?”
MC: “Yes… b b but… high temperature applications… heavy transport… shipping… methanol… ammonia…”
EM: “But if I’m investing in the green power anyway, why wouldn’t I just hook that up to the grid, use conventional methods where nothing better exists yet, and invest in R&D?”
MC: “Government support programmes”
EM: “Hey, that’s worked for me at Tesla. I’m listening..”
Much of the investment happening at the moment makes no apparent rational economic sense. I’m sad (committed?) enough to get a spreadsheet out when I read a press release to see if I can make the numbers stack up, and absent significant support packages (or the sleight of the left hand obscuring what the right is doing), generally speaking, I just can’t.
(For “significant support packages”, read “your tax dollars”. For “sleight of hand”, read “greenwashing”. These are not absolute truths, but are high-probability truths based on, y’know, the science.)
Here’s the real rub: they don’t make rational environmental sense either. Why install a certified metric shed load of wind or solar to waste 70% of it separating and then (perhaps via an intermediate like ammonia) recombining to make water? It would make more sense now (the “now” word is important) to tie that to the grid - maintaining enough backup capacity (likely gas, I’ll get to batteries at a later date) - and enjoying the benefits without needing to figure out how to safely handle one of the most reactive substances in the known universe.
One proton, one electron. Hydrogen has its place - there are some specific niche uses that make sense, and technology always benefits from pilot facilities generating lessons learned and the incremental improvements that eventually combine to constitute innovative revolution. But until sufficient R&D dollars have been ploughed in to reduce the energy intensity - and I have almost infinite faith in the ingenuity of research chemists and engineers - then I do not see a credible near-term pathway to hydrogen being a significant energy carrier in the way that many are hoping.
So here’s Andrew’s (unapologetically capitalist) alternative path:
Governments should do what only governments can do. This includes investing in fundamental science R&D, and not picking winners.
Encourage companies to offer consumers the alternatives with a transparent price tag.
Let them choose and let the market do what it does best - compete to meet the demand efficiently.
Time and again over history, citizens have shown more wisdom than governments. Reversions to the mean of coal use don’t help. Gilets jaunes and Kazakstan LPG protests indicate the limits of social acceptability before the backlash starts. GloboEnerCorp may be a horrid thought, but they would never throw as much money at hydrogen production projects as we are currently seeing - they’d be investing in R&D.
Be critical - question your representatives - and insist on a global view to global issues. Hydrogen ain’t ready to save the whale.
AB
Footnotes for the dedicated:
Water use
Let’s start with some high school chemistry. If you can’t remember, ‘av a good go (avogadro? https://www.britannica.com/science/Avogadros-number).
2H20 —> 2H2 + O2
Oxygen (atomic mass of 9)
Hydrogen (atomic mass of 1)
So 2 waters (atomic mass 11 each) gives 2 hydrogens (atomic mass 2 each)
That means we need 5.5 kg of (somewhat pure) water to make 1 kg of hydrogen, all things being ideal, which they aren’t. I understand that the actual ratio is closer to 9:1
Power requirements
OK, moving on to the laws of thermodynamics:
First law: Energy cannot be created or destroyed, just changed from one form to another
Second law: Natural processes are irreversible - so in this context, the energy input required to split water cannot be completely recovered when the hydrogen later reacts with oxygen to reform water.
Putting these two together, if the energy carrier must be created, more energy must be put in to make it than will be returned when the carrier is consumed. For hydrogen, the energy returned at the point of use (such as fuel in a truck) is typically quoted as ~30% of the energy required to separate water.
Incidentally, what’s the difference between a theory and a law? A theory is a hypothesis that has stood up to scientific testing, a law is a mathematically demonstrable and therefore predictive of outcomes. If we’re trying to follow science, following the laws is a damn fine place to start - the observable universe doesn’t hang together without the laws being true (within the limits of current understanding and technology).
Dollars and Sense
The paradox - intended to highlight a key flaw of Copenhagen Interpretation of quantum superposition - states that a cat in a box with a bottle of poison that will be released on the decay of a single radioactive atom can be simultaneously both alive and dead until the box is opened. The analogy here is that a dollar spent on hydrogen cannot simultaneously be spent on another energy source until we open the box and see which actually made sense (cents?)
Yes, I have some strange hobbies, and yes, I love a bad pun.