I worked up a pitch for a full-length opinion piece, but haven’t placed it. So, I’m going to share it with my readers here, and leave it at that for now. At the COP28 meeting, 22 countries including U.S., Canada, the UK, France, South Korea, and the UAE pledged to triple nuclear capacity by 2050. But it will be impossible to meet this pledge, or even to maintain currently nuclear capacity, while decoupling from Russian and Chinese suppliers, most notably Rosatom and China General Nuclear. Of 60 nuclear plants currently under construction, more than 40 are being built by Russian and Chinese firms.
“It [Qld’s emissions target] will need policies encouraging heavy industry to shift towards carbon-free energy sources such as electricity and hydrogen derived from wind and solar energy.”
Careful please on hydrogen. There is currently massive pressure from fossil fuel lobbyists to subsidise hydrogen for no clear reason, even before it’s green, and a real risk of massively inefficient diversion of taxpayer and private money. Japan and Germany head the gay procession after the pied pipers down the primrose path, and even usually rational Spain is not immune.
In three industries hydrogen is an unavoidable feedstock, for chemical not energy reasons.
- Nitrogenous fertiliser is the lead consumer (about 55%) of the current and very ungreen world hydrogen output of 95 mt a year. This uses the high-pressure Haber-Bosch reaction to synthesize ammonia: N2 + 3.H2 ⟶ 2 (N.H3). Hydrogen is obligatory, use it or stop using fertiliser. Better processes or green sourcing of hydrogen would not change this datum. Fertiliser demand is growing slowly, but better farming practices (AI, drones, no-till) may cut demand, who knows.
- Oil refining, which consumes another 25%r, for desulphurization and unsludging heavy crude oils. This entire industry will disappear in the energy transition.
-Virgin ironmaking, which doesn’t buy hydrogen now, but sees hydrogen DRI as by far its best hope for decarbonisation. The reaction, ignoring intermediate steps, goes:
Fe2.O3 + 3.H2 + heat → 2.Fe + 3.(H2.O)
Decarbonising iron will create a large but finite demand for green hydrogen. Virgin iron is headed for long-term decline, as ever greater volumes of cheaper scrap steel become available, reflecting past growth. I write “iron” not “steel”, as a growing share of final steel production comes from scrap recycled in electric arc furnaces.
All three of these processes take place in a small number of very large industrial plants. It makes sense for these to produce the hydrogen very near the points of use and avoid transport costs, so they do.. This will continue to be true as oil refining dies and DRI ironmaking grows, and hydrogen shifts from black to green.
The hydrogen lobby are not satisfied with this realistic but unspectacular scenario, which – depending on market conditions – does not even guarantee net growth in hydrogen demand above current levels. Their wet dream, that they have had considerable success in selling to politicians and investors, is to use hydrogen as a drop-in replacement for fossil gas as an all-purpose energy carrier. It appeals because it looks reassuringly familiar: just burn hydrogen instead of fossil gas, no disconcerting and alien new technology like silent battery cars and autonomous planes. Mike Barnard has shown just how flimsy the scheme is in numerous documented posts at CleanTechnica, in one field of application after another: home heating, cars, trucks, shipping, aviation ...
There are two common threads in these demonstrations.
First, beyond the three point-of-use industries, wider and dispersed hydrogen burning requires an essentially new transport and storage network, ranging from pipelines, refrigerated trucks, and high-pressure tanks to purpose-built refrigerated tanker ships. Hydrogen is a very different molecule to methane and very little existing gas infrastructure can be safely repurposed, the rest would be brand new and expensive from the high safety risks. What is the value-added of this network, given that we have already paid for a comprehensive, safe, and reliable transport system in the electric grid? True, it does not cover replacing the LNG tanker ships for long-distance energy exports. The response is that there won’t be any.
Second, green hydrogen does not grow on trees but is created by a different energy carrier, green electricity. Hydrogen cannot be cheaper than its feedstock. Put your thumb on the scales for say fuel-cell trucks, by assuming really really cheap hydrogen, and you necessarily must assume that the wind and solar electricity it comes from is really really cheap as well. In fact it must be cheaper, since electrolysis – or for that matter quantum vector plasmotrons – will involve conversion losses by the inconvenient laws of thermodynamics. In the FCEV case, vehicles with electric drive motors, more losses will hit you on the return leg when you convert the hydrogen back to electricity. For heating, both hydrogen and electricity can get close to 100% conversion efficiency: but with the twist that at near-ambient temperatures electricity can reach 300% efficiencies through the magic of heat pumps. There are heat pumps powered by combustion, an exotic niche product only economic when electricity is dear and combustion fuel cheap, which can’t happen widely, see above. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_heat_pump
At the very least, the onus is on the hydrogen promoters to make the case for special treatment instead of a level playing field, and this they have signally failed to do.
I’m trying to think about what a level playing field could look like. I’ll let you know when I have some tablets. I’m not promising anything about the hairdo.
If Western Europe is in drought (reducing hydro by ~80% per the last big drought) and the wind doesn't blow for a week and solar isn't producing much energy because it is winter, how will it cope without coal/gas/nuclear? Are batteries currently able to firm supply in those circumstances?
Interesting. Pairs with the Levant gasfields and the closing out of Gazan access to its own gasfield.
Like nuke, it is only for TNC's and processors, they seem to be total in their refusal of science and necessity.
Once again, what about investment in renewable tech and developing it? But they don't want it. I think the refusal to acknowledge the problems with some industries , corporations are now too big and powerful and we are again witnessing the profit-hunger of these at the expense of everyone and thing else, with Gaza and the Levantine gasfields as a present example.
The LNP is weaponising the CSIRO report that confirms what markets already know - renewables are beating nuclear by an even bigger margin than they are beating fossil fuels - by accusing the ALP of weaponising the CSIRO report. Not that the Doubt, Deny, Delay politickers weren't weaponising nuclear in their efforts to save fossil fuels from global warming and renewable energy.
Renewable energy and climate activism are clearly enemy to them, NOT legitimate adversary and they are desperately attempting to portray renewables as environmentally irresponsible (to divide environmentalism?) and a threat to Australia's productive farmland (to reinforce existing divisions that align rural Australia with denial and opposition) - ie willing to lie and cheat. But the whole of Doubt, Deny, Delay is based on lying and cheating and scapegoating.
No denial of climate change around here... because the climate is always changing, ha, ha. Truly, they are a disgrace.
“It [Qld’s emissions target] will need policies encouraging heavy industry to shift towards carbon-free energy sources such as electricity and hydrogen derived from wind and solar energy.”
Careful please on hydrogen. There is currently massive pressure from fossil fuel lobbyists to subsidise hydrogen for no clear reason, even before it’s green, and a real risk of massively inefficient diversion of taxpayer and private money. Japan and Germany head the gay procession after the pied pipers down the primrose path, and even usually rational Spain is not immune.
In three industries hydrogen is an unavoidable feedstock, for chemical not energy reasons.
- Nitrogenous fertiliser is the lead consumer (about 55%) of the current and very ungreen world hydrogen output of 95 mt a year. This uses the high-pressure Haber-Bosch reaction to synthesize ammonia: N2 + 3.H2 ⟶ 2 (N.H3). Hydrogen is obligatory, use it or stop using fertiliser. Better processes or green sourcing of hydrogen would not change this datum. Fertiliser demand is growing slowly, but better farming practices (AI, drones, no-till) may cut demand, who knows.
- Oil refining, which consumes another 25%r, for desulphurization and unsludging heavy crude oils. This entire industry will disappear in the energy transition.
-Virgin ironmaking, which doesn’t buy hydrogen now, but sees hydrogen DRI as by far its best hope for decarbonisation. The reaction, ignoring intermediate steps, goes:
Fe2.O3 + 3.H2 + heat → 2.Fe + 3.(H2.O)
Decarbonising iron will create a large but finite demand for green hydrogen. Virgin iron is headed for long-term decline, as ever greater volumes of cheaper scrap steel become available, reflecting past growth. I write “iron” not “steel”, as a growing share of final steel production comes from scrap recycled in electric arc furnaces.
All three of these processes take place in a small number of very large industrial plants. It makes sense for these to produce the hydrogen very near the points of use and avoid transport costs, so they do.. This will continue to be true as oil refining dies and DRI ironmaking grows, and hydrogen shifts from black to green.
The hydrogen lobby are not satisfied with this realistic but unspectacular scenario, which – depending on market conditions – does not even guarantee net growth in hydrogen demand above current levels. Their wet dream, that they have had considerable success in selling to politicians and investors, is to use hydrogen as a drop-in replacement for fossil gas as an all-purpose energy carrier. It appeals because it looks reassuringly familiar: just burn hydrogen instead of fossil gas, no disconcerting and alien new technology like silent battery cars and autonomous planes. Mike Barnard has shown just how flimsy the scheme is in numerous documented posts at CleanTechnica, in one field of application after another: home heating, cars, trucks, shipping, aviation ...
There are two common threads in these demonstrations.
First, beyond the three point-of-use industries, wider and dispersed hydrogen burning requires an essentially new transport and storage network, ranging from pipelines, refrigerated trucks, and high-pressure tanks to purpose-built refrigerated tanker ships. Hydrogen is a very different molecule to methane and very little existing gas infrastructure can be safely repurposed, the rest would be brand new and expensive from the high safety risks. What is the value-added of this network, given that we have already paid for a comprehensive, safe, and reliable transport system in the electric grid? True, it does not cover replacing the LNG tanker ships for long-distance energy exports. The response is that there won’t be any.
Second, green hydrogen does not grow on trees but is created by a different energy carrier, green electricity. Hydrogen cannot be cheaper than its feedstock. Put your thumb on the scales for say fuel-cell trucks, by assuming really really cheap hydrogen, and you necessarily must assume that the wind and solar electricity it comes from is really really cheap as well. In fact it must be cheaper, since electrolysis – or for that matter quantum vector plasmotrons – will involve conversion losses by the inconvenient laws of thermodynamics. In the FCEV case, vehicles with electric drive motors, more losses will hit you on the return leg when you convert the hydrogen back to electricity. For heating, both hydrogen and electricity can get close to 100% conversion efficiency: but with the twist that at near-ambient temperatures electricity can reach 300% efficiencies through the magic of heat pumps. There are heat pumps powered by combustion, an exotic niche product only economic when electricity is dear and combustion fuel cheap, which can’t happen widely, see above. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_heat_pump
At the very least, the onus is on the hydrogen promoters to make the case for special treatment instead of a level playing field, and this they have signally failed to do.
I’m trying to think about what a level playing field could look like. I’ll let you know when I have some tablets. I’m not promising anything about the hairdo.
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BODcxYjUxZDgtYTQ5Zi00YmQ1LWJmZmItODZkOTYyNDhiNWM3XkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyNjc1NTYyMjg@._V1_FMjpg_UX1000_.jpg
If Western Europe is in drought (reducing hydro by ~80% per the last big drought) and the wind doesn't blow for a week and solar isn't producing much energy because it is winter, how will it cope without coal/gas/nuclear? Are batteries currently able to firm supply in those circumstances?
Interesting. Pairs with the Levant gasfields and the closing out of Gazan access to its own gasfield.
Like nuke, it is only for TNC's and processors, they seem to be total in their refusal of science and necessity.
Once again, what about investment in renewable tech and developing it? But they don't want it. I think the refusal to acknowledge the problems with some industries , corporations are now too big and powerful and we are again witnessing the profit-hunger of these at the expense of everyone and thing else, with Gaza and the Levantine gasfields as a present example.
The LNP is weaponising the CSIRO report that confirms what markets already know - renewables are beating nuclear by an even bigger margin than they are beating fossil fuels - by accusing the ALP of weaponising the CSIRO report. Not that the Doubt, Deny, Delay politickers weren't weaponising nuclear in their efforts to save fossil fuels from global warming and renewable energy.
Renewable energy and climate activism are clearly enemy to them, NOT legitimate adversary and they are desperately attempting to portray renewables as environmentally irresponsible (to divide environmentalism?) and a threat to Australia's productive farmland (to reinforce existing divisions that align rural Australia with denial and opposition) - ie willing to lie and cheat. But the whole of Doubt, Deny, Delay is based on lying and cheating and scapegoating.
No denial of climate change around here... because the climate is always changing, ha, ha. Truly, they are a disgrace.
The AEMO / CSIRO report that just dropped won't help the nuke boosters either.
https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/energy/energy-data-modelling/gencost
I wrote pretty much the same article 10 years ago (didn't pick the headline, which overstated my case a bit) https://nationalinterest.org/commentary/china-can-make-nuclear-power-work-9815
That was an interesting article. Thanks.