Europe’s economic relations with Argentina are strong. Despite the geographical distance, EU investment in the country accounts for half of foreign investment. Similarly, the bloc is Argentina’s third-largest trading partner, behind Brazil and China.

While the more comprehensive trade agreement between the EU and its Latin American counterpart, Mercosur, flounders, von der Leyen agreed on a bilateral agreement with Buenos Aires on Monday (17 July). It follows a similar agreement on materials agreed in June.

“Europe and Argentina are partnering for a more secure, sustainable and prosperous world,” she said.

Ahead of elections, Argentina’s leaders wrap fossil fuels in the flag

The non-binding agreement hinges on four key aspects: hydrogen and its derivatives, renewables, energy efficiency, and liquefied natural gas (LNG).

With Russian gas flows into Europe at an all-time low, the two partners committed to “enabling a stable delivery of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the Argentine Republic to the European Union.”

Argentina’s export dreams

The 45 million-strong country, which heavily relies on natural gas for its own energy consumption, is a serious player in the gas industry – bolstered by the rich shale gas stemming from Vaca Muerta in the South-West.

To export its fracked riches, Buenos Aires is working on a law to boost its LNG industry – with an eye to begin exporting at scale as early as 2027.

The agreement insists that supplying LNG will be  “consistent with [the EU’s and Argentina’s]  respective long-term decarbonisation objectives and consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement.”

Australia will update the ‘fantasy’ net zero plan it inherited

Likely as a concession to Brussels, the agreement also insists that Argentina tackles its leaky gas wells. In 2022, at least one new gas well was drilled in Vaca Muerta per month.

Meanwhile, the formerly Argentina-based NGO Center for Human Rights and Environment warned in 2018 that at least 5% of produced gas was entering the atmosphere, often due to operators venting surpluses to maintain operational security.

“The Participants endeavour to reduce methane leakages in the fossil gas supply chain to the maximum technically feasible level,” the EU-Argentina agreement stresses, adding that new technologies should help tackle “venting and flaring.”

Both venting and flaring are commonplace methods of ensuring production equipment does not get damaged by too much fossil gas. Given methane’s extreme climate impact, it is 28 times worse than CO2 on a 100-year basis, uncontrolled venting is among the most climate-damaging by-products of producing fossil gas.

The agreement also points to integrating “recovered methane into the supply chain.” Methane that would otherwise leak into the atmosphere can be captured and used regularly. One key source may be landfills, like Norte III in Buenos Aires, which account for about half of the city’s methane emissions.

With corporate climate cheats on the chopping block, net zero is growing up

Renewable potential

“In large parts of your beautiful country, in the large plateau of the South, you can only hear one sound: this is the sound of the wind, running undisturbed,” explained von der Leyen in June when speaking to business executives.

Argentina has all it takes to become a “renewable energy powerhouse,” she said, adding that “the extraordinary Patagonian winds are a blessing of nature.”

In practice, the EU-Argentina agreement is sparse on the details – aside from a commitment to “facilitate investments necessary to increase energy trade between the Participants.”

European investments are largely expected to come through the European Gateway Initiative, which has a “Team Europe” approach, meaning that EU countries invest under the banner of the bloc.

For example, France and the EU have supported upgrading and bringing the country’s electricity grid up to speed. Other projects include waste and water management support and aid in exploiting the country’s rich mineral resources.

Whether similar initiatives will help fund the country’s nascent LNG infrastructure is unclear.

The post EU and Argentina strike gas, hydrogen & renewables deal appeared first on Climate Home News.

The EU bloc sees hydrogen made with renewable energy – known as “green hydrogen” – as a cost-effective way to reduce emissions, especially in industries that are difficult to decarbonise such as aviation and heavy land transport.

While the European industry is in its infancy, hopes of achieving short-term goals largely rest on production overseas. Countries, especially in Northern and Sub-saharan Africa, have been attracted by the sector’s opportunity for investments and new jobs, analysts told Climate Home News.

But experts warned the enthusiasm hides significant risks. Incentives built into the EU regulations mean the massive scale-up of green hydrogen exports could take up most renewable electricity in developing nations, at the expense of local populations.

G7 may ignore climate warnings and call for new gas investments

This would be a problem for countries like Namibia – one of the EU’s key hydrogen partners – where just over half of the population has access to electricity.

For Godrje Rustomjee, an analyst at the African Climate Foundation, countries need to find the right trade-off between domestic needs and export potential.

Otherwise, he says, the risk is that green hydrogen may turn into “another neo-colonial project”.

“There is a real possibility that foreign countries come in with direct investment, but all the benefits and added value end up being extracted and sent across to Europe”.

Marta Lovisolo, a hydrogen analyst at Bellona, says the risk developing countries will divert resources toward production for exports is “extremely high”.

“Green hydrogen is something Europe desperately wants and developing countries could potentially mass-produce for a lucrative market,” she says. “As it happened with fossil fuels, countries seem ready to stake everything on becoming exporters without being given the necessary safeguards.”

Very glad to meet President @hagegeingob

Namibia is a trusted partner of the EU. We stand by your side in the fight against the pandemic.
#GlobalGateway can support Green Hydrogen plans and sustainable raw minerals value chains.

Let’s develop a full-fledged partnership. pic.twitter.com/uU4HdYnIIO

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) February 18, 2022

Betting big on hydrogen

Despite being a nearly non-existing energy source today, green hydrogen has become a cornerstone of Europe’s decarbonisation plans.

Green hydrogen is mostly produced through electrolysis, a process that separates water into hydrogen and oxygen, using electricity generated from renewable sources.

The bloc has set a target of reaching annual domestic production of 10 million tonnes of renewable hydrogen by 2030 and importing the same amount. It is a tall order, considering that last year worldwide green hydrogen production capacity was 109 kilo tonnes – a fraction of what the EU wants to achieve.

Currently, most hydrogen is created using fossil fuels. Around three-quarters is derived from methane gas and a quarter from coal. Green hydrogen is more expensive to produce and accounts for less than 1% of total global production.

To fuel its ambition the EU is pouring billions of euros into the sector. Alongside investments in the build-up of domestic capacity, funds are being committed towards partnerships with future exporting nations.

The EU has signed agreements with a series of countries including Egypt, Kazakhstan, Morocco and Namibia. The partnerships are billed as a win-win situation.

Uncertainty on renewable retraining frightens South Africa’s coal communities

Rules exemption

The Commission has also recently set out the rules on renewable hydrogen. Among various provisions, it includes a criteria for developing renewable electricity called 'additionality'.

In the future, hydrogen producers will have to make sure that only new renewable electricity generation capacity is used for green hydrogen production. This is to ensure hydrogen production does not take away existing renewable energy from the grid, potentially increasing reliance on fossil fuels elsewhere.

Additionality can be achieved either by directly connecting a solar or wind farm to a hydrogen production facility or through purchase agreements with clean power generators.

But European lawmakers have included a phase-in clause to speed up the industry with the hope of meeting its 2030 goals. Any green hydrogen installation that starts production before 2028 will be exempted from the additionality rules for the following ten years, until 2038.

That means the projects developed before that date will be able to use already installed capacity, for instance taking clean energy directly from the grid.

Analysts say the rules have set off a race between exporting nations to meet the 2028 deadline. Namibia, for example, hopes to begin exporting green hydrogen in 2026, although analysts believe this will be very difficult to achieve.

Over the rainbow: The role of hydrogen in a clean energy system, explained

Risk of 'cannibalisation'

Maria Pastukhova, a senior policy advisor at E3G, says the rules allow hydrogen projects to “cannibalise” the existing local infrastructure for the purpose of export production.

“For many countries, especially in Africa, this energy is needed at home, where grids need to be decarbonised or local citizens don’t have access to electricity,” she added.

Only 56% of Namibians had access to electricity in 2022. The nation imported 60-70% of its electricity demand, most of it coming from fossil fuel sources.

The Southern African nation, in particular, is racing to become Africa’s first green hydrogen exporting hub, but faces a context of high unemployment and one of the most unequal economies in the world, according to the World Bank.

Namibia's pitch

Namibia’s President Hage Geingob sees green hydrogen as an “engine of growth” that will make the country an industrialised economy and create a large number of jobs.

“Because of our national green hydrogen efforts, Namibia remains well-positioned to become a major supplier of clean and green energy to the world,” he said at Cop27.

In 2021 the Namibian government began pitching its proposition to European leaders, luring them in with the promise to supply up to three million tonnes of renewable hydrogen every year.

Namibia's Tsau Khaeb National Park has been earmarked for green hydrogen projects. Photo: Olga Ernst and Hp Baumeler

Germany was first to respond to the calls and quickly partnered with its former colony. A German private joint venture is now working with the Namibian government to develop a $9.4 billion green hydrogen project. The huge infrastructure is expected to take up 4,000km2 of land (roughly four times the city of Berlin) within the Tsau Khaeb National Park.

Its goal is to begin hydrogen production by the end of 2026.

Money for hydrogen

Following Berlin’s lead, the European Commission signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Namibia on renewable hydrogen, something they have also done in at least other three developing countries

The agreement aims to facilitate “the production and export of renewable hydrogen”, while offering Namibia the “possibility to achieve its own energy security and decarbonisation objectives”.

At the same time the European Investment Bank pledged to give Namibia a loan of up to 500 million euros to finance renewable hydrogen and renewable energy investments. The EIB President said “the development of a green hydrogen economy will bring Namibia and Europe closer together - as partners”.

A similar memorandum of understanding was signed on the sidelines of Cop27 between the European Union and Egypt. The partnership is aimed at "contributing to the EU future plans to import renewable hydrogen", while accelerating "the Egyptian energy sector's transition and decarbonisation".

The agreement does not yet contain any binding commitment but it expects to encourage investment in infrastructure and easier access to financing options.

Upon unveiling the deal, the European Commission Vice-President said Egypt is "ideally placed" to transport green hydrogen to Europe. He added that Egypt is blessed with "unlimited potential for solar and wind energy", which goes beyond local electricity needs and, therefore, can also be used for green hydrogen.

Despite this potential, the country's energy sector is still hugely dominated by fossil fuels, with only about 6% of the supply coming from renewables.

Migrant workers face risks building Europe’s new gas supplies in the UAE

Bellona’s Marta Lovisolo says the agreements are “full of nice words, but do not have any legal safeguards” to prevent European interests come first.

She adds developing countries are particularly attracted as the European Union has signalled it would subsidise the big premiums needed for green hydrogen.

More money to come

Brussels is working on a subsidy scheme to bring down the prices of hydrogen for buyers. Green premiums would cover the cost gap between renewable hydrogen produced overseas and the fossil fuels it would replace.

The money pot is expected to be large. The green premium to achieve the 2030 targets for hydrogen could come up to €115 billion in total.

For the African Climate Foundation's Godrje Rustomjee the financial incentives are just too good for developing countries to ignore. "On one hand they could use renewables only for domestic consumption but this could come at extreme cost," he says, "on the other, the nature of these export deals has the potential of doubling a country's economy".

The key, he says, it's striking the right compromise and securing safeguards in the deals with rich importing countries.

He believes these should include safeguards for local electricity provision and incentives, such as the localisation of manufacturing in the country.

The post Green hydrogen rush risks energy ‘cannibalisation’ in Africa, analysts say appeared first on Climate Home News.

After meeting with Germany’s leader Olaf Scholz, Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau announced Canada would work towards exporting green hydrogen to Germany by 2025.

Energy experts swiftly criticised the idea as unrealistic. A call by Scholz for Canada to expand its fossil fuel infrastructure got less attention.

Bloomberg New Energy Finance founder Michael Liebreich called the alliance “hilarious”. “No more than homeopathic quantities of [hydrogen] will ever move by ship,” he said.

Hilarious. Any engineer can tell you hydrogen is not like LNG. 30% energy lost in liquefaction; 38% of the volumetric energy density; 6x the boil-off; embrittles; -253C; etc. Transport cost 2-3x production cost? No more than homeopathic quantities of H2 will ever move by ship. https://t.co/qZojKtSyH7

— Michael Liebreich (@MLiebreich) August 24, 2022

On his trip to Canada, Scholz urged Trudeau’s government to build shipping terminals on its east coast to export liquefied natural gas (LNG) to Europe.

“As Germany is moving away from Russian energy at warp speed, Canada is our partner of choice,” he said in Toronto. “For now, this means increasing our LNG imports. We hope that Canadian LNG will play a major role in this.”

Electrical engineering professor Arvind Ravikumar said: “This is more an LNG export deal than a hydrogen one, at least in the short term… Because transporting [liquified hydrogen] like [liquified natural gas] is an expensive, leaky, & uneconomic endeavor.”

It follows a pattern in Scholz’s recent energy diplomacy. He’s encouraged an LNG terminal in Argentina, gas production in Senegal and a pipeline to bring gas from Algeria through Spain and France to Germany. At home, Scholz supports the building of two terminals to import LNG from overseas.

Canada’s east coast has no operating gas exporting terminals (brown dots) but several proposed ones (orange) (Photo: Global Energy Monitor)

Experts warn this infrastructure will take too long to build to help with Germany’s immediate gas demand crunch. In the long run, it will either worsen climate change by prolonging gas use or become worthless as Germany phases gas out of its electricity system by 2035.

Scholz is in coalition with the German Green Party. He has tried to reconcile his support for gas infrastructure with climate action by claiming that the terminals and pipelines can be converted from fossil gas to zero-carbon hydrogen made from renewables.

Hosting a recent G7 summit, he told the press: “When it comes to financing fossil sources of energy, this is something that is to come to an end. But of course, in this very specific situation we are now in, we will be helping many countries, if they need to make investments for being hydrogen-ready.”

Germany has no LNG import terminals (brown dots) but several proposed ones (orange) and two under construction (red) (Photo: Global Energy Monitor)

Hydrogen has different properties to methane gas and switching infrastructure from one to the other is no simple matter. E3G gas analyst Maria Pastukhova told Climate Home: ““There is no such thing as a ‘hydrogen-ready LNG terminal’”. It is cheaper to build a hydrogen terminal from scratch than convert an LNG one to hydrogen, she said.

Scholz and EU Commission chief Ursula Von Der Leyen have claimed that gas pipelines in Europe can be converted to hydrogen.

Over the rainbow: The role of hydrogen in a clean energy system, explained

While conversion is possible, Stanford University engineering professor Mark Jacobson told Climate Home that hydrogen in a gas pipeline leaks at seven time the rate of gas, as the molecules are smaller and escape easier. Hydrogen leaks are expensive and dangerous.

We are also ready in case Russia uses energy as a weapon.

Several countries are ready to step up their exports of LNG to the EU.

We already reinforced our pan-European pipeline and electricity interconnector network.

This will also be the backbone of green hydrogen supply. pic.twitter.com/cxRfDzz0Lq

— Ursula von der Leyen (@vonderleyen) February 16, 2022

Jacobson said green hydrogen should be produced near to where it is needed in places like “airports, steel factories, ammonia factories, shipping ports, and truck stops”. The renewable electricity needed to make green hydrogen can be moved by cables. Pastukhova agreed, adding that 85% of hydrogen is currently produced near to where it used.

Another option is to use green hydrogen to make ammonia, which is easier to transport and can be used as fuel or in fertilisers. But converting ammonia back to hydrogen for use as a gas is inefficient, Pastukhova said.

The post Germany hypes green hydrogen alliance while shopping for Canadian fossil gas appeared first on Climate Home News.

First, electrification and renewable energy for most consumer needs. Second, a big ramp up of the hydrogen economy to replace fuels used by industry. Third, mechanisms surrounding a high carbon price designed to lessen the economic impacts of the transition for countries and communities that will be most impacted.

None of these pillars are simple to achieve, but the hydrogen segment is the most shaky. The EU has achieved 24% emissions reductions by 2019 compared to 1990 levels, but heavy transport emissions actually increased during that period and industrial decarbonisation efforts have largely plateaued since 2009.

Studies projecting European hydrogen demand vary, but all show massive increases. Even at the low end, there is more than 700% projected growth by 2050. Europe will need as much hydrogen as it can get its hands on. A sizeable amount will be imported as domestic production is unlikely to scale fast enough to meet this rapid increase in demand.

Sources: Guidehouse, European Hydrogen Backbone 2021, DNV Pathway to Net-Zero 2021 and CATF Europe Decarbonisation Pathway Analysis 2022

Europe has only seven and a half years to leap from 24% to 55% emissions reductions, so there is absolutely no time to lose.

Fundamentally, difficult-to-electrify sectors – such as heavy industry and heavy transport – will require a new set of  low-carbon fuels like hydrogen and ammonia to replace the fossil fuels in use today, as well as carbon capture and storage (CCS) to eliminate leftover emissions. Hydrogen and ammonia are relatively simple to swap into fuel-focused processes. They contain no carbon molecules, so are considered ‘zero-carbon’ at the point of use.

The major climate challenges come with the production of these fuels.

Upstream emissions and the risks of carbon capture

Within the EU, hydrogen produced by electrolysers powered with renewable energy remains the primary focus. This is a laudable strategy that deserves enthusiastic backing, but it isn’t a quick fix.

Europe is in a race to build renewables fast enough to decarbonise the electricity grid, so may not have the additional renewable electricity needed to produce meaningful volumes of ‘green hydrogen’ in the near term. Europe’s largest port estimates it will be importing 20Mt per year in 2050, more than double Europe’s current total consumption.

There are many challenges associated with the alternative option: producing hydrogen from fossil gas with carbon capture and storage, often referred to as ‘blue hydrogen’.

First and foremost, there is the potential for a significant amount of upstream emissions in the form of methane. Scientists estimate that methane can dominate the emissions associated with blue hydrogen, even at high carbon capture rates, as you can see from the chart below.

Impacts on climate change associated with the production of natural gas based hydrogen (Photo: Bauer et al/Sustainable Energy and Fuels)

Methane is 80 times more potent than CO2 and is leaked and vented throughout the fossil gas network, as our colleagues at CATF have shown. Cleaning up methane emissions is perhaps the single most pressing climate action of this decade. Happily, leading research shows that significant reductions are attainable with technologies that are already available, at low or negative costs. This has to happen whether or not fossil gas is being used to produce blue hydrogen.

Second, there are inevitable CO2 emissions involved when extracting hydrogen from fossil gas which must be accounted for. To solve this, blue hydrogen plants need to adopt technology that prevents CO2 from entering the atmosphere and then permanently store it in geologic formations.

CCS technology has been working safely and effectively for almost 50 years, and hydrogen production facilities achieving 90% overall carbon capture or more can be built today using commercial technology.

With much lower methane leak rates and advancing carbon capture units with high capture rates, it is possible to produce hydrogen that results in about an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions compared to directly using fossil fuels.

However, such capture rates have yet to be proven on a large scale. As with any other new climate technology, there are risks that the promised emissions reductions will not materialize, and many groups have resisted attempts to bring CCS into the technology mix because of said risks.

This links to a major reason we are yet to see such capture rates at scale: we haven’t really tried it yet.

Just 0.6% of the fossil fuel derived hydrogen produced today is done using carbon capture technology. Without policy pressure to increase the production of low-carbon hydrogen, producers have no reason to cut the emissions for the ‘grey’ hydrogen produced from fossil fuels which we overwhelmingly use today.

Where the European Union needs to take action

Getting to scale is a huge concern when it comes to the low-carbon hydrogen economy.

The EU’s climate chief Frans Timmermans recently stated that “Europe is never going to be capable of producing its own hydrogen in sufficient quantities” in a speech aimed at potential low-carbon fuel producers in neighbourhood countries.

A combination of blue and green hydrogen is likely necessary to meet European and global hydrogen demand at least up until mid-century – the IEA’s flagship Net Zero by 2050 report shows a 62/38 percent split between the two even in 2050.

However, hydrogen can only be considered a viable option for Europe with appropriate climate controls such as strong methane management and significant carbon capture and storage.

To an extent, this is already reflected in European policy. The term ‘low-carbon hydrogen’ is included in the EU’s Hydrogen Strategy and the Gas Package, but the details are lacking. It’s crucial that the Gas Package, in particular, lays out the terms to ensure that hydrogen imports will be climate beneficial.

There is currently no certification system in place for low-carbon hydrogen and the Commission is only planning to introduce one in 2024. That’s far too late. Many member states have already secured import deals and are in the process of adopting their own schemes, which will inevitably lead to confusion among producers. Furthermore, these certification schemes fail to take into account adequate life-cycle analyses, ignoring upstream and transport-related emissions which must be addressed. The EU must step in.

The lack of clarity has delayed investment from potential hydrogen producers in the Middle East and North Africa. These are countries that have long been energy partners with Europe and possess knowhow and resources to ramp up much needed hydrogen production, but they are under the impression that only green hydrogen will be accepted by importers in Europe. Producing blue hydrogen means significant infrastructure investments – these will not happen overnight.

The longer Europe takes to lay out its vision for hydrogen imports, the longer it will take for both regions to transition away from the status quo of continued extraction, transport and consumption of unabated fossil fuels.

As the EU builds new energy relationships around the world, it must seek win-win solutions that address the scale and speed needed to hit climate goals, while also addressing energy security challenges.

Olivia Azadegan is Clean Air Task Force’s energy transition director for the MENA region

Magnolia Tovar is Clean Air Task Force’s global zero-carbon fuels policy director

The post Europe must set robust clean hydrogen standards to mobilise MENA investment appeared first on Climate Home News.

Observers say the European Commission’s decision to classify gas as a transition fuel in its green investment list leaves the door open to “blue hydrogen” projects with exaggerated climate credentials.

“Blue hydrogen is basically nothing but a smokescreen for more air pollution, mining, and fossil fuel use with hardly any CO2 benefit,” said Mark Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford University.

Unlike green hydrogen, which is derived from water in a process powered exclusively by renewable energy, blue hydrogen comes from methane, with the carbon dioxide emitted during production captured and stored.

The International Energy Agency reported last week that there are at least 50 blue hydrogen projects under development globally, and capacity is set to increase more than tenfold by 2030.

European Commission endorses fossil gas as ‘transition’ fuel for private investment

In a delegated act last year, the EU Commission set an emissions threshold of just over 3 tonnes of CO2e per tonne of H2 for hydrogen projects to comply with the green taxonomy.

“Which is not low enough to guarantee that it would be only renewable energy-powered hydrogen,” said Eleonora Moro, a hydrogen analyst at the E3G climate think tank. “It could include some types of high efficiency blue hydrogen projects.”

One such project is a joint venture announced by Equinor and Engie in December to produce “low-carbon hydrogen… at large scale and at competitive cost levels”. The companies claim that they will use a process known as autothermal reforming (ATR), which “allows for decarbonization rates above 95%”.

The project sponsors some editions of POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook newsletter, telling readers: “Hydrogen can accelerate the energy transition but we need to develop well-functioning markets and infrastructure. The H2BE project will help kick-start the Belgian low-carbon hydrogen market.”

Seven countries join US and EU in methane reduction pledge

ATR involves heating methane gas with a catalyst, then adding water to get hydrogen and CO2 that is then captured. Equinor says it will bury the captured CO2 beneath the North Sea. 

The EU’s hydrogen strategy, published in 2020, says that “renewable  and low-carbon hydrogen can contribute to reduce greenhouse gas emissions ahead of 2030”.

Jacobson disputed Equinor and Engie’s claim that blue hydrogen can be classified as “low-carbon”.

“Carbon capture equipment is never 95% effective,” he told Climate Home. Blue hydrogen capture technology currently available is at best 78.8% effective, “but that ignores the fact that more energy is needed to run carbon capture equipment, so it is 78.8% of a much larger emission stream”. 

Jacobson co-wrote a study last year which found, due to the increased amount of fossil gas needed to power the carbon capture and storage (CCS) process, blue hydrogen likely had a 20% higher carbon footprint than burning methane alone.

Comment: Why the hydrogen bubble could burst in Europe’s face

A paper by different researchers last month noted that developers’ promises of a 90-95% CCS success rate were based on theory, not practice. 

“While these high capture rates are assumed in many national strategies and major reports, they have not yet been achieved in a large-scale commercial plant,” said the paper, published in the journal Applied Energy. 

Another issue with blue hydrogen projects is that the methane feedstock can leak, with a short-term warming impact more than 80 times that of CO2.

Countries agreed at the last UN climate summit in November to reduce methane emissions by 30% this decade, and an EU Commission proposal seeks a ban on routine gas flaring and venting as well as penalties on leaks. 

Yet the draft legislation doesn’t set specific emissions reduction targets, and E3G’s Moro said leakages – which may be as much as 4% in some countries – could only be penalised if effectively observed. 

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Eilidh Robb, an anti-gas campaigner at Friends of the Earth Europe, said that industry’s focus on blue hydrogen “shows a complete lack of understanding about methane emissions”.

“We talk so much about CO2 that methane has been overlooked and it’s only now we are starting to talk about that,” she said. “[Blue hydrogen] is a highly technological solution from the gas industry for them to continue to do what they have always done and we need to be deeply skeptical.”

A spokesperson for Equinor told Climate Home that in order for the EU to reach its decarbonisation aims, it “will need many forms of hydrogen with zero to low-carbon and environmental footprint. The volume needs are massive.”

The spokesperson added that Equinor “pursues a methane intensity target of near zero and are an engaged member of international efforts to reduce global emissions”.

Engie did not respond to comment requests.

Researchers also questioned if burying CO2 beneath the sea bed was a durable solution to the climate crisis. 

Caitlin Swalec, research analyst and hydrogen specialist at the Global Energy Monitor watchdog, said that no matter how well it is stored, buried CO2 will “eventually leak and make its way back to the atmosphere”.

“This may happen over several hundred years, or a few decades. We don’t really know because we haven’t tested it,” she said.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, in its 2005 special report on CCS, suggested that CO2 stored below 3,000 metres would be less likely to leak. At this depth, the gas becomes denser than water.

Saudi energy minister touts pink hydrogen made by “emancipated young ladies”

Equinor says it stores its captured CO2 “1,000-2,000 metres below the seabed” and Swalec said it was not clear how viable the storage was at such depths. 

“In order to store CO2 long term under the sea floor, it needs to go very deep which means that it will require a lot of energy to store it,” she told Climate Home. “If it takes more energy (i.e. emissions) to store the CO2 than we remove, the project will cause more problems than it solves.”

Silje Ask Lunberg, a senior campaigner and Norway expert at Oil Change International, said Equinor – previously Statoil – had a history of failed CCS attempts. 

These include problems at its Snohvit field in the Barents Sea, which saw one attempt at CCS aborted as the reservoir was at risk of collapsing, and a second paused as the injected CO2 was polluting the methane extracted from the site.

Statoil also mothballed its Mongstad CCS plant after less than a year of operations.

“Mongstad was meant to demonstrate that it was completely feasible to have carbon capture at gas-fired power plants and it was supposed to be 100% from 2014,” said Lundberg. “They ended up failing at their own project.”

EU climate package risks locking in gas use, campaigners warn

Equinor and Engie say they are in talks with potential blue hydrogen buyers from “predominantly large, hard-to-abate industries”. These may include sectors such as cement and steel, where there are few low-carbon production methods.

The EU green taxonomy also encourages the use of hydrogen in gas-fired power stations, while gas grid operators are preparing to “blend” hydrogen into the fuel mix for home heating and cooking.

E3G’s Moro said that even for hard-to-abate sectors, there were “much more efficient alternatives”, such as renewable energy or green hydrogen.

She said there were “very strong economic interests” pushing for blue hydrogen across Europe, and that the guidelines as to what qualifies as renewable or low-carbon gas were too vague, as they stand, to discourage them.

“We know that fossil gas will have to be phased out in the EU so what do we do with all that infrastructure? The easy solution the fossil industry is selling is blue hydrogen.”

This article was amended after publication to add a response from Equinor. 

The post Experts sound the alarm on oil sector’s blue hydrogen push appeared first on Climate Home News.

Energy minister Abdulaziz bin Salman told the online World Economic Forum this week the kingdom was pursuing blue, green and pink hydrogen development, the colours representing the way it is made – some cleaner than others.

He said the EU was interested in green hydrogen, made with renewable electricity, and joked that pink – to be generated with planned nuclear power plants – was of particular interest to women in the industry.

“We are recruiting, by the way, young Saudi ladies that are happy to see the pink coming along,” said bin Salman. “We have started being very conscious of taking care of our female new recruits and new cadets. We’re becoming an extremely well emancipated society.”

However the bulk is likely to be blue, made from methane gas and emitting carbon dioxide in the process, some of which may be captured and stored.

“We will have a field day with blue hydrogen because again, we’re the cheapest cost producer of gas,” bin Salman said. “We’re doing a huge investment in shale gas in Saudi Arabia and we will be dedicated to have that gas to be used for producing blue hydrogen.”

Likely future importers of hydrogen are in yellow with exporters in blue (Photo: Natural Earth)

Hydrogen can be burned to power processes like steel-making or propel planes and ships. While it’s currently expensive and not widely used, many analysts see it as a clean fuel of the future, particularly for applications that cannot be easily electrified. How clean depends on how it is made.

By 2050, the global trade in hydrogen is expected to be worth more than global trade in oil, according to the International Renewable Energy Agency.

Europe and East Asia are likely to need more hydrogen than they can produce and Gulf nations are well-placed geographically to export through ships or pipelines.

Egypt names foreign minister Sameh Shoukry to lead Cop27 climate talks

Bin Salman said that he had discussed exporting green hydrogen to the EU with the European Commission’s vice-president Frans Timmermans. Saudi Arabia is developing a $5bn green hydrogen plant in its new megacity of Neom, which is due to start running by 2025.

E3G hydrogen analyst Lisa Fischer said the EU is developing guidelines on what constitutes “low-carbon” hydrogen and blue hydrogen, particularly if it comes from fracked shale gas, is likely to be excluded.

The other big hydrogen market is East Asia, which is more likely to accept blue hydrogen. Saudi Arabia is in hydrogen talks with South Korea and Japan.

Saudi Arabia’s electricity has always come almost entirely from oil and gas but it is now planning to ramp up renewables and to build two large nuclear power reactors for power and smaller ones to power taking salt out of sea-water.

The cost of producing green hydrogen. Red is the cheapest and blue is the most expensive (Photo: International Energy Agency)

With its abundant gas reserves and sunshine, the kingdom is well placed to produce both blue and green hydrogen cheaply. Its competitive advantage in nuclear power is less clear.

While women have won more freedoms in Saudi Arabia in recent years, notably permission to drive cars, in 2021 the World Economic Forum’s gender equality index ranked Saudi Arabia 147 out of 156 countries.

There are no female government ministers in Saudi Arabia, women take up just 7% of managerial roles and earn a quarter of a man’s income on average, the report found.

Green hydrogen creates jobs in production of renewable energy and electrolysers, and can support industries like fertiliser production.

Those jobs would help Saudi Arabia transition away from oil and gas while keeping its public on side, Fischer suggested. “If you don’t have that many rents any more from your fossil fuels then you need some other way of keeping people happy, to manage the politics.”

The post Saudi energy minister touts pink hydrogen made by “emancipated young ladies” appeared first on Climate Home News.

At a hydrogen summit this week, finance minister Bruno Le Maire unveiled his vision for clean hydrogen and emphasised that he hopes to partner with Germany on this.

“I hope that we will manage to find a joint Franco-German and then a European project for hydrogen,” Le Maire told French media outlet CNews ahead of the meeting in Berlin.

This week Le Maire revealed that almost a third of France’s €100 billion ($119bn) coronavirus recovery package will be spent on green energy policies, with €7 billion going towards the development of carbon-free hydrogen for transport and the industrial sector by 2030. 

Germany unveiled its national hydrogen strategy in June. The country has earmarked €9 billion for the expansion of hydrogen production as part of a €130 billion economic stimulus package, with the aim of ramping up its capacity to 5 GW by 2030 and 10 GW by 2040.

Carbon-free hydrogen is produced by electrolysis. Electricity from renewable sources or nuclear is used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. It is expected to play a pivotal role in the global transition to net zero emissions, particularly as a solution to decarbonise the steel and shipping industries, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report published on Thursday. 

Ministers promise green recovery at Japanese virtual summit, keep quiet on fossil bailouts

France aims to install 6.5 GW of clean hydrogen production capacity by 2030 and start building electrolyser factories in 2021, the government said.

The government has said its investment in carbon-free hydrogen will cut France’s CO2 output by 6 million tonnes, the equivalent of Paris’ annual emissions.

“France is convinced that carbon-free hydrogen will be one of the great revolutions of our century: for the decarbonisation of the industrial sector, to develop and deploy emission-free mobility solutions, to store energy and provide additional responses to the intermittency of renewable energies,” Le Maire said in France’s hydrogen strategy.

Nicola De Blasio, a senior fellow in energy technology innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School, told Climate Home News it would take more than two countries to build a functioning European hydrogen market.

“You need to create a demand, you need to build the infrastructure… this will require coordination at the EU level,” De Blasio said. 

Fracking company sues Slovenia over ‘unreasonable’ environmental protections

A global race to ramp up production of the clean fuel has begun with the EU Commission unveiling its hydrogen strategy in July, which aims to increase capacity to 40 GW and generate 10 million tonnes of clean hydrogen by 2030.

The EU estimates that by 2050 clean hydrogen could meet 24% of the world’s energy demand. But it is a long road ahead. Today 96% of hydrogen supply comes from fossil fuels, according to a report by the Rocky Mountain Institute. Hydrogen from fossil fuels generates more than 800 Mt of CO2, comparable to the emissions of the UK and Indonesia combined, according to the IEA. 

EU Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans, who presides over the European Green New Deal, has championed hydrogen as a renewable fuel that can easily be integrated into existing energy infrastructure, as opposed to wind and solar which require the construction of new farms and grids. 

“There are millions of kilometres of natural gas pipeline, and a significant fraction is completely compatible with hydrogen use,” José Miguel Bermúdez Menéndez, an energy technology analyst at the IEA, told Climate Home News. 

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While Germany plans to generate hydrogen from renewable sources, such as offshore wind and hydropower, France is a major proponent of nuclear power, which makes up over 70% of the country’s energy mix. In an interview with French media BFM TV, Le Maire described himself as a “nuclear advocate.” When asked whether France would generate clean hydrogen using nuclear, Le Maire said the fuel remains relevant.

Germany plans to close all its nuclear power plants by 2022, following mass public support for their closure amid safety concerns. 

This should not hinder EU-wide collaboration on hydrogen, said De Blasio, citing Italy as an example. Italy closed its nuclear plants decades ago but continues to import electricity from nuclear. “How many consumers know where their electricity comes from?” De Blasio said.

The EU could meet most of its hydrogen demand internally, but the bloc must move fast to compete internationally, De Blasio added, noting that China has started to look into hydrogen. 

During his interview with CNews, De Maire warned that the EU should not make the “same mistakes” as it did with solar panels by allowing China to dominate the manufacturing side. 

“If China is going to put its industrial might behind hydrogen, like it did with electric vehicles and solar panels, we could have a similar situation,” De Blasio said.

The post France seeks German collaboration on hydrogen in EU green recovery appeared first on Climate Home News.

“This remarkable place, the youngest child of England’s enterprise, is an infant, but if an infant, an infant Hercules.”

These words of prime minister William Gladstone, visiting Middlesbrough on the river Tees in 1862, have passed into local legend. With iron ore from the Eston hills and steel foundries, the burgeoning town did more than its share of heavy lifting in Britain’s industrial revolution.

It came at an environmental cost. Not for nothing are Teessiders known as “smoggies”. But for more than a century, people and money flowed in.

From such youthful vigour, Hercules has got a little doddery. Last October, the last blast furnace on Teesside fired down, unable to compete with cheap Chinese imports. The unemployment rate, swelled by 2,200 redundant steel workers, is among the worst in the country.

The remaining heavy industry, which includes some of Europe’s highest emitting plants, is under pressure. In the short term, the main issue is surplus production in Asia. In the longer term, its levels of pollution clash with climate goals.

Cleaning up industry looks more essential than ever, after 195 countries agreed in Paris to curb the greenhouse gas emissions behind global warming. The pact also calls for a “just transition of the workforce” – that is, helping communities adjust to the low carbon shift.

It is in tackling that challenge that a band of business leaders see a chance to reverse Teesside’s fortunes. They hope to position the region as a low carbon hub, by pumping its CO2 output into capacious reservoirs under the North Sea.

If it works in the UK, it can be a model for rapidly industrialising societies across the world.

But there are headwinds. The green revival hinges on carbon capture and storage (CCS), a technology that has seen many false dawns. Beloved of engineers and climate modellers, it needs high upfront investment for distant rewards – a tough sell politically.

Can the Teesside Collective break the mould?

(Flickr/image_less_ordinary)

Jay Brooks, a regional manager with industrial gases firm BOC, picks me up from the train station in his Jaguar – a British make of car.

He is taking me to the company’s hydrogen plant, the biggest of its kind in the country. It’s not green right now, but with investment, it could be.

We cross the river by the tourist route: Tees Transporter Bridge, a landmark featured in the film Billy Elliot and TV series Auf Wiedersehen, Pet. For £1.30, a gondola ferries cars from one side to the other, suspended from a frame high enough to allow tall ships to pass.

Its blue paint shines in the bright February morning. Brooks proprietorially points out an oxygen pipeline across the structure belonging to his firm. The message: we can do the same for CO2, no problem.

On the other side, a tangle of imposing smokestacks soon hoves into view. By the side of the road, an unremarkable-looking patch of land has a hide for bird-watchers. Migrating flocks are apparently prepared to dodge the chimneys and pause there on their journeys – testament to an environmental clean-up in recent decades.

North Tees industrial park is surrounded with barbed wire and floodlights, security Brooks explains is to protect stores of not-yet-taxed oil.

Its proximity to the North Sea is one of Teesside’s selling points. Natural gas is piped in direct from offshore rigs to industrial buyers. It is the feedstock for BOC’s hydrogen plant, reacting with steam to produce 4 tonnes of hydrogen an hour.

In the office at the base of the installation, plant manager Victoria Oleksik gets away with wearing shiny tan high heels. She takes me through a brightly coloured flowchart on the computer screen.

To take a tour, you need to don full protective gear, from boots to ear plugs. Climbing the diamond-tread steel stairs, heat coming off the reactor gives some comfort from the biting wind. Brooks opens a hatch to reveal the roaring blaze within.

At the moment, most of the hydrogen goes to a chemical works. Carbon dioxide is a by-product, going straight up the chimney. It traps heat in the atmosphere, contributing to climate change.

The Teesside Collective wants to capture that CO2 and return it to abandoned oil and gas wells.

Brooks says: “We could show you every single element that is required to make this CCS system work, up to the beachhead. All the building blocks to make it happen are existing technology. To an operator like me it is easy.”

Meanwhile, hydrogen production could be scaled up as a clean fuel for tough-to-decarbonise sectors like transport and heating. As a fuel for buses, it gives off nothing more noxious than water vapour in urban areas. Injected into regional gas networks, it reduces the carbon emissions of household boilers.

Mark Lewis’s accent betrays him as a southerner, but he used to visit his grandparents on Teesside. He has seen a lot of changes since the mid-1970s.

Now, he is ensconced in the northeast. His tie pin proclaims him as president of the Cleveland Institution of Engineers, a regional professional body. As project manager for the Teesside Collective, it’s his job to mobilise industry participation and pitch for public support.

The main driver is climate policy: the UK has a legally binding target to cut emissions 80% from 1990 levels by 2050.

“We are not going to meet our 2050 targets in the UK if we don’t decarbonise industry,” says Lewis. “We want to be doing it early in order to seek advantage from that if we can. You can’t meet those targets without CCS and particularly industrial CCS.”

There is another way of cutting those UK emissions, of course: closing heavy industry and importing carbon-intensive products. That is part of the trend over recent decades. Thai owner SSI’s closure of the Redcar steelworks last year is one example.

But on a global scale, there is no net benefit to the climate – the pollution source moves rather than disappearing. Meanwhile the region loses out on investment.

So Lewis is equally keen to stress the value to UK plc of keeping Teesside’s industry cluster alive. Employment, for one: around 4,000 well-paid direct jobs and more in the supply chain. The trade surplus, for another: £4 billion a year worth of exports.

He is not overly sentimental about what has already gone. “The loss of the blast furnace is nostalgic, it’s sad, but we have got to look forward. Low carbon industry is something I think we can do in this region.”

“We are not going to meet our 2050 targets in the UK if we don’t decarbonise industry”

Pursuing a CCS project in the UK is a triumph of optimism over experience.

Despite enjoying cross-party support, a public initiative to develop commercial scale CCS has been scrapped not once but twice.

A Labour government first launched the £1 billion competition in 2007. Four years later a Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition cancelled it on value-for-money grounds. They had not been able to agree terms with the frontrunner – Longannet in Scotland.

The National Audit Office blamed “insufficient planning and recognition of the commercial risks”. In future, the watchdog said, the Treasury “should be clear on the public investment available and establish any affordability constraint”.

On a second attempt to find a home for the £1bn, two schemes were shortlisted – White Rose in Yorkshire and Peterhead in Scotland. Yet again, in November 2015, a now Conservative government dashed the industry’s hopes – on value-for-money grounds.

Similarly at EU level, Brussels has repeatedly tried to back CCS, only for projects to fall through.

The fundamental drivers have not changed. The UK still has an emissions target to meet. Experts warn it will be more expensive – if not impossible – to meet it without CCS.

Indeed, the Conservatives are enthusiastic about developing shale gas reserves. Gas can act as a “transition fuel” from dirtier coal to clean energy sources, they argue. But a recent study warned there is limited scope for gas expansion without CCS.

Yet the problem only comes to a crunch in a decade or two. For politicians on five-year terms, it is not a vote-winner or loser. That is particular true for the Conservatives, with CCS projects tending to affect safe Labour seats. They might accept the logic behind CCS, but pay no penalty at the polls for abandoning it.

After the decision, the government narrative shifted. Yes, Britain needs CCS, but no, it doesn’t need to be an early mover. Let’s wait until China does it at scale and then import the kit when it’s cheaper.

It is the one argument that gets Teesside Collective’s Mark Lewis exercised, raising his voice before – in true British style – apologising.

“You have got to build it where you have got to build it,” he fumes. “You are not going to import underwater reservoirs from China. There is nothing there that we need to import from China. I don’t think you get any substantial cost reductions by waiting. We have got an offshore industry here that is crying out for jobs and employment.”

The axed competition was to capture emissions from power generation. For industry, the case is different and arguably stronger. There are plenty of viable low carbon electricity sources, whereas options to neutralise CO2 from industrial processes are limited. That is particularly true of steel and cement production, but the hydrogen plans also reach hard-to-decarbonise places.

And after a year of savaging green policies, the Conservative government has narrowed its options for meeting that legally binding carbon budget. It is promising a new energy and climate policy package by the end of 2016.

Lewis says industrial CCS is on the agenda at the Treasury, prime minister’s office, business and energy departments. He is encouraged by conversations with government. But it will take more than a politician’s word to convince investors.

What’s the cost – and who pays?

Early analysis, funded by a £1 million government grant, suggests Teesside CCS could prevent CO2 emissions for £50 a tonne.

It’s a ballpark figure that has been superseded by events. The now-closed SSI steelworks accounted for a large chunk of the 56.5 million tonnes of CO2 they expected to capture over 20 years.

There is no shortage of emissions sources to replace it, but with steel out of the picture, the concept has evolved. Now, the buzzword is “hydrogen economy”. By capturing carbon at a big hydrogen plant rather than the back end of several different factories, there could be cost savings.

On the other hand, the cancellation of power CCS projects could push costs up, as Teesside can no longer piggyback on that infrastructure.

The industry has some incentive to invest, as insurance against future climate policies. At present, UK polluters get some free emissions permits and pay £22 a tonne for any extra needed – a surcharge on the EU carbon price.

The price is expected to rise by the time CCS would be up and running, but how much remains uncertain. And if it is higher than prices in other jurisdictions, multinationals could just as easily take their investment elsewhere.

Undoubtedly, government would need to offer a carrot as well as a stick. That could follow a similar model to the contracts offered for renewable energy, which guarantee a certain power price.

“What I think we can do is make sure we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

Terry Waldron, PR manager at Sembcorp, a partner in the Teesside Collective, is apologetic as he picks me up. He is not an expert on CCS. It is half term for schools and other candidates to show me round were on holiday.

Ask about Teesside’s industrial history, though, and there’s no stopping him. A journalist in the late 1980s before getting into corporate communications, he has experienced up close the upheaval of the past three decades.

From iron and steel in the 1800s, the big growth last century came in chemicals. Teesside was one of the heartlands of Imperial Chemical Industries, for much of its existence Britain’s biggest industrial company. It made everything from Perspex to paint.

Waldron joined the giant in 1990, thinking he had a job for life. But ICI was getting too big for its boots. The very next year, arch corporate raider Lord Hanson launched a takeover attempt. It failed, but marked a tipping point – ICI started selling off its disparate business.

“You had this cataclysmic change of ownership,” says Waldron. “Your lords and masters now could be in Houston or Salt Lake City, not your men in bowler hats. From being the hub where everybody came to, you were suddenly an outpost in somebody else’s empire.

“It was difficult at all levels, but we really made a good go of it. The fact there is still such a lot of industry now shows how good we have been at innovating and adapting.”

The Wilton International site on Teesside (Pic: Terry Waldron)

He takes me round the Wilton site, 2,000 acres of industrial land connected to North Tees by pipelines.

Sembcorp’s UK utilities division joined the Teesside Collective last October, replacing the closed-down SSI steelworks as an industrial partner. The others are BOC, Lotte Chemical and CF Fertilisers.

The Singapore-headquartered firm owns a small woodchip-fired steam and power plant, tacked onto the side of a decommissioned coal station. Across the way, it is building works to generate energy from waste collected in Merseyside, in partnership with Sita.

The biggest beast on the block is “the cracker”, making ethylene, propylene and butadiene – ingredients for everything from food packaging to detergent. Steam rises from vents along ground-level pipes, while a chimney flares surplus gases on the skyline. Owned by Saudi Arabia’s Sabic, it is not currently part of the CCS collective.

Waldron also shows off the empty plots, talking up their potential for development. “This is a great manufacturing area, with skilled people. It is what it is, it is not pretending to be anything else.”

Guisborough (Flickr/Roland Turner)

In the market town of Guisborough, just outside Middlesbrough, modest terraced houses built for ironstone miners in the 1800s are now home to commuters.

Tom Blenkinsop MP’s office is distinguished by the Save Our Steel posters in the window. His constituency spans southern Middlesbrough and more rural – and well-to-do – villages of north Yorkshire.

A former official at trade union Community, Blenkinsop was propelled into politics after predecessor Ashok Kumar died suddenly in 2010. Redcar steel works was fighting for its future and the local Labour party wanted someone who could speak up for it.

That battle was decisively lost last September, despite Blenkinsop’s best efforts. And he lists half a dozen other local employers that have shut down. Each closure puts a strain on local authority budget, as tax take falls and demand for services increases.

“All we have done since September is have to make the case about how we need help and how it is difficult. You get sick of your own sob story. It is incredibly frustrating, when you know how much we could do here.”

“Culturally, it is in my DNA to make sure we have a manufacturing industry here”

Blenkinsop, who grew up in Middlesbrough, is proud to represent an area that makes things. “Culturally, it is in my DNA to make sure we have a manufacturing industry here.”

He sees little support for that from government, more interested in courting app developers and city slickers. Nor does he have much time for the “holier than thou” green lobby, which embraces steel-built wind turbines yet sees industry as corporations not allies.

“What we really need at the forefront is pro-British, pro-industry, pro-leading on climate change brave leadership.”

As such, he is keen on CCS. “Our area already has the know-how of capturing CO2. You would create jobs, you would attract people here. More than that, you are sending a clear signal to industry to come here and reduce your [carbon] taxes.”

His prescription for the area’s economic woes also includes extracting coal bed methane as a cheap fuel – not something you will find environmentalists endorsing. Even if CO2 is captured at the end of the chain, the process brings risks of methane leakage and water contamination.

But Teesside is no pristine wilderness. There are acres of empty post-industrial land that would be expensive to decontaminate. Blenkinsop wants to put them to work.

North Sea oil and gas rigs could be repurposed to inject CO2 – if they’re not decommissioned first (Flickr/Jon Olav Eikenes)

Back in Westminster, Belinda Perriman is trying to inject some urgency into the process.

“I am drafting an email to Norway [Statoil], offering them our storage site, just to try and goad the UK government into action,” she confides.

This is about the potential destination for Teesside’s CO2, under the North Sea. The offshore rigs and pipelines that used to pump oil and gas to the mainland could be repurposed to send CO2 in the other direction. If not maintained, however, they are due for decommissioning as wells are depleted.

Shell’s Goldeneye platform, which stopped producing gas in 2011, was lined up as storage for the Peterhead project. Now that has been cancelled, its future is uncertain.

Perriman, who led on the Peterhead scheme for Shell before joining the Teesside Collective, argues this infrastructure needs to be held open. Building from scratch costs. “They will be consciously setting back CCS 10 years if they do nothing.”

“You can either decarbonise industrial areas of the UK or the government accepts we allow them all to die and reskill the labour force.”

The discussions with Norwegian oil and gas company Statoil, which already uses CCS, may prompt Britain to consider the strategic value of these reservoirs.

Again, there is the potential to keep on at least some jobs, as the offshore sector suffers from low oil prices and dwindling reserves.

Meanwhile, Perriman thinks a deal is within reach for another £250,000 of government funding – although after months of negotiation, there is nothing in writing. It is half the sum the collective asked for, with lots of work to do fleshing out the concept.

Full operation is some way off. To get there will involve detailed engineering plans, costing in the tens of millions, plus regulatory approvals. Perriman is reluctant to suggest a date, but when pressed puts it in the late 2020s.

Her point to leaders is they need to decide now whether to keep a clean industrial future on the table. “You can either decarbonise industrial areas of the UK or the government accepts we allow them all to die and reskill the labour force.”

Middlesbrough College (Flickr/Paul Hudson)

On Teesside, there is clearly a will to keep industry alive.

Middlesbrough College, its large shiny campus right by the train station, is churning out technically qualified youngsters. The news pages are filled with upbeat stories of redundant steel workers retraining in related skills like electrical safety.

It is not clear what could replace chemicals at the heart of the northeast economy. Alternatives in service sectors tend to be precarious and poorly paid.

How concerned Westminster is with sustaining this child of England’s enterprise is another question.

Tory grandee Lord Michael Heseltine was appointed last November to chair a panel on the region’s employment crunch. He didn’t want to “raise false hopes,” he told local media. Manufacturing may be part of Teesside’s heritage, but it’s “a relatively small part of the whole” today.

It makes no difference to the climate where the emissions come from – or not. But if the birthplace of the industrial revolution won’t take a lead, who will?

The post Reviving Hercules: Can carbon capture give British industry a future? appeared first on Climate Home News.

The team hopes to use the technology to pipe hydrogen for use in cars. (Source: CSULA EcoCar2)

By Nilima Choudhury

A process, called artificial photosynthesis, creates hydrogen which can then be used as a fuel either directly or in the form of methane, or it can generate electricity in a fuel cell for cars.

The scientists from HZB research institute and TU Delft claim this energy also has the potential to be available at night or on cloudy days.

Professor Bernard Dam of the Faculty of Applied Sciences at TU Delft explained: “Our focus has been a ‘cheap and stable’ solution. In this way we have reached a yield of almost 5%.

In other words, nearly 5% of the energy in the incident sunlight is stored in the hydrogen produced. For this type of set-up, that is a record.”

Hydrogen’s primary emission when used is water vapour, and as a result is regarded as one of the best forms of fuel for transport of the future.

But for that its production has to be made affordable, efficient and environmentally friendly. One way of achieving this is through the electrolysis of water, breaking it down into hydrogen and oxygen, particularly if that is done using electricity generated sustainably. Electrolysis is an expensive technique, though, whereas solar is not.

“We’ve just created a cost-effective, highly stable, and highly efficient solar fuel device,” Professor Dr. Roel van de Krol, head of the HZB Institute told RTCC.

“The big advantage of this compared to normal solar cells where you generate electricity and have to store it somewhere [else] – we store it as hydrogen in this device… as a single device,” he said.

Theoretically, a solar-to-chemical efficiency of up to 10% is possible, but de Krol admits his team still have some way to go before they can bring it to market requiring at least a 5% to make it attractive to private investors.

“We’re not there yet, [and] it will be quite challenging. It’s very hard to put a time frame on,” he said. “Our dream is to make large fuels of this technology then instead of normal cells with electrical cables we would then have pipelines of hydrogen.”

The post ‘Artificial photosynthesis’ can create hydrogen from solar energy appeared first on Climate Home News.

Artist’s concept of a hydrogen production plant that uses sunlight to split water to produce fuel. (Pic: University of Colorado)

By Sophie Yeo

Hydrogen could be more widely used as a clean, zero-carbon technology, thanks to a new technology that scientists are calling the “Holy Grail” of a sustainable hydrogen economy.

The radically new technique, developed by researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder, harnesses sunlight to split water into its two components of oxygen and hydrogen molecules, allowing the latter to be collected as hydrogen gas.

“We have designed something here that is very different from other methods and frankly something that nobody thought was possible before,” says Alan Weimer, the co-lead on the team.

“Splitting water with sunlight is the Holy Grail of a sustainable hydrogen economy.”

Hydrogen has been promoted as a sustainable fuel that could be particularly useful in the automotive industry. In February, for instance, a joint report by government and industry suggested that the UK could have 1.6 million hydrogen vehicles on the road by 2030.

The new technology uses a vast network of mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto a single point on top of a tower up to several hundred feet tall.

The tower heats up to around 1,350C. This heat is then delivered into a reactor containing metal oxides, made up of a combination of iron, cobalt, aluminium and oxygen, which releases oxygen atoms.

Adding steam to the system, which can be produced by boiling water in the reactor with the concentrated sunlight, causes oxygen to adhere to the surface of the metal oxide, which then frees up the hydrogen molecules for collection.

Improvements

This is a big improvement on the previous system of obtaining hydrogen gas, says Charles Musgrave, co-lead on the team.

He says, “”The more conventional approaches require the control of both the switching of the temperature in the reactor from a hot to a cool state and the introduction of steam into the system

“One of the big innovations in our system is that there is no swing in the temperature. The whole process is driven by either turning a steam valve on or off.”

This conventional two-step method for splitting the water wastes both time and heat. “There are only so many hours of sunlight in a day,” he said.

With the new method, the amount of hydrogen produced depends entirely on the amount of metal oxide and how much steam goes into the system.

To produce a significant amount of hydrogen gas would require a number of tall towers to gather sunlight from several acres of mirrors surrounding each tower.

“When we saw that we could use this simpler, more effective method, it required a change in our thinking,” said Weimer.

“We had to develop a theory to explain it and make it believable and understandable to other scientists and engineers.”

But the new technology isn’t enough by itself to make hydrogen the next big thing in the renewables market; Weimar admits that, until there is a change of thinking regarding climate change, commercialisation of their discovery is likely to be years away.

“With the price of natural gas so low, there is no incentive to burn clean energy,” said Weimer.

“There would have to be a substantial monetary penalty for putting carbon into the atmosphere, or the price of fossil fuels would have to go way up.”

The post New technology is the “Holy Grail” of clean hydrogen energy appeared first on Climate Home News.

US: General Motors and Honda will develop and share a hydrogen fuel cell for vehicles they could produce around the end of the decade. They said they would also work with energy suppliers and state and local governments to expand the network of hydrogen refuelling stations. (New York Times)

General Motors and Honda will develop a hydrogen fuel cell for vehicles. (Source: IFCAR)

Australia: Australia’s largest power company, Macquarie Generation, is to use captured carbon emissions from one of its coal plants to help grow algae that can then be processed into clean transport fuel. They signed an agreement with Algae.Tec to site a A$150 million ($136 million) algae carbon capture and biofuels production facility alongside the 2.6GW Bayswater coal-fired power station near Sydney. (Business Green)

UK: Homes and businesses installed nearly 380,000 green power projects such as solar panels and wind turbines in the first three years of the government’s feed-in tariff subsidy scheme. Data also showed interest in the feed-in tariff has fallen to its lowest level in nearly two years. (Business Green)

Spain: Researchers at the Universiti Putra Malaysia have created a prototype of a device to harness energy from ocean currents able to work in deep water. The prototype would be able to provide a 1MW of electricity. (Science Daily)

Maldives: The country plans to forge a bi-lateral partnership with Japan to exchange carbon credits for technology, finance and logistical support for projects to reduce carbon and protect against the impacts of climate change. (RTCC)

US: The California ISO, which operates the grid in most of California and Nevada urged customers in the northern part of the state to conserve energy for a second day on Tuesday as residents crank up air conditioners to escape a heat wave blanketing the region. ISO forecase peak demand topping 47,100MW on Tuesday and 47,200MW on Wednesday. (Reuters)

South Korea: The Green Climate Fund (GCF) remains on course to launch in 2014 following progress at its most recent board meeting in South Korea. (RTCC)

Oceans: Climate change may be weeding out the bacteria that form the base of the ocean’s food chain, selecting certain strains for survival, according to a new study. As atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and temperature rise globally, scientists increasingly want to know which organisms will thrive and which will perish in the environment of tomorrow. (Health24)

The post GM and Honda start work on innovative hydrogen fuel cells appeared first on Climate Home News.

The UKH2 Mobility consortium, which includes Hyundai, Toyota and Nissan as well as utility firm SSE and government departments with responsibility for business, energy and transport, is planning the rollout of the technology in the UK.

It believes that a network of 1,150 fuelling station could support this new fleet at a cost of £400m.

Three million tonnes of CO2 could be avoided by 2030 as a result of the hydrogen vehicle roll out.

“The transition to ultra-low emission vehicles has already begun. It has the potential to create really significant new economic opportunities for the UK, to diversify national energy supply and to decarbonise road transport,” said Business Minister Michael Fallon.

A Hyundai hydrogen concept car on show at last year’s Revolve Eco-Rally. (Source: Flickr/Revolve Eco-Rally)

“We already have a strong automotive sector and must ensure it stays that way. Opportunities for the UK to take a leading role in low carbon technologies will be looked at as part of our auto industrial strategy, published later this year,” said Fallon.

The report claims hydrogen fuel cells can be cost-competitive with diesel and with 60% less emissions once the production and delivery of the fuel is factored in. This figure could be 75% by 2030 with the aim of reaching zero emissions by 2050.

At this stage, hydrogen could have a 30-50% market share of vehicles.

“The motor industry recognises it is vital for it to develop and deliver new solutions for reducing the environmental impact of the vehicles it produces,” said Akihito Tanke, Vice President, Research and Development, Toyota Motor Europe.

“Hydrogen fuel cell technology represents a major advance in securing sustainable mobility,” said Tanke adding that all those involved in the development of hydrogen-based transport would have to work together closely to get it off the ground.

A number of manufacturing processes will be used to produce the hydrogen with renewable energy providing more than half the estimated hydrogen by 2030 by splitting water molecules, according to the report.

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When people think about islands with a proactive outlook on the global climate change and sustainability agenda, they are most likely transported to the low lying pacific isles that have campaigned tirelessly and punched far above their weight in the international climate arena. 

The Ecoisland concept, that will arm islands and other community groups from around the world with the knowledge and technologies required for a sustainable future, however, traces its origins to the Isle of Wight, off the south coast of England.

Sandown Pier on the Isle of Wight, which is aiming to be energy independent by 2020. (Source: Flickr/Sidibousaid60)

It may be a new entrant to the international climate change arena but the Ecoislands movement is wasting no time.

The island has targeted energy independence by 2020, is working with a number of global technology giants to develop a cutting edge smart grid and has just received a grant for an experimental hydrogen energy storage facility.

Less talk

Founder David Green is a firm believer that when it comes to energy security and sustainability, actions speak louder than words.

“People have spent too much time trying to agree wholeheartedly with everything that has to happen, before doing anything,” says Green

“The result is similar to hillwalking, you end up going at the rate of the slowest. We decided we’d start out at the front and see if we can get people to catch up with us.”

So what is special about  islands? Why might they be better suited to triggering climate action than any other sub-section of society?

There are a few common traits in island communities that may be responsible.

Islands frequently engender a strong sense of identity, the pursuit of independence from “the mainland” or a larger neighbouring state. Many island communities have already survived against the odds and doing it all again in the face of the challenge posed by climate change is nothing new.

Many of these traits are encapsulated in the Ecoisland project, but there are simpler reasons too.

“It is very easy to measure things on an island and that provides an insight in microcosm about what is happening on the big island to the north,” he says in reference to the UK mainland.

“We can prove the concept by being the guinea pig, the living laboratory for these ideas. We can crack it here and then we’re in a position to roll it out elsewhere in the country and even in other parts of the world.”

As one of the sunniest locations in the UK, the Isle of Wight is well placed to exploit solar energy. (Source: Flickr/p-a-t-r-i-c-k)

The plans include making the Isle of Wight energy self-sufficient by 2020 and energy efficiency plays as big a role as renewable generation.

It is working with IBM, Toshiba, Cable&Wireless Worldwide and UK utility firm SSE to roll out a smart grid. It has just received a £4.6m grant to trial a hydrogen storage system for excess renewable energy that will also integrate a vehicle charging station as it looks to cut its fossil fuel dependency for liquid fuels too.

Small wind projects, geothermal, solar and waste to gas projects will be developed to meet the island’s 120MW power demand.

Islands in the stream

In October, the Ecoislands Summit will see a chunk of the UK’s island communities as well as some from as far away as Japan, converge on the Isle of Wight’s major port, Cowes to learn from the Ecoisland experience thus far.

“We’re expecting a lot of people to sign up to be an Ecoisland and they’ll put in the IBM Intelligent Operations Centre (IOC) and the hope is we can give them the blueprint or the greenprint if you like. We can give them the technology, access to the partners and if necessary, the funding.

“We have a central funding pot that can help develop the technologies. The hope is that in ten years we can wean them off fossil fuels, put in renewable energy generation capacity and eventually hit some much bigger carbon reduction targets than maybe central governments can,” says Green.

Funding is not only important for the obvious reasons, for spending. Green also believes that the self sustaining model of Ecoisland breeds confidence and removes some of the intimidation.

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“It has been entirely fuelled by private money that serves us well because if it had been founded on grants or handouts people would say “oh you were lucky, you got yourself a fairy godmother. What we are doing is not predicated on subsidies. It is a very healthy economic model as a standalone.

“By doing it from grassroots, it all started with the sale of our first Greenback card, an individual putting £20 in, from that day on it has all come from commercial partners and opportunities and commercial activities.”

The Greenback card is a discount scheme involving 80 businesses with strong ethical claims or directly selling green services. In order to access the offers you must first buy the card for a 12 month period for £20. Thousands have been sold – with the money helping to fund the Ecoisland venture.

The potential of the Ecoisland scheme is undoubted. The scope of the project could leave some small islands feeling daunted and isolated, however, the self-sustaining business model and the Green’s “living laboratory” on the Isle of Wight will negate much of this feeling.

The most important message of any future Ecoisland success story could be “less talk, more action”.

If that mentality can jump across the water to a few mainland governments we may see more of the ambition and urgency so badly needed to wean ourselves off fossil fuels and towards a world with less than 2°C of warming.

The Ecoislands Global Summit will take place on October 16-17, 2012 in Cowes, Isle of Wight.

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