Most of us believe that producing hydrogen from water by electrolysis and in particular using ‘excess electricity’ from windfarms that would otherwise get constraint payments to turn off, could only be a good thing.
That’s of course if you ignore the insane amounts of clean potable (or public) water that’s needed and the hugely explosive nature of hydrogen ( remember the Hindenberg … or look at the rocket that exploded on Shetland only this last weekend).
But what the politicians don’t tell you is that hydrogen is not all that good for the climate either.
There is an increasing body of evidence that the inevitable leakage of hydrogen to the atmosphere (between 1-10% at point of use according to BEIS) will have an indirect warming effect on the climate (@ 11x worse than CO2) and so this should be minimized or avoided. Hydrogen burnt either with methane (natural gas) or by itself in air will also produce nitrous oxides which are far worse (298 x worse) for global warming than CO2.
Such is the concern, that in quick sucession the UK Government commissioned three reports into the emissions and pollution that would occur if we were to move more to replacing fossil fuels with hydrogen:
This is reminiscent of the political pressure to get folk to buy diesel cars to reduce CO2 emissions – before someone woke up to the fact that the nitrous oxides and particulate matter emitted by diesel engines was far worse for climate change and air pollution than emissions from petrol cars.
So why are politicians pressing ahead putting not just our public safety but the climate at risk?
Answers on a postcard?….
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