Andrew Bolt: Global-warming zealot Bowen duped by pixie dust

Chris Bowen has fallen for the hype that “green” hydrogen is the magic new fuel that will save the planet.

Energy Minister Chris Bowen hasn’t lost faith in hydrogen. Picture: Gary Ramage

Energy Minister Chris Bowen terrifies me. Six truth bombs last week confirm this global warming zealot is trying to replace our coal and petrol with pixie dust.

Bowen has fallen for the hype that “green” hydrogen – made by running electricity from renewables through water – is the magic new fuel that will save the planet.

And I do mean hype. Exhibit A: Trevor Milton, founder and former CEO of electric car company Nikola Motors.

Last week Milton was convicted of fraud by a US court for falsely pumping up the value of his then company to nearly $40 billion, in part by claiming he’d created a new hydrogen fuel cell technology to slash emissions from trucks and help stop global warming.

Some invention. To film his hydrogen truck in motion he just rolled it down a hill.

But Bowen hasn’t lost faith in hydrogen, tweeting: “Labor will work with the states to build hydrogen highways so companies can make the change to no-emissions trucks.”

Last month, Bowen doubled down, boasting that the Albanese Government was investing $47 million in just one West Australian plant to “help Australia become a hydrogen exporting powerhouse”.

Andrew Forrest is building hydrogen plants in Queensland and Tasmania. Picture: John Feder

Sure, hydrogen would be brilliant if it worked just as Bowen dreams. It burns without creating greenhouse gases, and we have limitless supplies trapped in water molecules.

There’s also plenty of spruikers telling Bowen this is the fuel of the future. Billionaire Andrew Forrest is building hydrogen plants in Queensland and Tasmania, in a controversial plan to become the “Saudi Arabia of the green energy world”, with shipments planned to Germany.

Bowen is such a believer that he’s even demanded that the Kurri Kurri gas plant in NSW be fired with hydrogen when it opens next year, and he forced out the chief executive who warned it couldn’t be done.

So what a pity for Australia that Bowen wasn’t at the opening last week of the World Hydrogen Congress to get a wake-up.

If congress delegates expected the keynote speaker to give a big rah-rah for hydrogen, they got a shock.

Michael Liebreich, a prominent energy analyst and member of the UN Secretary General’s High Level Group on Sustainable Energy for All, instead warned that the hydrogen mania looked like another bubble economy.

Here are some of his truth bombs he dropped to explain why green hydrogen will be of limited use.

IT’S NOT DENSE

A litre of hydrogen carries only 25 per cent of the energy of a litre of petrol. Liebreich says the fuel tanks of an aircraft, for instance, would be too outsized to make sense.

IT’S HARD TO SHIP

To replace the energy of every tanker of liquid natural gas you’d need three tankers of much less dense hydrogen, plus a fourth to compensate for the energy lost in keeping it at minus 253C. That’s a big problem for transporting hydrogen from far-off Australia.

IT’S INEFFICIENT

You can convert hydrogen to much denser ammonia for shipping, but that’s also inefficient. Liebreich said: “If you think any business … that goes from electricity to hydrogen to ammonia, to liquefying and shipping it, to expanding it, to then generating electricity — with 22 per cent cycle efficiency – and then the people using that (power) are supposed to compete with the people using electricity at the source country, forget it.”

IT’S HARD TO MAKE MORE

We already make hydrogen with gas to produce chemicals and refine oil. Just replacing this “dirty” hydrogen with “green” hydrogen will already require 143 per cent of all wind and solar already installed, Liebreich said.

IT’S HARD TO USE

Hydrogen atoms are so tiny that they tend to leak through pipes, and can also make them more brittle. Liebreich said converting Britain’s infrastructure and appliances to hydrogen would cost more than $300 billion.

ELECTRIC IS EASIER

Liebreich said Hydrogen-powered fuel-cell cars have been around for as long as battery electric vehicles, but rarely sell because they’ve got many more parts, making them more costly and less reliable. “Then, of course, you’ve got the cycle inefficiency of going from electricity to hydrogen to electricity, versus (just) electricity.”

Anthony Albanese last year tweeted it was “great to drive the Hyundai Nexo around Parliament House”, but failed to mention this hydrogen vehicle cost $99,000 simply to lease for three years.

True, there will be a demand for hydrogen from manufacturers, but claims that it’s the miracle fuel to save us from global warming is pure hype.

How frightening that our own Energy Minister believes it.