Opinion: Hydrogen hype and hurdles

Harry Bruce’s cartoon of the day and readers have their say on current events.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Hydrogen Hype and Hurdles
Green Hydrogen is the latest ‘energy’ fad from the global warming warriors. It is mainly hot air.

Hydrogen will never be a source of energy. Unlike coal, oil or natural gas, hydrogen rarely occurs naturally – it must be manufactured, and that process consumes far more energy than the hydrogen ‘fuel’ can recover.

‘Hydro-gen’ means ‘born of water’, but the first commercial fuel containing hydrogen was born of coal. Maybe it should be called ‘Carbo-gen’?

‘Town Gas’ was manufactured by heating coal to produce hydrogen, methane and oxides of carbon.

The resultant mixture of flammable gases was used for street lighting and domestic heating and cooking. It was replaced by ‘clean coal by wire’ (electricity).

Today’s hydrogen hype proposes using wind and solar energy to produce ‘green’ hydrogen by electrolysis of water.

But all green generators are unreliable and intermittent – they seldom produce rated capacity for more than a few hours.

‘Green hydrogen’ would create a messy scatter of expensive equipment for panels, turbines, roads, power lines, electrolytic cells and specialised storage tanks and freighters – all to produce stop-start supplies of a tricky, dangerous new fuel.

Risking capital in such ventures is best suited to unsubsidised and well-insured speculators.

There are other problems.

Australia is a huge dry continent. Burning hydro-carbons like coal, oil and gas releases plant-friendly CO2 and water into the atmosphere. (Every tonne of hydrogen in coal produces 9 tonnes of new water as it burns.)

However every tonne of green hydrogen extracted using electrolysis will remove over 9 tonnes of fresh surface water from the local environment.

That water may be released to the atmosphere far away, wherever the hydrogen is consumed (maybe in another hemisphere).

The tonnage of water thus removed (often from sunny dry outback areas) would be substantial.

Farmers will wake up one morning to see their hills covered in wind turbines and power lines, their flats smothered in solar panels, and a huge hydrogen generator draining their water supply. Not green at all.

The hydrogen molecule is tiny, seeking any minute escape hole. Once it reaches the air, one small spark will ignite a violent explosion (once detonated, it burns ten times faster than natural gas).

This makes storage and transport of hydrogen difficult, and the swift destruction of the Hindenburg illustrates the danger.

It cannot be moved safely in natural gas pipelines and exporting it as a liquefied gas just wastes another 30 per cent of the energy and adds another layer of cost, complexity and danger.

Using hydrogen for fuel cells in vehicles makes a bit more sense than promoting electric vehicles powered by massive flammable batteries made of rare metals.

This green dream faces huge costs and obstacles to generate the extra electricity, mine the battery metals, establish reliable battery charging stations all over the country and cope with battery disposal problems.

Hydrogen fuelled cars would improve city air quality at the vast expense of producing, handling and dispensing a dangerous gas.

Hydrogen makes no sense for replacing petrol and diesel on country roads or farms.

For hydrogen to replace coal, oil and gas would require immense quantities of hydrogen, needing huge quantities of reliable electricity to generate it.

So what’s best?
If there was a profitable market for hydrogen it would be far more efficient to use coal, gas, hydro or nuclear power for continuous production of hydrogen in an area well supplied with freshwater.

These same proven, reliable and abundant fuels are best suited to provide cheap reliable electricity and transport fuel for all factories, smelters, farms, vehicles, ships and planes.

Forget the global warming religion and get rid of intermittent wind and solar generators from the grid unless they provide their own backup generators.

Cut their subsidies and let them use their intermittent energy to generate unsubsidised green hydrogen for sale to whoever will buy it.

– Viv Forbes, Washpool

HARRY’S VIEW ON COVID VACCINE ROLLOUT

Harry's view on the Covid vaccine rollout.

SMS TO THE EDITOR

ANON. What a joke we are to the rest of the world. This government had over 12 months to make a plan for the roll out of the vaccine but could not even get that right. Mistake number one – they didn’t order enough vaccines. Number two – didn’t give voters a choice and had the wrong people doing the job that’s way over their heads which will probably cost lives. Three thumbs down for a government that wouldn’t a have clue.

ANON. These new laws mean nothing to real estate agents about tenants’ rights. There’s loopholes. The minister for tenants right is a joke. Tenants are scared to speak up. Rental properties are at a all time high. Whoever has the most cash gets the property.

Originally published as Opinion: Hydrogen hype and hurdles