Oh, the Irony!
Or how the evil oil and gas industry may come galloping to the climate rescue
I was struck by an article in the last couple of days: “Limitless ‘white’ hydrogen under our feet may soon shatter all energy assumptions”. The author of the article, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, is the World Economy Editor of The Daily Telegraph and - just in case you’re tempted to stop reading because you consider anything published by the Telegraph to be unclean - he is a fervent believer in the necessity for action to address climate change.
Obviously and for a start it can’t be called ‘white’ hydrogen - too ‘problematic’ in these febrile times. The link below uses ‘natural’ hydrogen as an alternative designation.
Anyway, the above link is paywalled, so for a wider audience and also to satisfy myself of the validity of the information behind the article, I went exploring to find how solid is the basis for such a dramatic claim. Because a few months ago when a commenter suggested the answer to our climate problems may lie in ‘hydrogen from the ground’ citing the Mali find, I poured scorn on the idea. But when the facts change, I accept I will have to change my mind.
I found this article “ANALYSIS | Will natural hydrogen extracted from the ground be the next global gold rush?” dated 7 November 2022. It seems to contain many of the same facts as the Evans-Pritchard article and may be its source.
It’s logical that hydrogen hasn’t been detected before because the oil and gas (O&G) industry hasn’t been looking for it - and because the standard carrying gas in gas chromatographs is hydrogen. But now that gas with high concentrations of hydrogen has been discovered and appears to be self-sustaining, the O&G industry [demonised by tree-huggers the World over] may actually be needed to come galloping to the World’s rescue, Climate-wise at least.
Now that really would be ironic.
It would also obviate the need to solve the issues of intermittent ‘renewable’ power necessary to produce truly ‘green’ hydrogen by electrolysis.
Although a recent study by a team led by Stanford University professor Mark Z Jacobson rather astonishingly asserts “Producing green hydrogen only when wind and solar power is available would be cheaper than 24/7 operation”. The team is quoted as saying “… we hypothesize that, at high WWS [wind-water-solar]1 penetrations and hydrogen penetrations, running this equipment intermittently (with sub-unity use factors) reduces overall system cost.”
Prof. Jacobson appears never to have heard of the insurance industry’s extensive experience of losses in the O&G industry being strongly correlated with non-steady operation.
That link takes you to the Lloyd’s Marketing Association’s “An analysis of common causes of major losses in the onshore oil, gas & petrochemical industries” which I believe should be essential reading for anyone working in high-hazard industry sectors including hydrogen.
In particular for this purpose, see Figure 7, reproduced below with the relevant text. ‘Transient Operations’ accounted for 63% of significant insured losses where the pressure-retaining equipment itself did not fail. And let’s face it, “Producing green hydrogen only when wind and solar power is available” is the very epitome of transient operations.
No, the equipment didn’t wear out, just as we hypothesized. Instead it exploded because of the way it was being operated, but that wasn’t in our model.
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are solely my own.
This material is not peer-reviewed. This is why I’ve stopped believing it would do any good anyway.
I am against #GroupThink.
Your feedback via polite factual comments / reasoned arguments welcome.
In the past I have directly queried Prof. Jacobson’s grouping of Wind and Solar (inherently rather random, and intermittent on a daily basis, respectively) with Water in this way. My objection was on the basis that, unlike Wind and Solar, Water = hydro power is controllable.
His response was that he will continue to group these unlike things together, as he indeed has in this latest study.
I saw the headline for the Telegraph article, but didn't attempt to look behind the paywall. Interesting that you highlight that the hydrogen "appears to be self-sustaining" -- seems like that would be critical and we would need to have high confidence in that continuing to be the case. (BTW, "natural hydrogen" seems to be a so much more meaningful term than "white hydrogen", that I wouldn't be worried I was being woke if I used the former.)
I pin more hopes on nuclear power and renewables, combined with a huge move towards mass transit (away from individual car ownership), but if this passes peer review it can be part of some solutions too.