“Green Hydrogen” The Fossil Fuel Industry’s Grand Deception

The Eiffel Tower was illuminated green, using a Toyota fuel cell powered generator. International hydrogen expert Michael Liebreich, founder of energy research group Bloomberg New Energy Finance, slammed the display as one of the “stupidest things” he’d witnessed because of the light show’s gross inefficiency.

By Michael Coppola and Nancy Lazar

The fossil fuel industry joined up with Toyota to light up the Eiffel Tower with a hydrogen fuel cell to show that fuel cells can make green electricity. Why are petroleum companies promoting fuel cells? They don't sell hydrogen. But, they do sell methane, coal and oil which are used to make hydrogen. By applying super heated steam to any of their three products you can get hydrogen. All commercially available hydrogen today is produced this way. The problem with this method is that it produces tremendous amounts of Green House Gases (GHGs). But that has never been a concern for the fossil fuel industry. Somehow they convinced the European Union that hydrogen fuel is a “green” fuel when used in a fuel cell because the fuel does not produce GHGs. But what are the processes to get to that so-called “green” fuel?

The hunt for a fuel cell that works efficiently

Fuel cells have been around for a long time. Back in the 90’s there was a lot of talk about them and how they would be the energy source of the future. So why did that never happen? We have to look at the pros and cons of a fuel cell to understand why they never came into popular use:

Pro: They can produce electricity without producing GHGs

Con: They are not very efficient in their production of electricity. They average around 50% efficiency. That means that 50% of the energy in the hydrogen is lost in making the electricity. Well to wheel efficiency is even worse only 38%., when used in a vehicle.

Con: They are very complicated to build therefore prone to operating problems.

Con: They are very expensive to build.

Con: They use very expensive catalyst to function, and the catalyst needs frequent replacement, increasing the cost of operation.

Con: The units themselves have a very short operating lifetime.

Con: There is no infrastructure available to transport the hydrogen fuel.

Con: It is highly explosive, therefore dangerous to transport.

Con : Hydrogen is such a small molecule that it requires special materials to contain it.

Con: For mobile use, as in cars there is no convenient way to refill the storage tank.

Con: For mobile devices the storage tanks are heavy, bulky and can carry only a limited amount of hydrogen safely, which limits range to between 100 to 300 miles.

Con: The only commercial source of hydrogen is produced using fossil fuels which produces large amounts of GHGs.

The fossil fuel industry is not deterred by these hurdles. They have somehow convinced the E.U. that efficient and competitively priced fuel cells can easily be achieved if enough money is put into research to find a green method of producing hydrogen. This idea has found supporters. The E.U. put up one billion Euros to distribute to researchers to find a way to make the green hydrogen. Private investors will match the amount.

The hunt for a way to make green hydrogen

Hundreds of experiments are being conducted. Most laboratories are experimenting with various versions of the electrolysis method of separating hydrogen from water. For those of you who are not familiar with electrolysis lets take a quick look at it: If you pass a DC electric current through water, at one terminal oxygen molecules will break off from the water molecule, while hydrogen breaks off at the other. This is a very common experiment done in high school chemistry classes.

However, to produce hydrogen in the amounts needed commercially and economically as well as green is proving very difficult. It requires electricity and lots of it. As they say they can use green energy, but it would be a waste of energy because 50% of it is lost in the fuel cell process. Catalysts of very expensive materials are needed in large amounts to increase the efficiency of the process. Ultra pure water in very large and continuous amounts is also necessary. Producing pure water involves either distillation or reverse osmosis- both use large amounts of electricity. A scientific evaluation of over 40 of the experiments being conducted has concluded that it is unlikely that a method will ever be found and even if one was to be created, it would take between 10 and 20 years to get it operating commercially.

The hunt for a way to transport hydrogen

Hydrogen is a highly volatile gas and also a difficult gas to contain because of it small molecular size. It requires special piping and containers to transport and store. That means it can’t be transported easily. To build the infrastructure to transport hydrogen would be too expensive and take decades to complete. What is their solution to transporting the hydrogen? They say that they can produce the hydrogen at the locations where the fuel cells will either operate or have their tanks refilled in a process that will separate hydrogen from ammonia. Ammonia is already transported using the infrastructure that exists. Ammonia is used to make fertilizer, which is made all over the world.

Conveniently, ammonia is already manufactured by the petro-chemical industry in a method called Haber-Bosch that uses super heated steam under high pressure and applies it to coal, crude oil, or natural gas. As we have already mentioned this method also produces large amounts of GHGs. So now they have to find a green way of making ammonia. Not surprisingly, the green way involves combining hydrogen with nitrogen. Which means they need to make green hydrogen; this we have seen is nearly impossible to do.

The final hurdle for the fossil fuel industry is impossible to overcome, making the whole system around fuel cells energy efficient and economically feasible. What they want us to believe is that they can make green hydrogen that they will then convert to ammonia; transport the ammonia to the fuel cells all over the world; convert the ammonia back to hydrogen and finally produce “green” energy with a fuel cell that will lose 50% of the energy you put into it. This somehow can be done in an energy and cost-effective way, and they want us to believe, will be here any day now.

Each new windmill and solar panel that gets installed is a threat to the revenue stream of the fossil fuel industry. In answer to that threat, they have decided to run a campaign to convince the world that they can provide a “green” way of generating electricity with hydrogen fuel cells that is better than wind and solar. As long as they keep that carrot in front of our noses, they can keep making electricity with fossil fuels.

To summarize, the campaign has to convince government and business:

1. That hydrogen can be produced with a non GHG method such as electrolysis.

2. That the hydrogen via ammonia can be distributed commercially throughout the world and do it safely.

3. Finally they have to prove to the world that the whole process, from producing hydrogen to making electricity with the fuel cell, is efficient and cost effective at a commercial level.

What I believe we have here is a smoke screen that allows them to keep selling fossil fuels. If the latest report of the International Panel on Climate Change is correct, we have less than 10 years to dramatically reduce the amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere to prevent catastrophic climate change. The fossil fuel industry would have us believe that we can continue burning fossil fuels and not continue heating up the atmosphere. As the fictional character, Vincent LaGuardia Gambini, from the 1992 movie “My Cousin Vinny” would put it; they are asking us to believe that the laws of physics cease to exist in their world.

We need to focus on using the tools we currently have to reduce the amount of GHGs we put in the atmosphere and remove what we can that already exist in it. There are things that can be done that will allow us to get to a safe level of GHG’s and mitigate their effects on our climate. As individuals we can:

1. Conserve energy, simply use less, lower the thermostat in winter and use less AC in the summer. Use cold water in your washing machine not hot water.

2. Reduce the amount of animal agriculture by not eating animal foods. They are a very large source of the greenhouse gas methane, which is 80 times more potent than CO2, and is responsible for 17% of GHG’s.

3. Produce electricity locally with solar panels on residential homes. It is much more efficient then transporting electricity long distances at high voltages and it does not produce greenhouse gasses.

4. Plant a tree or a shrub and capture CO2. Stop growing turf lawns and using GHG producing lawn mowers to maintain it.

5. Drive an electric or a hybrid vehicle, and if you cannot afford one, carpool or reduce your number of trips.

6. Reflect back the sun’s rays as short-wave radiation so they do not heat up the greenhouse gasses. Paint the sidewalks, driveways, streets and roof tops white. This will reduce the heating of the atmosphere and buys us time to reduce the greenhouse gasses.

And finally, as a society, we can stop subsidizing and investing in fossil fuels and direct those monies to solar panel and wind turbine installations. How about the EU use those billion euros to subsidize solar panels on residential homes in all of their wonderful countries.

References:

Hydrogen cars won't overtake electric vehicles because they're hampered by the laws of science (theconversation.com)

https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-fuel-basics

https://energies.airliquide.com/resources-planet-hydrogen/how-produce-hydrogen

https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/low-carbon-energy-programme/hydrogen-production/

https://youtu.be/_T24lHnB7N8

https://sciencebusiness.net/news/meps-back-more-spending-green-hydrogen

https://royalsociety.org/topics-policy/projects/low-carbon-energy-programme/green-ammonia/

https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_736938_6/component/file_932945/content

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/21/musk-calls-hydrogen-fuel-cells-stupid-but-tech-may-threaten-tesla.html

https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/to-fight-climate-change-europe-bets-big-on-hydrogen-power-but-questions-remain/ar-AAKvnd9?ocid=msedgntp&pfr=1

https://energypost.eu/hydrogen-fuel-cell-cars-competitive-hydrogen-fuel-cell-expert/