Sounds like politically correct posturing to me.
Something must be done. This is something. Therefore it must be done…?
“Something must be done… so something will be done” a few decades from now when the ones promising it are retired and no longer need to worry about being held to account.
I consider my situation, for example - and living in a cold country but driving an electric car, my main contribution to CO2 is heating my house with natural gas. (The only thn other than the babeque that uses it). I see nothing on the horizon to replace that. The closest is a heat pump, but in extreme cold spells, that may have trouble keeping up - heat pumps work best, like air conditioning, when inside and outside are not so far apart. Scaled up, it requires a large amount new electricity generation to convert the whole country. (Unlike electric vehicles, where charging overnight could simply tap the extra capacity of the grid that is idle overnight)
As mentioned above, the existing natural gas infrastructure is not easily converted completely to hydrogen. Additional insulation can only do so much. Following the Pareto principle, the first 20% of energy consumption may be easy to replace, but the rest will be more of a challenge.
I mentioned large air transport using H2 because unlike the general public filling cars, you would have a much smaller number of use points, a smaller number of big bulk uses, and handling would (allegedly) be done by trained personnel under controlled safety guidlines (assuming all the bolts are tightened, etc.). The questions revolve around practicality and whether there are alternatives. If it requires covering the entire airport, except the runways, with solar panels to generate the energy to create sythetic jet fuel, then the questions are cost and practicality. Certainly creating a chemical fuel for future use - H2 or jet fuel - is an ideal application for a variable energy source like solar.
Just for completeness, this density statement refers to volumetric density. By mass, hydrogen is 3 times more energy dense than petro-fuels. Current EV batteries have much inferior energy density by both measures. And in any mobile situation, mass is a substantial issue.
For transport and storage, one solution is to convert the hydrogen into another chemical state, e,g. ammonia. In this case it has another set of benefits and issues, but energy density is poorer than petro-fuels though still better than batteries.
But ammonia also has negatives, such as increased NOx and nitrous oxide emissions. Nitrous oxide is a much worse greenhouse gas than CO2.
Not if you count the fuel storage equipment. DOE HFTO’s target for light duty fuel systems is only 1.5 kWh/kg (4.5 wt.% hydrogen).
like I said, benefits and issues. Pretty well laid out in that article you reference. If burning ammonia, then and NOx and even Nitrous oxide can be managed as in the “ad-blue” exhaust add-ons for diesels. However if can also either be cracked for hydrogen combustion or used directly in fuel cells, in both cases effectively zero harmful emissions (other than leaks, but this applies to nearly all fuel systems).
Cracking some of the ammonia, rejecting the nitrogen, and mixing the remaining hydrogen back into ammonia seems attractive from a NOx and power perspective. It does complicate the fuel system though.
And yet we’ve been flaring off the natural gas that comes out of oil wells in remote locations like North Dakota or offshore rigs for decades. If even that is “too hard” to turn into electricity, what chance does hydrogen have?
Nothing will happen until it costs money to emit CO2. Those North Dakota flares will stop when it’s $1000/day/well to do that. And not before.
The difference is that hydrogen would be the primary, if not the only, product of the wells. If it’s not shipped, it would have to be converted to electricity or fertilizer at the well. With the natural gas, that’s seen as a side product of the oil, so there’s no imperative to do something with it.
Or of course if there is a way to make a profit out of it.
But presumably companies have done the math and concluded that building a generator station in a remote location where there’s no long-haul grid infrastucture to transport the electrical power to useful places is not a winning business model. Especially if the amount of natural gas is somewhat limited.
Mind you, the same arguments might well apply to ‘natural hydrogen’ depending on where and in what quantities it may be found. Which is still pretty speculative as far as I can see…?
I do wonder why they don’t capture it, compress it, and sell it as bottled fuel?
But I guess there are a lot of questions.
What’s the composition of this flared gas?
Is it actually suitable as a bottled fuel?
Most of retail bottled fuel is propane, I think. so perhaps not.
And of course, the $64,000 question: can you make a profit…?
See “virtual pipeline”. If it’s straight from the wellhead, then it goes to a processing plant first.
Released today:
The 16 teams announced today are set to receive funding through two Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) Exploratory Topics on geologic hydrogen. The first Exploratory Topic—Exploratory Topic G: Production of Geologic Hydrogen Through Stimulated Mineralogical Processes—seeks technologies that stimulate hydrogen production from mineral deposits found in the subsurface, including developing our understanding of hydrogen-producing geochemical reactions and how to enhance or control the rate of hydrogen production.
[…]
The second—Exploratory Topic H: Subsurface Engineering for Hydrogen Reservoir Management—focuses on technologies relevant to the extraction of geologic hydrogen. The following teams will work toward improvements in subsurface transport methods and engineered containment, reservoir monitoring and/or modeling during production and extraction, as well as assessing the risk of hydrogen reservoir development: