Renew Extra Weekly

In its 2022 REPowerEU plan, the EU sought to eliminate dependence on Russian fossil fuel imports well before 2030, with hydrogen playing a key role. In a new report Agora Enerigewende, the German energy analysts,  agree that ‘Europe will need a significant amount of renewable hydrogen to become climate neutral’, but it says that, in its Gas Exit scenario, hydrogen demand by 2030 ‘could be only a fifth of that foreseen in REPowerEU. By prioritising direct electrification and reserving its use for no-regret applications, the EU would need only 116 TWh of renewable hydrogen by 2030, compared to 666 TWh in REPowerEU. This is more cost-effective, more realistic from a security of supply perspective & consistent with the hydrogen sub-targets in the new Renewable Energy Directive. The REPowerEU target should thus be revised’. The case for a rethink becomes even stronger when the you look at the difference in hydrogen imports. 333 TWh of hydrogen imports are foreseen under REPowerEU in...

The debate over hydrogen rumbles on. In a new report, the UK Energy Networks Association say that ‘without hydrogen, there will be no Net Zero’ and that ‘without gas pipeline infrastructure, we risk increasing the cost of the transition to clean energy’. As maybe you might expect from ENA, as a gas pipe lobbyist, it looks to ‘a balanced decarbonisation solution that includes a significant role for hydrogen transformation, alongside biogases & electrification’. It says there is ‘good evidence to suggest that this balanced approach is the most cost-effective way to decarbonise.’  The ENA’s report ‘ A hydrogen vision of the UK’ , notes that UK’s gas network consists of ‘over 280,000 km of pipes, enough to travel around the world seven times’. It says that around 75% of the old iron gas distribution pipes have been replaced, so that the gas networks ‘stand in a strong position to transition to new, low carbon gases’, with the development of the hydrogen economy being seen as a way ...

Hydrogen is in the news regularly these days - see my last few posts. Some are quite keen on it - see the recent hydrogen champion report. Others are pretty hostile , seeing it as mostly a fossil fuel ploy. Well that certainly is where blue hydrogen comes from, with carbon capture and storage to clean it up a bit. Others think hydrogen has been oversold, including green hydrogen for heating: Michael Liebreich says ‘it will take until 2030 to rein in the current bout of hydrogen mania… cult deprogramming takes time'  The UK Climate Change Committee (CCC), an independent government advisory body, is less severe. In its new report on ‘Delivering a reliable decarbonisation system’ it sees hydrogen production, use and infrastructure as important: ‘It will be needed for hard-to-decarbonise sectors such as industry and shipping and is expected to have a role in power generation, although the scale of this remains uncertain.’ It also adds that it is likely to provide flexibility in the ...

Green hydrogen has its attractions and is being promoted around the world, although not all end uses are seen as good for it. The 100% Renewable UK lobby group has produced a draft position paper setting out the pros and cons of each hydrogen option. It says that ‘whilst we accept that achieving a unanimous agreement amongst a global community of energy experts informed by their own professional and academic backgrounds and their understanding of their own national and regional perspectives is unlikely, the consensus is such that it is possible to determine a broad hierarchy of uses for hydrogen commensurate with achieving the goal of a one hundred percent renewable energy future’. In this context, it sees green hydrogen, made by electrolysis using renewable power, and used for decarbonising heavy industry, as being very attractive, as is using surplus renewable power to make hydrogen for bulk storage for power grid balancing.  It sees its use for shipping too as a good idea. Its u...

The cross-party Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Select Committee has warned that the UK Government’s plan is set to fail to generate enough electricity from fossil fuel free sources by 2035, risking the country’s security of supply and its ability to meet its net zero target.  Its report on Decarbonising the UK Power sector  says that ‘the absence of strategic leadership from Ministers and the lack of a coherent, overarching plan to deliver national targets undermines our ability to reduce our dependence on imported expensive fossil fuels for electricity’. And it warns that funding for renewables was under threat as the UK’s attractiveness for investment in low-carbon technologies has ‘deteriorated’. The report suggests that investor confidence has been hit by policy instability, including windfall tax exemptions that favoured fossil fuels;  failure to tackle rising development costs;  15-year delays to connect to the grid, and  a cumbersome planning re...

The ‘100% renewable UK’ campaign conference in London this weekend went off well , focussing on the UK 100% renewables by 2050 scenario produced for the campaign by LUT University in Finland. It was prefigured by a very clear on-line overview from Green MP Caroline Lucas of the UK’s dire energy policy context, with the LUT report seen as just what was needed as a corrective. So that set up Prof. Christian Breyer from LUT to outline the approach in detail online, with his main message being that ‘100% can be done’- and at less cost than any other approach.  As I noted in an earlier post, in his team’s scenario, wind takes the lead, with offshore at 44% of the total, onshore at 16%.  Solar PV is at 25%, although it could be much larger if land-use constraints were relaxed.  Wave energy is also plays a small part, but surprisingly not tidal power. A special feature is the conversion of surplus green power into hydrogen, with that being converted to methane for storage, hel...

In July 2022, the Government doubled the UK’s ambition for up to 10GW of low carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030, with at least half of this coming from electrolytic hydrogen. The stated goal is to have up to 1GW of electrolytic hydrogen and up to 1GW of CCUS-enabled hydrogen operational or in construction by 2025. However things have gone rather slowly. A new independent advisory ‘Hydrogen Champion’ report looks at what might be done to speed the programme up.  It notes that ‘Government analysis suggests that by 2050, the UK will need between 250 and 460 TWh of hydrogen, delivering 20- 35% of the UK’s final energy consumption – equivalent to the UK’s total energy consumption today.’ So it could be big. It says ‘Following delays in the passage of the Energy Bill, and with decisions on the next phase of CCS industrial cluster sequencing and the Net Zero Hydrogen Fund application process pending, there is market uncertainty. It is time for the UK Government to take key polic...