H2 Hoax

A couple of weeks ago, Reuters reported that India had been discussing green hydrogen exports for the European Union and Singapore. The volumes discussed came in at 11 million tonnes annually.

The report sounded quite impressive at first but then doubts gripped me about the wind and solar generation capacity India would need to build in order to produce so much green hydrogen.

The answer, apparently, was very simple: companies from the EU and Singapore would build the generation capacity and the electrolysers. Easy-peasy, right? And they would do it happily, because these projects would allow them to claim carbon offsets.

A question forced itself on me at this point: if a company wants to score some carbon offsets, would it even care about a project’s actual commercial viability? Or would it gobble up the subsidies, spend some money on some capacity and electrolysers, declare the job done and hit the “Collect your carbon offsets now” button?

Alternatively, it seems you can declare a project green-hydrogen and then use… well, coal to produce the magic chemical. This is what appears to be happening with another green hydrogen project, this time in Canada.

Last year, a company named EverWind signed preliminary deals with two German energy heavyweights — Uniper and E.on — for the supply of green hydrogen, produced in Nova Scotia.

The project would involve two phases, with a total production capacity of 1 million tonnes of green ammonia, which is the form hydrogen is preferably transported in because it’s safer.

Yes, that means the green hydrogen produced by electrolysis — an energy-intensive process — then has to be converted into ammonia, which also consumes energy. Basically, there’s a whole lot of energy inputs in the production of green hydrogen. But it’s green, so that’s all right. Or is it?

Two media outlets questioned the green credentials of the Nova Scotia project, reporting that the wind farm that would supposedly power the whole thing is yet to be built. Until it gets built, the so-called green hydrogen would be produced with electricity from the grid. And the electricity on the grid comes from, well, coal, among other things.

A year later, the same two outlets, the Halifax Examiner and the Energy Mix, published a German media’s attempt to find out more about the Point Tupper hydrogen project in Nova Scotia.

Apparently, over the last 12 months not much has changed and the company behind the project is still being vague about its energy input plans. I guess I would be too if I promise wind power and then have to admit I’ll actually be powering my electrolyser from the unclean grid.

The Point Tupper green hydrogen story and the Indian carbon offset story are just two of the most recent pieces of evidence that, compared to green hydrogen, wind and solar make all the sense in the world. And now there’s a new hype in town: white hydrogen. There is an epic struggle to make low-emission hydrogen make sense.