Redefining self-sabotage
Hydrogen emits pollutants and can exacerbate global warming. No joke.
Last week, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously voted to convert the city’s largest gas-fired power plant into a hydrogen power plant. But not just any hydrogen power plant. The council voted to replace gas at the Scattergood Generating Station with green hydrogen.
The purpose of the conversion is, of course, part of California’s eager shift from fossil fuels to low-carbon alternatives under its plan to become a net-zero state by 2045. Los Angeles, specifically, aims to be sourcing 100% of its electricity from low-carbon sources by 2035.
So far, so Californian. But it appears that not everyone in the environmentalist camp is happy about the conversion project. There appears to be concern about… emissions.
From the Los Angeles Times: “In public comments before the vote, critics from groups including Communities for a Better Environment, Pacoima Beautiful and the Sierra Club noted that although hydrogen doesn’t produce planet-warming carbon emissions when burned, it does generate lung-damaging nitrogen oxide pollution — much more than gas, at least using current technology.”
The study linked in the quote above says that “in the case of using hydrogen-enriched natural gas or pure hydrogen instead of natural gas as the fuel, the combustion emissions of the burner–boiler such as CO and CO2 are remarkably decreasing compared to the natural gas. However, the NOx emissions are significantly increasing especially due to thermal NO.”
It gets even more outrageous. According to this article by climate nonprofit Clean Energy Group, “Two European studies have found that burning hydrogen-enriched natural gas in an industrial setting can lead to NOx emissions up to six times that of methane (the most common element in natural gas mixes). There are numerous other studies in the scientific literature about the difficulties of controlling NOx emissions from H2 combustion in various industrial applications.”
Hydrogen, then, even green hydrogen, may well turn out to be a devil in emissions-free disguise. And emissions of nitrogen oxides are just one of H2’s less than stellar properties. The most abundant chemical element in the universe is quite a naughty boy.
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