Just when you thought the hydrogen economy zombie was dead and gone, it
rises again, this time in color.

Yes, hydrogen comes in
many colors these days: green, blue, gray and now white. No, these
are not literal colors, but rather marketing tools designed to convince investors,
policymakers (think: public subsidies), and the public (think: support of public subsidies) that the hydrogen economy is right around the
corner and will be a key to addressing climate change. When burned, of
course, hydrogen combines with oxygen to produce water. When manufactured,
however, the process can produce a little or a lot of carbon dioxide
depending how the manufacturing is done and whether fossil fuels are used
as feedstocks.

Periodically, hydrogen advocates create a boomlet in media coverage to
announce the coming of the hydrogen economy that never seems to arrive.

White hydrogen is the newest hydrogen media boomlet. It denotes hydrogen
occurring naturally in reservoirs in the Earth’s crust as a free gas not
combined with other elements. Its presence has been known for a long time.
But no one believed the reservoirs were numerous enough or large enough to
bother extracting. That thinking has changed, and there
are now companies actively prospecting for underground hydrogen
reservoirs.

The trouble is that even if white hydrogen turns out to be plentiful
(which is a big if), it will be energy-intensive to extract, store and
transport. In reservoirs hydrogen is often mixed with other gases from
which it must be separated. And, it is also sometimes found dissolved in
liquid and so must be extracted from the liquid after that liquid is
pumped to the surface. What will the cost of getting at the pure hydrogen
gas be? No one knows for sure because reservoir extraction has never been
done on a large scale. Separating hydrogen from other gases would likely
be done by liquefying the gases at very low temperatures and then
distilling off each one. This is extremely energy-intensive.

Then
there is the problem of storage and transport. As
one analysis points out, it would take 14 tanker trucks of
compressed or liquefied hydrogen to equal the energy content of one tanker
of gasoline. And since hydrogen is the smallest molecule in the universe,
it leaks from practically anything it is stored in.

There
is little understanding of how much hydrogen would leak in a pipeline or
tanker truck environment. Two
scientists interviewed by Reuters suggested that leak rates of 10
percent over the life cycle of hydrogen (extraction, storage, transport
and use) would negate any climate benefit because hydrogen gas "reduces
the concentration of molecules that destroy the greenhouse gases already
there [in the atmosphere], potentially contributing to global warming." In
short, the further a hydrogen reservoir is from the ultimate users of
hydrogen, the greater the potential for leakage and therefore 1) the less
likely its use would be a plus for climate stability and 2) the greater
its energy requirement would be for compression and/or liquefaction.

For
all these reasons, most of the hydrogen in use today is made on the site
where it is used, mostly in the oil, chemical and fertilizer industries. And,
the vast majority, 98 percent, is made from fossil fuels. This is
so-called gray hydrogen. (The most common process for obtaining hydrogen
from fossil fuels is called steam-methane
reforming. For the uninitiated, the formula for the methane molecule
is CH₄. Methane is the major component of natural gas and thus
is readily obtained and, at least for now, a relatively low-cost
feedstock.)

So-called green hydrogen (currently under 1 percent of total supply) is
generated using electricity from renewable energy sources to separate
hydrogen from oxygen in water molecules through a process called electrolysis.
Green hydrogen actually takes more energy to produce than is released when
the hydrogen is burned. That makes green hydrogen an energy carrier, not
an energy source.

Blue hydrogen must be placed right alongside "clean coal." Like "clean
coal" it involves a promise to sequester underground the carbon emissions
from hydrogen made from fossil fuels. The carbon sequestration ploy is
what an environmental writer I know calls the "delay and fail strategy."
The industry promises to perfect carbon sequestration over time. And, on
the way to failing the industry builds a very profitable infrastructure
spewing enormous carbon emissions into the air. When the jig is finally
up, the industry can claim it tried. But investment that could have gone
into cleaner alternatives has been squandered to enrich the fossil fuel
industry and further entrench its hold on society.

Some sources are touting white hydrogen supplies as "virtually
unlimited." Whatever the supply may ultimately be, white hydrogen
will be like every other underground resource, limited. There will be
easy-to-get resources and these will come to be known as the "sweet
spots." And, there will be hard-to-get resources, generally too expensive
to bother with. And the hard-to-get hydrogen will constitute the vast
majority of resources identified.

What the hydrogen enthusiasts are counting on is the ignorance of the
public and policymakers about the limits that will dictate hydrogen’s role
in the energy economy. For now the enthusiasts seem to have the upper
hand.

Kurt Cobb is a freelance writer and communications consultant
who writes frequently about energy and environment. His work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Resilience, Common Dreams, Naked Capitalism, Le Monde Diplomatique, Oilprice.com, OilVoice, TalkMarkets, Investing.com, Business Insider and many other places. He is the author of an oil-themed novel entitled Prelude and has a widely followed blog called Resource Insights. He can be contacted at kurtcobb2001@yahoo.com.

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