Here comes Hydrogen?

I restarted this blog to start writing some articles about climate change, but also to challenge myself to brush up on things I haven't read about for a while, and to learn things I didn't already know. The past few weeks have been a big exercise in learning things I didn't already know, with the big announcement on June 12 that a new company, H2X, wants to start manufacturing hydrogen-fuelled cars... right down the road in Port Kembla! So, while I've been twiddling my thumbs waiting for a sprained knee to heal, I've been looking into what exactly hydrogen means for the climate.

So... what does hydrogen fuel mean for the climate?

To answer that question, I've had to learn the answers to a few more. How does hydrogen fuel even work? How is it made?

The simple answer is, the same way as most other fuels - but unlike other fuel sources, when pure hydrogen is burnt, it releases only water vapour. Also unlike other fuel sources, pure hydrogen doesn't occur naturally - though it can be found in most fossil fuels, as well as in water. These are the three sources from which pure hydrogen can be derived for industrial use:

• from a hydrocarbon like natural gas through steam reforming
• from coal through gasification
• or through separating water into pure H & O using electrolysis

From Australia's National Hydrogen Strategy

The former two sources are emissions-intensive, while the latter only produces the emissions that go into making electricity. Within Australia, these are overall quite substantial, making grid-fuelled electrolysis more emissions-intensive than any other source. However, with 100% renewable energy there are zero emissions generated (other than those that go into manufacturing the systems themselves).

Thus the various "colours" of hydrogen as outlined in Figure 1.1 - labels that describe how it was produced, and that suggest what hydrogen can mean for the planet. "Brown" hydrogen is derived from coal, "blue" from natural gas, "grey" from fossil-fuelled sources. The last sort, the one which excites environmentalists, is "green" hydrogen from renewable electricity-powered electrolysis.

Unfortunately, green hydrogen presently only accounts for 0.3% of hydrogen actually being produced. Around the world, steam reforming (blue hydrogen) makes up the largest portion of all industrial hydrogen production.

It turns out, quite a lot of capitalists in Australia are ready to start making green hydrogen. I first heard of the concept from Beyond Zero Emission's plan to make the Northern Territory a clean energy export superpower - a project which excited Atlassian's Mike Cannon-Brookes. At the time, the thinking was that nations in South-East Asia without our capacity to produce renewable electricity (like Japan and Singapore) would be the destination for green hydrogen from the NT. But, if H2X leads to a boom in domestic consumption, it might be right here in Oz.

After the H2X announcement I started looking into it some more, and it turns out there is a whole wealth of proposed green hydrogen facilities across Australia, including a number in Western Australia, the other main state not connected to the NEM and thus not able to share renewable electricity to the east coast in the traditional way. Thanks to seed funding from ARENA, up to $3 billion AUD of proposals are on the table.

That hasn't stopped our coal-loving Prime Minister from attempting to throw a lifeline to fossil fuel capitalists, by passing legislation to support brown hydrogen production from coal. The promise of carbon capture and storage being integrated into the production is a fig leaf, covering up the fact that there is no need to produce hydrogen in this way when we can do it in others. This is another front in the war on climate action - but it does also show that the coal barons know the writing is on the wall for coal-fired power, and they are looking for a new market to keep their mines from becoming stranded assets.

So, I've gotten a clearer picture on the climate impact of hydrogen... so if the hydrogen is "green", then switching cars from petrol or diesel to hydrogen should be great for the climate... right?

The big announcement for H2X was the "consumer halo", an SUV dubbed the Snowy. With a hydrogen-electric hybrid motor, it will have a range of 650km, and refuel in 3 minutes.

Concept art for the Snowy

That one has got all of the auto journalists excited and writing headlines dubbing it the "modern Ford" - but "the catch is that the hydrogen refueling infrastructure is no better in Australia than in the United States." Both the ACT and Queensland governments have announced they are installing fuel-cell hybrid infrastructure for their vehicle fleets, with hydrogen-powered Hyundai Nexos already on order. But for ordinary motorists, there is no practical means to refuel, and for this reason, Hyundai is only selling Nexos to government fleets for the time being. It looks like residents of the ACT will get the first chance for private ownership, with public access to the new refuelling infrastructure scheduled in a few month's time.

And that brings me to the elephant in the room - the fact that fully electric cars like the Nissan Leaf, BMW i3 or Tesla are already on the market and have started to reach the point where the charging infrastructure can support most people's needs. Like hydrogen, electricity is as dirty or as green as how it is made, but it requires no major supply lines or new fuel refineries to be set up - they already exist in the form of our grid. So will the Snowy reduce our number of petrol-chugging SUVs, or will it short-circuit the switch to electric vehicles?

There has been some commercial uptake of LPG over the last thirty years, which hydrogen could easily replace, particularly when it comes to buses. But electric vehicles seems to have beaten hydrogen off the mark here as well; Volgren in Victoria has already begun producing electric buses that are hitting the roads, while NSW plans to convert its entire bus fleet to electric.

H2X is no doubt aware of these limits, which is why the consumer halo of the private market isn't all they are looking at. ""Hydrogen fuel cell systems are greatly aligned to the power outputs required for tasks found in industry, mining and marine," Brendan Norman, the CEO and founder of H2X Australia, told CarAdvice."

Concept art for a hydrogen tractor, as seen on ABC

That's where this announcement is, for me, the most exciting. As of yet, electric vehicles for heavy applications haven't made a big dent in Australia. The headlines have hailed the "consumer halo", but the "industrial floodlight" (if you will) of concepts for tractors, vans and trucks that H2X has released are applications where hydrogen might have the edge over straight electric vehicles anyway; a big hydrogen tank that gets emptier gets lighter, whereas a big empty battery weighs just the same, and requires the same amount of energy to haul around. And it takes a lot of time to recharge, while hydrogen refuels in much the same way (and with much the same speed) as conventional petrol or diesel.

H2X plan to start manufacturing up to 20,000 vehicles within 5 years. That sounds impossibly ambitious - until you hear the qualification that the vehicles will only be "80%" made in Port Kembla, built around imported drivechains. Shipping major components from Europe or the Americas does increase the carbon footprint of manufacturing these vehicles, but if it means they are able to start getting made and reducing emissions from our transport sector (#2 only to energy generation itself) soon enough to make a difference for staying within our 1.5c timeline, it may be an acceptable cost.

So is this the kind of change we need to see?

The South Coast Labour Council teamed up with Labor and Greens politicians to relaunch a Green Jobs plan for the Illawarra in 2019. They are calling for the shrunken industrial district of Port Kembla to be revitalised as a hub of investment in green manufacturing. The 5000 jobs that H2X says it will create are, no doubt, a welcome answer.

The focus of the plan has, naturally, been the single biggest contributor to Australia's greenhouse emissions - energy generation. Right now, despite the growth in renewables in the last two decades, there are only one factory in Australia each manufacturing wind turbines and solar panels. Port Kembla, as a location with steel supply lines and infrastructure already in place, would be an ideal location to build a 100% renewable grid, and avoid the emissions of transport.

H2X plans to make hydrogen cars, and is looking to make a business case for it without government support. But we cannot leave the survival of the climate we depend on to decisions based on what is or isn't profitable. In this era of pandemic and recession, we can and should be demanding nationalised industries which create profit for the public, not a few capitalists.