Is the Biden administration prematurely pushing development of a particular way of generating hydrogen as a substitute for fossil fuels? That’s the argument in a new report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). The analysis takes aim at including methane as a hydrogen feedstock, using carbon capture and sequestration technology to justify calling the resulting hydrogen “clean,” rather splitting water with electricity. Reforming methane is the dominant and least expensive way to generate hydrogen today.
The title of the analysis puts its case succinctly: “The Energy Department’s hydrogen gamble: Putting the cart before the horse.” Authors Suzanne Mattei, David Schlissel, and Dennis Wamsted write, “The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is about to make decisions on whether to fund methane-based hydrogen hubs, when it does not yet know whether such hubs will be clean enough to qualify—reliably and over the long term—for the grant of funding. Charging ahead without that knowledge is putting the cart before the horse.”
DOE’s enthusiasm for hydrogen – clean burning, plentiful, familiar – is well known, predating the Biden administration. Advocates for using hydrogen as a substitute for fossil fuels were touting the fundamental element of nature decades ago, based on its environmental properties and abundance. The abundance, however, is found only in combination with other elements, such as water and hydrocarbons such as methane (natural gas).
Hydrogen can be burned in furnaces, turbines and conventional internal combustion engines without major modifications. But hydrogen combustion produces more oxides of nitrogen pollutants than burning natural gas, due to flame speed.
Today, hydrogen is used in fuel cells, battery-like devices, to produce electricity, although that has not developed into the kind of game-changing technology advocates claimed it would years ago. In 2017, DOE’s “hydrogen and fuel cell technologies office” was touting hydrogen fuel cells as pollution reducing applications for cars, trucks, buses, auxiliary power supplies, and combined heat-and-power. DOE offered a caveat: “The greatest challenge for hydrogen production, particularly from renewable resources, is providing hydrogen at lower cost. For transportation fuel cells, hydrogen must be cost-competitive with conventional fuels and technologies on a per-mile basis. This means that the cost of hydrogen—regardless of the production technology—must be less than $4/ gallon gasoline equivalent.”
This week (March 1), the Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the city’s transit agency SEPTA, facing disappointment with battery-powered buses, “is spending $17 million on 10 fuel-cell electric transit buses that run on compressed hydrogen gas as part of the agency’s transition to a zero-emissions fleet.” A battery-powered bus can travel about 150 miles on a charge, while a fuel-cell powered bus can log 300 miles on a tank of compressed hydrogen.
The DOE program to push hydrogen that is the focus of the IEEFA analysis looks to “clean” ways to produce the energy carrier, authorized by the administration’s 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Act, providing $8 billion for “clean hydrogen hubs.” These are designed to be “infrastructure development projects to establish jobs-generating, hydrogen-based industrial centers.” The program envisions not only splitting H20 with electricity to liberate hydrogen but also conventional steam reforming of methane, if that technology can be defined as “clean” by capturing the carbon dioxide that results. Hydrogen from methane, as DOE explains, involves two chemical reactions: first a steam-methane reaction: CH4 + H2O (+ heat) → CO + 3H2, and second, a water-gas shift reaction: CO + H2O →CO2 + H2 (+ a small amount of heat).
According to IEEFA, the energy agency has 33 finalists for the program, which it has not identified. Resources for the Future has identified 22. Of those, five propose producing hydrogen by electrolysis of water from renewable electricity; eight would depend partly or entirely on nuclear-produced electricity; nine “propose either entirely or partly fossil fuel-based hydrogen production.” DOE says that to qualify as “clean,” those methane projects must capture 95% of the carbon emissions.
Those nine are the problem, says IEEFA, and it involves timing: DOE wants final applications by April 7, with an expectation of making 6-10 awards by the end of the year.
Here’s the rub: “IEEFA’s research reveals that no carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) system has so far achieved a consistent 95 percent annual average carbon capture rate on a commercial scale over the long-term.”
DOE plans to make the awards in four phases: 1) initial planning and analysis to ensure technological and financial viability; 2) final engineering designs, business development, permitting, and other details; 3) construction and startup; 4) full operations and data collection.
Says IEEFA, “The problem is, the question to be addressed in Phase 1 cannot be answered in the near future with regard to fossil fuel-based hydrogen. The DOE has said it may issue a second opportunity to solicit more hydrogen hub applications. It should delay funding of methane-based hydrogen hubs until more reliable evidence is developed that the hubs can remove enough carbon to meet the definition of a regional clean hydrogen hub.”
The Color of Hydrogen: Hydrogen is the only color-coded energy carrier. The colors are nomenclatural, not physical, based on how the element is separated from its molecular partners. Here is the hydrogen palette: black (from bituminous coal), brown (from lignite coal), blue (steam reformed methane with carbon capture and storage), turquoise (pyrolysis of methane), green (electrolysis from renewables), pink (electrolysis from nuclear), yellow (electrolysis from solar alone).
–Kennedy Maize
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