Is it to early for hydrogen? Free Hydrogen contributes more to global warming than co2.
Hydrogen is one of the most promising zero emission fuels of the future. But there is a caveat.
Some Background:
“Green Hydrogen” can be produced by splitting water molecules with electricity from renewable sources. For example, solar power in the desert can be used to produce hydrogen, which can then be transported anywhere by pipeline, or zero emission hydrogen-powered trucks.
However, a major issue with hydrogen is a leakage. It is so severe at the moment, that even green hydrogen production could actually contribute to, rather than mitigate, global warming.
The research paper highlighted in the following article suggests five things to help ensure a positive climate outcome:
- Conduct more research on hydrogen’s warming effects relative to other greenhouse gases and develop models that can increase confidence in the impacts hydrogen deployment would have on global temperatures at varying leakage rates.
- Accurately measure leakage, which will require equipment capable of measuring hydrogen concentrations at the parts-per-billion level, so we can systematically quantify leakage rates.
- Use climate metrics that reflect the role that hydrogen leakage could play over the policy-relevant near-term, instead of relying exclusively on 100-year accounting.
- Include the likelihood of hydrogen leakage and its impacts in decisions about where and how to deploy hydrogen. Use should be concentrated where it is produced and used in close proximity, with limited need to transport it.
- Identify leakage mitigation measures and best practices. Lessons learned over the past decade about minimizing natural gas leakage can help, despite the differences in the properties of these two gases.