7/10/2022
The world’s nations agreed at the UN’s Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow last November to “accelerate efforts towards the phasedown of unabated coal”. Certain counties watered down the desired wording to this. New mining projects are being planned in China, India, Australia, Russia and South Africa. The same countries that wanted the wording changed. Coal is the most polluting of all the fossil fuels. Almost half the 1,000 companies assessed in a recent report are still developing new coal assets, and just 27 companies have announced coal exit dates consistent with international climate targets. The report found 476GW of new coal-fired power capacity is still in the pipeline worldwide. This is equivalent to hundreds of new power stations being built. China is responsible for 60% of all the planned new capacity. The US, which has the world’s third-largest number of coal plants, has not set a national end date for its coal power, and doesn't appear to want to set one.
6/10/2022
It takes more than five times the electricity to heat a home with hydrogen than with a heat pump. Hydrogen has higher energy systems costs than heat pumps or solar energy because its production requires a lot of electricity. These were the basic findings of a report published in Joule this week. Low-carbon and zero-carbon hydrogen has been promoted by gas and heating industry representatives as a key solution to replace especially fossil gas in the distribution grid. It has received significant media attention over the last 2–3 years and featured in some of the many national hydrogen strategies launched recently. An important question is whether the available evidence supports a case for heating homes with hydrogen. The report analysed 32 independent studies – those that weren’t carried out by or on behalf of the energy industry – and found no evidence supporting widespread hydrogen use for heating. The critical issue is the inefficiency of hydrogen production and consumption. Electrolysis efficiencies are around 80%, and average boiler efficiencies of 85% are typical resulting in an overall efficiency of hydrogen heating of 70%. A heat pump uses one unit of electricity and generates about three to four units of heat. Because of these efficiencies, it takes about five times more electricity to heat a home with hydrogen than it takes to heat the same home with an efficient heat pump, either individually or as part of a district heating network. As a result of this inefficiency, the required build rates for renewables would be extremely challenging as the UK Committee on Climate Change points out.
