BRUSSELS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th July, 2020) The European Union's promotion of the German-championed idea of using hydrogen as a renewable source of clean energy is driven more with political fawning, rather than practical calculation of gains for the union's energy policy, experts told Sputnik.
On July 8, the European Union published its Hydrogen Strategy, where it asserted intention to increase the share of hydrogen in Europe's renewable energy capacity from last year's 2 percent to 13-14 percent by 2050. Last week, member states negotiated the biggest economic package in the bloc's history, drawn to help them recover economies after the coronavirus pandemic.
The European Commission proposed that the close to $2 trillion package be built on its two ambitious environmental initiatives, the Green Deal and the NextGenerationEU, which stress the role of hydrogen in helping the continent its target of complete climate neutrality by mid-century.
The hydrogen-driven transition is being championed by Germany, where the government has adopted the National Hydrogen Strategy last month as part of its effort to assert itself as Europe's leader in transitioning to green economy.
"There is no way that 'green' hydrogen, obtained by electrolysis, will have any chance in transport, weather, cars, trucks, trains or airplanes. No possibility, it is a non-starter," Damien Ernst, a professor specializing in energy and artificial intelligence research at the ULiege university in Brussels, told Sputnik.
According to the expert, who was awarded the prestigious Blondel Medal in 2015 for his research on electricity grids, the inclusion of German-proposed hydrogen projects in the pan-European Green Deal shows "the total lack of understanding by the European Commission of the energy sector."
"The loss of energy in the hydrogen liquefaction process is 30 percent. Producing green synthetic hydrocarbons makes sense, but not hydrogen. Whatever the model, green hydrogen has no real future," Ernst added.
�As explained by Samuele Furfari, a professor of energy geopolitics at the Universite Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), hydrogen is among the least cost efficient sources of green energy, promoted by the European Commission out of political ends rather than a viable alternative for the future.
"It is like heating up your house by burning Louis Vuitton bags," Furfari told Sputnik, pointing to the lack of common sense in Brussels.
"The European Commission is just copying the errors of Germany. The hydrogen solution is still-born. Hydrogen is the umpteenth utopia of the EU," the expert added.
HYDROGEN CAN BE BOTH GREEN AND FOSSIL-BASED
Hydrogen is the first element in the Mendeleev periodic table of chemical elements and also the smallest and most abundant element in the universe. No wonder many have seen it as a way to power vehicles and energy plants.
On the flip side of the coin, hydrogen is very expensive and also explosive, although storable, unlike excess electricity produced by wind and sun.
Today, hydrogen is being sourced both from fossil fuels and clean sources, whereas the price � according to the Commission's figures � varies as dramatically as from 1.5 Euros per kilogram ($1.8 per 2.2 Pounds) in the first case to up to 5.5 euros per kilogram in the second case.
When extracted from natural gas in a process commonly referred to as "steam cracking," it releases a lot of carbon dioxide (CO2), the most significant of greenhouse gases, which the EU is poised to cut to net zero by 2050. The "green hydrogen" is extracted from water by electrolysis, which is a very energy-intensive process.
�Hydrogen is used to produce fertilizers in the agriculture. Potentially, it can also be used as a fuel for vehicles or transformed back into electricity in fuel cells. This is the dream: clean electricity producing clean energy which only produces water when it is consumed and which will allow diversification, replacing the electric car in case this other illusion does not last long either. Useless to say that Elon Musk, the chief of Tesla electric cars, does not believe at all in the future of hydrogen in transport, deeming it much too expensive.
"This 'green' hydrogen idea goes far beyond the utopia of biofuels, imposed despite common sense and scientific data by the EU, and whose failure remains very discreet," Furfari said.
The expert recalled how in 2008, during Nicolas Sarkozy's presidency in France, the EU had decreed a production of minimum 10 percent of biofuels for transport by 2020.
"It has now gone from a 'minimum' to a 'maximum' and the worse than mediocre results of the huge operation are kept under wraps," Furfari continued.
According to his calculations, assuming that the electrolysis and fuel cell operations to produce hydrogen each have an industrial efficiency of 80 percent, 36 percent of the energy injected will be lost in operation.
"The chemical equations and thermodynamics that govern the whole question of hydrogen, make it that it will never improve. But politicians do not care about chemistry, they have convinced themselves, that is enough," Furfari said.
�For decades, politicians have promised lower renewable energy costs when the reality of electricity bills says the opposite. Facts inevitably stumble upon the fact that green hydrogen will always be much more expensive than that produced by natural gas.
HYDROGEN AS EU'S COSTLY ATTENTION DISTRACTOR FROM NUCLEAR ENERGY
"The political result is that 'renewable' hydrogen will have to be subsidized massively as long as there is natural gas available, that is to say for at least a century. Of course, some industries will benefit from the windfall of the hydrogen strategy � understand the manipulation of the market by politics � as others did in the days of biofuels; they will benefit from guaranteed prices and a green image, of course on the backs of taxpayers / consumers," Furfari said.
The expert reiterated that the global market intends hydrogen to be used in chemistry, not as a fuel, and that despite the EU being talked into the opposite by the International Renewable Energies Agency, the idea of treating hydrogen as a "strategic opportunity to green the global recovery" was built on false premises.
"Often in life, when we do something stupid, we commit another in order to hide the first. This is what happens with hydrogen. It is appalling to see the stubbornness and green indoctrination into which the European political world has fallen," Furfari added.
�As noted by Ernst, the EU Green Deal, aggressively promoted by Commission Vice-President Frans Timmermans, almost completely disregards nuclear energy. There is only an indication that the countries that still want it can do so.
"It would be a colossal mistake to stop the nuclear industry. The new EPR4 units have different designs. They are safe, make accidents almost impossible and burn waste from 2nd generation nuclear plants that we do not know what to do with," Ernst said.
Given that nuclear power plants do not emit CO2, the expert described the European Commission's lack of attention to nuclear policy as "just ignorance, filthy incompetence in the field of energy."
"The problem is not the closure of current nuclear power plants, it is energy foresight: what to do between now and 2050 and beyond? Russia, the United States and China are fully relying on nuclear research. Europe is building wind turbines in dead-end technologies. Europe has it all wrong when it comes to energy research," Furfari argued.
The expert forecast that, considering Brussels' obsession with what he called "renewable sectors with no future," the lion portion of EU subsidies are expected to be poured there and into decommissioning of nuclear fission plants.
