Green hydrogen, the new darling in the fight against greenhouse gases, is rife with false promises, experts warn. Governments, meanwhile, are preparing to spend billions to develop this sector.
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Hydrogen is mainly found in water and natural gas. It can therefore be extracted in two ways.
When it is made from natural gas, the process of extracting the hydrogen molecule releases a lot of CO2 and therefore pollutes. It is therefore difficult to qualify this production as “green” since it emits CO2 during the process.
When this is done from water by passing an electric current through the water (electrolysis), the process is cleaner but energy intensive. But in both cases, an enormous amount of energy is wasted in making the molecule.
Jean-Marc Pelletier, former engineer at Hydro-Québec
“It’s so inefficient it doesn’t make sense. There are so many losses in conversion,” explains Jean-Marc Pelletier, an engineer who has spent 32 years at Hydro-Québec, 25 of them at the Hydro-Québec Research Institute (IREC).
He explains that almost three quarters of the energy invested in the process is wasted. “In the hydrogen production step alone by electrolysis, there is an efficiency loss of around 40%. If we then want to use it for a car, in a heat engine, we lose another 50% in efficiency during use. »
In comparison, a battery retains about 90% of its energy.
“The minister asks us for energy sobriety to lower our heating, but would we produce hydrogen where in doing so we would waste 70% of the electricity? Where’s the logic? he adds. We will waste money and energy in terrible ways. »
Expensive to transport
Hydrogen is also very expensive to store and transport. And the infrastructure doesn’t exist, recalls Pierre-Olivier Pineau, Chair of Energy Sector Management at HEC.
“With hydrogen, you have to create a new system of production, storage, distribution and consumption from scratch. All this for an energy source that requires a lot of energy to produce and has a much lower energy density than natural gas or gasoline,” he says.
“It’s not practical as an energy source. It has qualities, for example it does not emit CO2, but there are many barriers to adopting a hydrogen economy,” he adds.
governments charmed
It should be remembered that just over a year ago, the Quebec government planned to invest “hundreds of millions, even over a billion” dollars to boost the hydrogen and bioenergy sectors, Le Devoir reported.
In the 2021-2026 roadmap of the Quebec Green Hydrogen and Bioenergy Strategy, we can also read that one of the objectives is to “promote the deployment of green and bioenergy hydrogen production and distribution infrastructures in the prioritized market segments, particularly in the regional energy ecosystems”.
Ottawa also provided generous green hydrogen tax credits in its most recent budget in March.
Ideal to meet specific needs
Pierre-Olivier Pineau, HEC Montreal
If it is too expensive to implement on a large scale, hydrogen can still meet a certain energy demand, according to Pierre-Olivier Pineau of the Chair of Energy Sector Management at HEC.
“There are applications for hydrogen for which no new infrastructure needs to be created. For example, we can produce hydrogen and turn it into biofuels, like Enerkem is doing in Montreal. This is good because it makes it possible to produce hydrogen-based biofuels without having to create distribution and storage infrastructures.”
Last year, Arcelor Mittal tested green hydrogen at its Contrecœur complex. The goal: to replace natural gas for the production of its steel and to make it a less polluting steel. The results were conclusive but costly. Therefore, the company would like to receive subsidies from the state.
Promising niches
“I believe in hydrogen for niches such as biofuels or, for example, for steel production,” says Pierre-Olivier Pineau. It can decarbonize part of steel production. But for the steel mills that are not yet ready to pay, it threatens to become expensive. »
However, these are niches for the future, he specifies. “We cannot replace the billions of liters of oil we consume today with biofuels, including hydrogen, because the distribution infrastructure would be too disproportionate,” he said.
window dressing
It would therefore be naïve to think that society will switch to hydrogen, or to imagine cars with only harmless drops of water coming out of the exhaust, warns the researcher.
“Governments set goals to give the impression that they are acting, that they are doing something. And also to please the various lobbies asking for money,” he says.
Among other things, the natural gas lobby is “pushing” for hydrogen because it can extend the useful life of natural gas, emphasizes Mr. Pineau.
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