The International Renewable Energy Agency’s (IRENA) new report warns that integrating hydrogen into existing natural gas networks is a sophisticated method of reducing household emissions that would likely cost more than $US500 per tone of emissions avoided.
The findings indicate that using hydrogen in domestic appliances such as stovetops and water heaters would be prohibitively expensive, and that electrification would be a more cost-effective way to reduce emissions.
While the precise cost of abatement would depend on both the cost of hydrogen production and the market price of fossil gas, even huge reductions in the cost of hydrogen would almost certainly result in an effective abatement cost above $US200 per tone.
“Blending results in little CO2 savings and a significant rise in energy costs,” according to the IRENA analysis.
“This results into an extremely high cost of mitigating natural gas’s GHG emissions. Given the current cost of renewable hydrogen production, the cost may exceed US$500/tCO2 for the majority of gas prices.”
The findings show that hydrogen may never play a significant role in decarbonizing domestic energy use, owing to technical constraints on the quantity of hydrogen that can be blended into the mains gas supply and the considerably higher prices.
Numerous Australian gas companies are currently conducting small-scale hydrogen blending trials to demonstrate that existing gas infrastructure may be converted to provide zero-emission electricity.
However, critics of such trials believe that hydrogen blending has limited ability to reduce emissions and that they are primarily being conducted to delay the phase-out of fossil gas use entirely.
IRENA’s findings corroborate recent comments made by ACT energy and emissions reduction minister Shane Rattenbury, who stated at this week’s Smart Energy Expo that he saw no future in which hydrogen will be piped to homes and businesses to replace mains gas.
Rattenbury stated that transitioning from natural gas to hydrogen would necessitate the replacement of practically all gas appliances with ‘hydrogen-ready’ equivalents, and that it would be more cost effective and convenient to simply move families to electric gadgets.
Rattenbury noted that switching to electric appliances would be less complicated and less expensive while achieving the same emissions reduction benefits, as they could be powered by renewable energy.
Rattenbury warned that gas businesses faced a ‘death spiral’ in demand as the cost of fossil fuels increased and people sought cheaper alternatives.
“We do not envision a future in which hydrogen or biogas is piped to individual consumer residences,” Rattenbury added. “We have received unequivocal advice that electrification is the most practicable and cost-effective course of action.”
“The majority of people believe that approximately 10% or less may be securely blended with fossil fuel gas in our network and still work with the majority of existing gas appliances.
“Making the switch to 100% hydrogen will very certainly necessitate the entire replacement of gas equipment with hydrogen-ready appliances.”
“When people say to me, ‘but we won’t have to remove their gas stove and replace it with an electric cooktop,’ they forget that when they say, ‘let’s utilize hydrogen,’ we will have to do the same thing.”
The ACT administration has vowed to phase out hydrogen use in the territory and would likely avoid any attempt to substitute hydrogen for current fossil gas supply.
According to IRENA’s assessment, the use of hydrogen in ammonia production and heavy transport applications could give more cost-effective ways to reduce emissions.
Additionally, ammonia would be the most cost-effective way to transfer hydrogen between countries — rather than liquid hydrogen.
