The Clean Energy Cost of Green Hydrogen
A conversation with the authors of a recent Gas Transition Allies Report
Welcome back to the New England Climate Dispatch!
Despite calls from environmental groups for the strategic decommissioning of the Massachusetts’ gas system over the coming decades, the state’s for-profit gas utilities have been pushing to keep the gas network running indefinitely on a mix of biomethane and green hydrogen. While the utilities argue that this would allow them to save costs by making use of existing gas infrastructure, environmental groups have brought up a litany of concerns related to cost, safety, climate impacts, and the overall viability of this path.
A new report from members of the nonprofit organization Gas Transition Allies highlights another major issue in the plans of gas utilities — the large amount of electricity needed to produce enough green hydrogen to heat the state. According to this report, blending hydrogen into the state’s gas supply would require about 120% of all the offshore wind energy slated to come online by 2030. To meet all of the state’s gas heating needs entirely with green hydrogen, this would require nearly all offshore wind energy planned for 2050.
The report’s authors argue that this could jeopardize the decarbonization of the state’s electrical grid and would be a far less efficient way to eliminate heating emissions compared to relying on electric heat pumps.
This report comes as several other studies have cast doubt on the efficiency of using green hydrogen for home heating, despite the hopes of investor-owned gas companies.
I recently spoke with the co-authors of the Gas Transition Allies report about their findings and large task of decarbonizing home heating in Massachusetts. The authors compiled this report as volunteers for Gas Transition Allies — Martyn Roetter is a management consultant with a PhD in physics, and Gordon Richardson is a retired consultant with engineering expertise. This interview has been edited for clarity and length. Enjoy!
First off, could we just go over your main take-aways from doing this research — what are the most significant findings here?
Martyn Roetter: Massachusetts’ plans for decarbonization of the entire economy, not just buildings, which is what we focused on, rest upon being able to build a green grid, which will powered entirely by clean electricity. And a major contributor to this clean electricity will be offshore wind power, because of where Massachusetts is located.
So, we thought, let's calculate the capacity of offshore wind power that you would need to produce the green hydrogen necessary to replace methane in buildings. And compare that with the amount of offshore wind power you'd need to produce the same result using heat pumps, which are now a well-established technology capable of operating, despite some of what you may read, at the lowest temperatures that we encounter in Massachusetts.
A startling result that came out of this was that you'll need more than three times as much clean electricity to produce the green hydrogen as to power the heat pumps to produce the same result.
And that is really frightening. And moreover, if you were to use green hydrogen, which would only produce a very small reduction in emissions — maybe six or seven percent — you will consume all the wind power that Massachusetts will have available by 2030. So that raises a big red flag.
Gordon Richardson: We can either decarbonize our grid with clean electricity, largely from wind, or we can produce green hydrogen. Green hydrogen has some legitimate uses, in my opinion as an engineer, but heating buildings is not among them, just because there’s a better alternative.
Have the gas distribution companies specified where they would source their green hydrogen?
Martyn Roetter: They're making sounds and saying things that indicate “Oh, we'll be able to take the first step for pilots.” But the path ahead is completely unknown. And in fact, one of the conclusions we reached was that if you start using hydrogen, you have a dead end, because it's quite clear that if you mix hydrogen in beyond a certain percentage, you're actually going to have to replace the entire gas ecosystem, all the pipelines, the compressors, the meters, and you'll probably have to replace all the gas appliances and gas boilers that people now currently have.
And then what you'd have to do is go straight for 100% hydrogen, which is completely crazy. And we found out that with 100%, you'd actually consume all the offshore wind power that is being considered for 2050.
Has the idea of using renewable energy certificates, or RECS, come up, which would allow electricity generated by fossil fuels be used to create hydrogen if the corresponding energy credits are purchased?
Martyn Roetter: RECs have certainly been in the general discussion about how to do it. That’s not something that we’ve investigated… but there are so many stories about how these kinds of schemes, which in effect involve some kind of offsetting, how easy it is to game them. This is not something that either Gordon or I have looked at, and I'm not sure that we're qualified to do so. But I would be very, very skeptical.
The state is currently in the process of developing a clean heat standard, which could have major implications the use of hydrogen in buildings. Do you have concerns about how this might be implemented?
Martyn Roetter: There's blue hydrogen, generated with carbon capture and sequestration. That might sneak in. Professor Robert Howarth, who has testified at some hearings before the DPU, working with Professor Mark Jacobson at Stanford, looked at blue hydrogen and actually concluded it could be, depending upon your assumptions, it could be even worse than natural gas [or coal] in terms of emissions.
So, we're absolutely solid on this point: we only consider acceptable clean hydrogen has been green hydrogen, which is produced with fully clean electricity via electrolysis, and everything else is just highly dubious if you dig into the details.
For any policy makers reading this report, what do you want their takeaways to be?
Martyn Roetter: I'll refer specifically to two bills that have been filed. One is Senator Creem’s bill… ‘The Future of Clean Heat,’ which contains a lot of provisions that we support and think are very important. The other one that is significant is House 4047, because that would give municipalities and residents much more power to actually get information out of the gas utilities, and have a say in the activities that they propose digging up the streets in their municipality.
Given that we were unable to find data, for example, with respect to green hydrogen and heat pumps from the gas utilities, I think increasing their requirements for transparency is very important.
Gordon Richardson: There's also a planning process that we're in favor of which was put forward by Acadia, which is called RESPECT. And we think that that's a very nice outline for how an integrated statewide or countrywide planning process should be put together. So that's one of the takeaways — we need an integrated planning process.
The other takeaway simply is that using green electricity to make green hydrogen jeopardizes the greening of our electrical grid. We can't do both. We have to choose, and it's an easy choice. If you look at the efficiency numbers and what the consequences are of heating with hydrogen… putting green hydrogen into buildings for heating makes no sense.
Climate News Roundup
Connecticut
As Connecticut sends large quantities of waste out of state, officials are developing a plan to reduce waste and build new waste disposal facilities (Mark Pazniokas, Tom Condon, and Gabby DeBenedictis — The Connecticut Mirror)
Maine
The lack of load capacity on (Avangrid subsidiary) Central Maine Power’s grid is limiting the development of community solar projects (Kendra Caruso — Belfast Republican Journal)
Massachusetts
Melissa Hoffer, Massachusetts’ first climate chief, is hoping to coordinate decarbonization efforts across state government (Sabrina Shankman — The Boston Globe)
Climate change is making allergies worse — according to a new study, allergy season has extended by 13 days annually in Boston since 1970, disproportionately felt in communities exposed to increased air pollution (Dharna Noor — The Boston Globe)
New Hampshire
Republican lawmakers are looking to dissolve the state’s existing energy facilities siting process, consolidating power under the state’s Public Utilities Commission, which is appointed by the Governor. This move has received intense pushback from residents and environmental groups, who argue it will reduce public participation and favor energy developers (Hadley Barndollar —New Hampshire Bulletin)
Rhode Island
Proceedings over the future of Rhode Island’s gas system at the Public Utilities Commission are starting to take shape (Mary Serreze — Providence Business First)
Vermont
Climate change has extended Vermont’s growing season, bringing additional crops along with pests and plant diseases (Kevin Gaiss — WCAX)
Across the region and beyond
The Biden Administration approved the massive $8 billion Willow oil drilling project on public land in Alaska, despite outcry from environmental and indigenous groups, and the Interational Energy Agency assessment that all new oil and gas drilling projects must be halted in 2021 to meet 2050 net-zero goals (Oliver Milman, Nina Lakhani and Maanvi Singh — The Guardian)