The Dirty Secret Behind the Green Hydrogen Push

this bright yellow power plant in East Germany is at the Forefront of the green energy transition its aim is to go from using polluting fossil fuels to emissions free hydrogen in Just 2 years and that would make it one of the first in the world we really convinced that hydrogen will play a major role in the future facilities like these are part of a dream Energy System sketched out by policy makers across the world clean hydrogen is a perfect means towards our goal of climate neutrality but does this hydrogen dream come at too high of

a cost to be quite honest without any support schemes we can't afford to transform this operations from natural gas into hydrogen operation I think we are tying our hands and we are making it impossible to hit Net Zero on an accelerated time frame we've got a problem with climate change and we need to solve it and Along Comes This thing that seems like it ticks all the boxes heat pumps are hard changing people's cars is hard hydrogen fabulous that's easy hydrogen is a gas and a lot of companies and governments see it as a way

to replace natural gas but using the same infrastructure that we already have governments across the world are rushing to scale up the technology clean hydrogen subsidies are set to top $360 billion globally this year up 71% since 2022 but even that might not be enough Europe aims to ramp up production to 20 million metric tons by the end of the decade Bloomberg nef forecasts it will only hit 2.8 one reason green hydrogen currently costs three times more than natural gas when you look at hydrogen it could be this amazing solution for the future but really

when you dig into it and when you take a closer look the time scales are long the budgets are huge and the technology isn't working in a lot of places yet so we don't see it on the ground this is redar a tiny Seaside town in the northeast of England chosen to be the site of an experimental hydrogen heating trial a few years ago as well as fueling power plants Advocates want hydrogen to heat our homes another source of emissions the trial was expected to start in 2025 but northern gas Network eventually pulled the plug

on the project after months of strong opposition from local residents the excuse given was that there wasn't enough hydrogen but to be honest it was never going to happen in any case because the basic work of getting people to accept what was coming down the tracks had not been done the first knowledge I had of the red car trial was leaflets and advertising through doors and initially it was quite enticing you will be giv new boilers um new cookers new appliances and that was the kind of the selling point the more questions were asked and

the less answers were given it just became very alarming hydrogen is a dangerous gas we handle it very well in industrial environments but we do it through an enormous amount of safety cautions so when it came to Red Car ngn said no we're not going to knock holes in people's walls we're going to use a hydrogen sensor most hydrogen professionals are a gast at the idea that we would be putting hydrogen into homes in the UK you we're not dinosaurs it wasn't that we weren't offer progress it was just you know we all know that

it hadn't been tried properly it's quite insulting really to to think that they just thought we wouldn't fight back we wouldn't do anything say we just back it just proves what can happen when a community work together stand together and say no you were not listening to us you will listen to us and we're not putting up with it how you like them apples exactly what red car really shows us is that you need to get people on board from the very beginning you've got to bring people with you whether it's heat pumps whether it's

hydrogen whatever it is you can't roll something out without talking to people first and making them believe in what you're trying to do there's been 58 independent reports not one comes out saying anything other than a minuscule or no role for hydrogen and heating and that raises the question why is it still being promoted so heavily the force behind the government subsidies it's recent it really is not coming from energy experts outside of the oil and gas industry it's coming from the oil and gas industry itself Robert howth has enemies in the oil and gas

industry due to his research questioning how clean hydrogen really is there are several different types of hydrogen while green hydrogen comes from renewable sources it only makes up 1% of the total hydrogen mix the majority of hydrogen we make today is a byproduct from fossil fuels releasing greenhouse gas into the atmosphere although still categorized as clean blue hydrogen is made using natural gas but only some of the emissions are captured oil and gas industry is incredibly powerful force in our in our universe you know there's documented history of Decades of misinforming disinform trying to pretend

climate change doesn't exist when they know it does trying to pretend that's not caused by them when they know it was blue hydrogen a dirty product the greenhouse gas footprint of blue hydrogen is actually larger than that of Simply burning natural gas over the past couple of years big oil has been jumping on hydrogen and the companies have started to heavily invest in the Technology's success 2018 shell totel British Petroleum other big Majors set up this thing called the hydrogen Council it's a huge part of the revenue stream for for Big Oil and and and

gas so you know when when you call into question whether or not we should be using that fuel at all that's going to be problematic for them right billions are being poured into a technology that could actually be adding to our climate wow while the stakes have never been higher 2024 is on track to be the hottest year on record and climate change is exacerbating the effects of extreme weather globally and the electorate feels it a lot of politicians need an answer to climate change young people expect it and some of the answers are really

difficult if the the ones you have are difficult would require sacrifices would require costs it's much easier just to say oh it's going to be hydrogen and if it works or doesn't work we'll only find out in a decade anyway but the fact is we don't have decades to get to Net Zero unless hydrogen becomes considerably cheaper our climate policies might need a rethink there's no route to to Net Zero that doesn't go through clean hydrogen but we need to be realistic they call it the Swiss army knife of energy you can do everything with

it but of course just like with a Swiss army knife just because you can cut your hair with it you don't right you can butter your bread with it but you don't while hydrogen can play a part in reaching at zero a more pragmatic approach could offer benefits sooner 10 years ago we decided to get rid of the oil furnace and we replaced it with these ground Source heat pumps it's modestly expensive to put in initially but over the 10 years since we've put it in we've more than paid back the system here in the

state of New York the number one source of greenhouse gas emissions is the emissions that we use for heating our homes and our commercial buildings once up and running the hydrogen plant in leig will have two turbines each producing 62.5 Mega of clean power barely scratching the surface of what's needed the German Authority predicts they could require up to 10 gaw to reach at zero building all this infrastructure needed for hydrogen is a big gamble we're going too slowly and we can't really afford to lose several years looking at a technology that later we don't

use I think what's really at stake here is net zero and from what we've seen from reporting this story there isn't really a plan B it's just hydrogen or fossil fuels [Music] [Music]