Australia: Energy giant sees hydrogen outshining nuclear in race to replace coal

[Caribbeans]

EnergyAustralia CEO Mark Collette at the Tallawarra B gas-fired power station.Cedit:LOUIE DOUVI

Energy giant sees hydrogen outshining nuclear in race to replace coal

Sydney Morning Herald | Nick Toscano | April 1, 2024

One of Australia’s largest energy utilities says clean hydrogen has the potential to become a viable fuel capable of replacing natural gas in power plants within a decade, eliminating the need to consider building expensive nuclear generators.

The federal opposition is fighting the Albanese government over its ambitious renewable energy rollout targets, and is pitching nuclear as the nation’s essential future source of power to compensate for coal exiting the grid. Critics of the Coalition’s push, however, say onerous capital costs and lengthy construction timelines make nuclear energy an impractical solution for Australia’s needs.

EnergyAustralia, the country’s third-largest electricity and gas supplier, believes nuclear energy is unnecessary and does not include the technology in its long-term planning. Instead, says EnergyAustralia chief executive Mark Collette, “green hydrogen” could be scaled up to become a commercially available power source faster than it would take Australia to establish a nuclear industry.

Green hydrogen – the name for hydrogen made using renewable energy – burns cleanly, meaning it could provide the same emissions-free back-up for the grid during times of low wind and solar generation as nuclear.

“To us, it looks like green hydrogen may come to life faster for Australia than nuclear could, and we think speed is really important,” Collette said...more
https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/energy-giant-sees-hydrogen-outshining-nuclear-in-race-to-replace-coal-20240331-p5fgcw.html

RELATED:



Australia, US See Low Cost Green Hydrogen On Horizon

CleanTechnica | Tina Casey | March 29, 2024

...“Yet in their most recent levelized cost of hydrogen analysis, Bhashyam and his team found that a tipping point is just around the corner,” Schelling wrote. “From 2030 on, they find, producing green hydrogen in a new plant could be as much as 18% cheaper than continuing to run an existing gray hydrogen plant in five major economies around the world...

“Using Western-made alkaline systems, green hydrogen beats out blue hydrogen by 2030 in all but a handful of modeled markets,” Bhashyam told BNEF, referring to steam reformation systems coupled with carbon capture...more
https://cleantechnica.com/2024/03/29/australia-us-see-low-cost-green-hydrogen-on-horizon/

[NNadir]

1. That is, of course, the dumbest statement ever produced by antinukes, but not surprising really...

...since they lack the literacy to tell primary energy from derived energy produced by exergy destruction.

It also makes sense because many fossil fuel sales people wish to greenwash coal by claiming it's "hydrogen."

It makes the same sense as it does in China, since Australia is a coal hell as well and they may as well jump on the coal greewashing.

Subsidizing Grid-Based Electrolytic Hydrogen Will Increase Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Coal Dominated Power Systems Liqun Peng, Yang Guo, Shangwei Liu, Gang He, and Denise L. Mauzerall Environmental Science & Technology 2024 58 (12), 5187-5195

The text is clear enough.

From the introductory text:

... Currently, nearly all hydrogen in China is either produced directly from fossil fuels (55% from coal gasification and 14% from steam methane reforming (SMR)) or as a byproduct of petroleum refining (28%), with only 1% coming from water electrolysis. (2) Producing 1 kg of coal- or SMR-based hydrogen emits roughly 19 and 10 kg of CO2, respectively. (3) In 2020, hydrogen production from fossil fuels in China emitted ∼322Tg of CO2, equivalent to 25% of total CO2 emissions from industrial processes, a number expected to rise with increasing hydrogen demand. (4) Industrial processes include production of nonmetallic mineral products, chemical, and metal products, as well as production and consumption of halocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride. (4)

.

The bold, italics and underlining is mine.

EST: Chinese Hydrogen Production Is Making Climate Change Worse.