Why hydrogen is NOT the fuel of the future – Dr Richard Dixon

As Scotland seeks to reduce climate emissions even faster than before, we are in serious danger of taking the wrong road, writes Dr Richard Dixon.

The only reason to back hydrogen over electricity is that it throws a lifeline to the oil industry, says Dr Richard Dixon (Picture: SWNS)

Last week’s vote on the Climate Bill saw a welcome increase in Scotland’s short-term target to a 75 per cent reduction by 2030. This was a huge success for the 40,000 people in Scotland who marched and rallied on the streets the Friday before.

Now that we have agreed the new targets, the Climate Change Plan will be thoroughly revised by the spring of next year. In parallel, the Scottish Government will revise its Energy Strategy.

We have a target of 100 per cent of the electricity we use in Scotland to come from renewables by 2020.

We won’t make it, mostly because of the UK Government’s total lack of enthusiasm for renewable energy, but we’ll get close, with the figure at 74 per cent last year. And no coal and only a relatively small amount of gas is now burnt to make electricity here.

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While making our electricity virtually carbon-free is absolutely essential, electricity only accounts for about a quarter of the energy we use in Scotland. Another quarter is the petrol and diesel we burn in transport and half is in fossil fuel use in heating, from hot water at home to running big boilers in industry.

In revising the Energy Strategy, the danger is that the Government will continue to back two horses. The first Energy Strategy was published at the end of 2017 and has two options – a high-electricity option and a high-hydrogen option.

Backing a loser

Governments like to hedge their bets so they don’t end up backing a loser, but that’s exactly where we might be heading with hydrogen.

There are some cases where it might be sensible to use hydrogen as a fuel, as long as you make it by using renewable electricity to split water. What doesn’t make sense is imagining that we will be using hydrogen on a wide scale for transport or heating people’s homes.

The ‘cheap’ way to make hydrogen is from gas. No wonder the oil industry is so enthusiastic about hydrogen. For a while there was a school of thought that electric vehicles were never going to be up to the job and petrol and diesel would need to be replaced with hydrogen. Then people thought we would need hydrogen for just the bigger vehicles.

There are electric buses on the streets of three of our cities and there are hydrogen buses in (surprise, surprise) Aberdeen. There are electric double deckers on the streets of London today, but hydrogen double deckers ordered for Aberdeen may never appear because the bus maker has gone bust. Glasgow has just opted for hydrogen bin lorries but there are already electric bin lorries in London and Sheffield.

Next year Elon Musk will sell you an HGV that can carry a 36-tonne load for 500 miles before it needs a charge, which only takes 30 minutes.

Going for hydrogen in a big way would require massive investment in new infrastructure, require carbon capture and storage to become economically viable and always carries with it the risk that hydrogen is much more likely to explode than natural gas. The Government’s advisors say hydrogen could not be in widescale use until some time in the 2030s.

Why would anyone back hydrogen when electricity is winning the race hands down? Only because it throws a lifeline to the oil industry. Come on Government, we can only afford to back one horse, let’s make sure it is the electric one.

Dr Richard Dixon is director of Friends of the Earth Scotland