The CO2 must therefore give way. At any price. Especially in little Germany. The guardians of wisdom proclaimed that people must stop burning coal, oil and natural gas. This is not easy to achieve, because people have been doing this for more than a century. They used coal to power their horses and created cosy warmth in their homes with oil and natural gas. Instead, according to the guardians of wisdom, people should use the power of the sun and the wind.
At that time, however, when a minister named Uncle Robbie was in charge of official business, „green“ Robbie had to find a solution to the dilemma facing the people of Germany. The guardians of wisdom whispered to Uncle Robbie that hydrogen could be burned in future instead of fossil fuels. This would be CO2-neutral and hydrogen must be abundant, since it is contained in water, of which there are vast quantities on Earth. If you split water into hydrogen and oxygen, you get pure hydrogen, which you can then burn.
No sooner said than done. Unfortunately, however, the guardians of wisdom had not yet found a solution for breaking down the abundant seawater into its atoms. It must first be desalinated for electrolysis to work. And for that, you need electricity. Vast amounts of electricity. There's always something. The best solution would be to source the hydrogen from other countries. So a deal was struck with our neighbours, the Danes. The Kingdom of Denmark is to supply us Germans with large quantities of hydrogen, specifically hydrogen produced with the help of wind turbines. This type of hydrogen is called „green“ hydrogen. Now that the Germans have become accustomed to yellow electricity, they will also believe in green hydrogen.
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At this point, we must briefly interrupt our fairy tale and insert a few paragraphs on the colour theory of hydrogen. Although hydrogen is always a colourless gas, it gives colours in the name, information about the type of production. What colours does the colourless gas H2 Is there?
greener Hydrogen is obtained from water through electrolysis. Renewable energy sources such as wind power, hydropower or solar energy provide the electricity required for this process. The production of green hydrogen is therefore CO2-neutral, but also much more expensive than grey hydrogen, for example.
greyer Hydrogen is produced by steam reforming fossil fuels such as natural gas. This is the method used to produce almost all of the hydrogen required worldwide today. However, this process causes the same CO2emissions than if the methane (the main component of natural gas) were burned directly in a power station to generate energy.
blue Like grey hydrogen, hydrogen is also produced by steam reforming, but the CO2 and then stored underground. It therefore does not enter the atmosphere and is also considered climate-neutral.
turquoise Hydrogen is the product of methane pyrolysis. In this process, the methane in natural gas is split into hydrogen and solid carbon. Solid carbon is a granulate that can be stored in old mine tunnels, for example. This means that no CO2 into the atmosphere. If the energy required for methane pyrolysis comes from renewable sources, the production of turquoise hydrogen is climate-neutral.
orange Hydrogen is produced by using biomass or electricity from waste utilisation plants such as waste-to-energy plants.
pink or yellow Hydrogen is also obtained through electrolysis. The electricity required comes from nuclear energy. Climate-damaging CO2 is not produced in the process, but radioactive waste is, which must be safely and permanently disposed of.
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Back to our fairy tale and green hydrogen from Denmark.
The Jutlanders are therefore to desalinate the sea and erect between 10,000 and 20,000 windmills in the tiny kingdom of Denmark so that 1 million tonnes of hydrogen can be produced and transported to Germany. This is to be done by pneumatic tube, which is now called a pipeline. One million tonnes of green hydrogen requires 10 million tonnes of pure, desalinated water and 55 million kilowatt hours of electricity, which is to be generated with the help of windmills. But why should we care about the Danes‘ misery? And what do the Germans intend to do with all that hydrogen? Is it even permissible to say it out loud? It's best to whisper it: the Germans want to burn the hydrogen.
But one million tonnes of hydrogen is by no means enough for the Germans. Hydrogen is also to be imported from distant Canada and African countries such as Namibia. This will, of course, be done by ship. Let us hope that the cargo ships are not powered by heavy fuel oil. And when so many cargo ships loaded with hydrogen are crossing the world's oceans, how will you be able to tell which ships are carrying green hydrogen and which are carrying grey or even coloured hydrogen?
And if so many cargo ships are sailing to Germany with green, colourless hydrogen, how do other countries obtain their green hydrogen? Or does no one in other countries care about the colour of the colourless gas? Or do other countries not import any hydrogen at all? Germany only accounts for 0.24% of the total land area of all countries on Earth. And can 1% of the people in this country, measured against the world population, save the climate? And does it help the climate at all if we spend so many billions of talers in little Germany to burn green hydrogen instead of natural gas? Uncle Robbie seems to think so – and so do his colleagues in the colourful traffic light coalition government.
And the moral of the story? Don't believe the myth of green hydrogen.
Disclaimer:
Any similarities to living persons, organisations and events are purely coincidental and are, of course, entirely unintentional.
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