Hong Kong’s Local weather & Hydrogen Plans Had been Captured By Its TownGas Utility – CleanTechnica – TechnoNews

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Not too long ago John Haffner, liable for sustainability at Hong Kong’s US$1.4 billion annual income Dangle Lung Property Group, reached out to me. ReThink HK, which payments itself as Hong Kong’s best-attended and most formidable enterprise occasion for sustainable growth, was internet hosting a debate he can be a part of in entrance of some subset of the roughly 10,000 attendees.

The controversy body was “The House Believes We Have a Credible Path to Achieving Carbon Neutrality by 2050.” Realizing my monitor report of assessing local weather and hydrogen plans, Haffner requested if I had a perspective on Hong Kong’s within the run-up to the occasion, probably with the hope of gaining some pithy quote or eye-popping statistic to make use of in his remarks.

I used to be curious sufficient and simply distracted sufficient from no matter I used to be doing to have a fast have a look at the local weather and hydrogen plans. The curiosity got here partly as a result of not solely is Hong Kong a storied metropolis, however at one level the agency I used to be working for was contemplating whether or not I’d be helpful in a job there after my Singapore time. Sadly no, however that didn’t cease me from setting my sank-without-a-trace local weather fiction novel there. (As a fiction author, apparently I write nice non-fiction.) Subsequently, I spent a while with CLP, Hong Kong’s utility, speaking about their mainland pumped hydro facility and long-duration power storage typically.

As famous, this was a skim, not a deep evaluation, nevertheless it’s a good evaluation, I believe. I began with Hong Kong’s Local weather Motion Plan 2050. Some negatives leapt out.

A spotlight of the plan is waste-to-energy. Many of the power in municipal waste is plastics, so waste-to-energy options have very excessive emissions full lifecycle, a mean of 400 to 600 kilograms of CO2-equivalent (CO2e) per megawatt-hour (MWh) generated. That’s the identical ranges as pure fuel. Whereas these amenities assist cut back landfill waste, their emissions are considerably greater than renewable power sources like wind and photo voltaic, elevating considerations about their total environmental influence. I contemplate them not a local weather resolution, however a waste disposal resolution.

One other a part of their plan is to exchange coal with fossil fuel within the ‘short term’. That is extra of the fossil fuel as bridge gasoline nonsense that has led to it being the quickest rising fossil gasoline when it comes to each international use and local weather change impacts on the earth. Methane leaks from fuel, LNG, and engines have made it clear that the local weather advantages are a lot decrease than asserted, if any even exist. This can lock Hong Kong into fuel for an additional 30 or 40 years. There are co-benefits of fuel like decrease — however removed from low — air air pollution, however these can’t be thought of a local weather profit.

The effectivity part doesn’t tackle the bottom hanging fruit, electrification. HK does plenty of water-heating and cooking with quite a lot of fossil gases, and changing these with electrical home equipment is a much bigger lever than constructing envelope retrofit. Gases aren’t used for constructing heating given the local weather, however electrical energy is used for cooling, so decarbonizing electrical energy and electrifying is by far the largest lever.

Hong Kong has relied on city fuel for over a century, with its distribution community initially developed within the early twentieth century to energy road lamps and households. At the moment, city fuel stays a key power supply for cooking and heating, nevertheless it emits roughly 0.65 kilograms of CO2e per kilowatt-hour of warmth produced. Any local weather plan that was full and well worth the title would spell out alternative of city fuel with electrification and the way the strategic shut-down of the fuel community would proceed. Nonetheless, the plan is silent on each of these factors.

All-in-all, the local weather plan is affected by crimson flags. Then there’s Hong Kong’s Technique of Hydrogen Growth. It’s typical for the style, so far as I can inform.

The technique is totally silent on the prices of hydrogen. It doesn’t even embrace the unbaked assertions of deeply low cost hydrogen, simply the implicit assumption that Hong Kong would require fuel, and hydrogen will provide it. I’ll interject my traditional mini-lecture on technique utilizing this level. I lean on Richard Rumelt’s Good Technique Unhealthy Technique and his kernel of fine technique. It requires a rigorous consensus on precise actuality, not wishful considering, at its core. Insurance policies which can assist the group exploit actuality for advantages or keep away from the impacts of different facets of actuality are required. Motion plans primarily based on the insurance policies should be in place. Within the absence of actuality, insurance policies, and plans, it’s not a method, however maybe an train in public relations or artistic writing.

With completely zero prices within the doc, Hong Kong’s ‘strategy’ on hydrogen fails the Rumelt take a look at. The elemental downside with hydrogen is that in any type, together with unabated fossil hydrogen, it’s far costlier to fabricate, distribute, and use than fossil gases it purports to exchange, and it’s far costlier than electrification full lifecycle. In lots of circumstances, it’s simply costlier for preliminary capital prices.

I’m going to cease calling the doc a method. It’s a hydrogen advertising and marketing and local weather motion delay doc. Any longer, I’ll discuss with it because the hydrogen advertising and marketing doc.

Do you assume I’m being too harsh, maybe? The intent is to make use of unabated fossil-derived grey hydrogen initially and ‘eventually’ swap to low-carbon hydrogen, so there might be unfavourable local weather worth within the quick run and far greater prices than options in the long term. This isn’t even a inexperienced hydrogen plan, it’s only a doc concerning the different fossil gasoline.

The hydrogen advertising and marketing doc considers the city fuel system to be an asset as a substitute of a legal responsibility, as it’s essentially. It contains regulatory efforts to approve pure hydrogen on the town fuel methods. To be clear, HK’s city fuel is about 50% H2, then a bunch of methane, then a bunch of carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide. Crappy stuff, however HK home equipment have been burning 50% hydrogen and the pipes have been carrying a mix of fifty% hydrogen for many years, so it’s extra technically viable. Actually grey hydrogen would enhance indoor air high quality, however that once more isn’t a local weather resolution, particularly not when much more leaking hydrogen with its 20-year warming potential — about 30 instances greater than carbon dioxide — is factored in.

For some actuality on the price factors, grey hydrogen delivered by pipeline in the very best case is US$6-8 per kg. That’s the German industrial worth. Industrial costs might be beneath residential and industrial costs for causes of volumes and energy, so $10 per kg is extra probably. $10 per kg H2 would value at finest $0.65 per megajoule (MJ), the unit of warmth they use to cost for city fuel immediately. HK expenses about $0.30 per MJ of city fuel, so hydrogen can be greater than double out of the gate.

Blue hydrogen would double it once more in the very best case to $1.30. Inexperienced hydrogen in the very best case can be 4x the price, so round $2.60 per MJ, about 9 instances the price to customers. None of that is remotely laborious to determine, however clearly hydrogen proponents keep away from this just like the plague, therefore the whole lack of value workups within the hydrogen technique.

Hydrogen buses and vehicles, each with targets within the hydrogen advertising and marketing doc, are in fact a useless finish. They aren’t aggressive with electrical automobiles when crammed with grey hydrogen and can turn out to be much less so with low-carbon hydrogen. At current, you’ll be able to’t purchase a hydrogen bus of equal functionality to an electrical bus in any respect if the measure is drivetrain guarantee and upkeep. Whereas electrical buses are coming with 5- and 8-year full warranties together with components, hydrogen gasoline cell buses are peaking out at 20 months.

And you’ll’t purchase hydrogen automobiles for the value level now you can get equal efficiency battery-electric automobiles. Electrical buses and vehicles at the moment are cheaper to purchase upfront, cheaper to keep up, and cheaper to energy. There’s zero financial argument left for hydrogen for floor transportation that isn’t made up of foolish putty dusted in lobbying {dollars}.

Consequently, the brand new power fund for hydrogen automobiles within the hydrogen advertising and marketing doc might be wasted.

In my evaluation, Hong Kong’s local weather and hydrogen paperwork are principally written by the fuel utility to delay and distract from actual local weather motion. It was clearly captured by the incorrect stakeholders and received’t transfer the needle on local weather motion for town.

However again to ReThink’s debate. What did the viewers assume? In spite of everything, a debate is meant to maneuver the viewers in a single path or the opposite via reasoned arguments and well-honed rhetoric — hopefully extra Socratic dialogue than sophistry. To that finish, it’s widespread to ballot audiences each earlier than and after arguments are introduced, to see if one aspect moved the needle.

Previous to the talk, 64% of the viewers had been against the assertion “The House Believes We Have a Credible Path to Achieving Carbon Neutrality by 2050.” After the talk, 74% had been against it.

Hong Kong, you must do higher. I’d be glad to help you to place collectively an actual technique for each local weather motion and hydrogen to exchange the unhealthy ones you might have now. I’m certain many different individuals can be too, however you’ll need to deal with TownGas as a hostile contributor and lobbyist, not part of the answer.