Member states have set aside their divergences on renewable vs ‘low-carbon’ hydrogen to focus on efforts to “rapidly upscale the market for hydrogen at EU level.”
The EU’s 27 member states adopted Council conclusions on hydrogen last Friday (11 December), bringing an end to weeks of tense discussions that saw proponents of renewable-only hydrogen clashing with those supporting a broader ‘low-carbon’ definition that also includes hydrogen made from natural gas and nuclear power.
At the end of the day, member states agreed to “rapidly upscale the market for hydrogen at EU level,” recognizing that “emphasis should be given to hydrogen from renewable sources” of energy such as wind and solar power.
The clean-burning fuel will be used to target “in particular those sectors that are hard to decarbonize through other means” – mainly heavy industries like steelmaking and cement, or long-distance transport, which could struggle to switch 100% to electricity.
But at the same time, the Council also emphasized that “there are different safe and sustainable low-carbon technologies for the production of hydrogen” – wording aimed at comforting countries like the Netherlands, Poland, and France which are planning to support hydrogen produced either from natural gas or nuclear power.
Read more at EurActiv
So has EU solved the many problems associated with hydrogen as a source of energy? Where are they going to get the hydrogen from? Separating it from Oxygen in water? Well, that requires a lot of electricity to do so. Or stripping it from methane (aka natural gas)? Where are they going to get all that methane from since they won’t drill for it themselves. And what about storage and transportation?
Methinks that this is another pie-in-the-sky like solar and wind to replace coal and nuclear.
Nuclear Energy and Natural gas all the victims of this Global Warming/Climate Change Scam