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Hydrogen fuel may add to warming but it still brings benefits.

Author: James Dinneen
Date: Nov. 8, 2023
From: New Scientist(Vol. 260, Issue 3464)
Publisher: New Scientist
Document Type: Brief article
Length: 298 words

Full Text:
HYDROGEN leaking from pipes or storage tanks indirectly acts as a greenhouse gas, but there are still significant climate benefits to
be had if we switch from burning fossil fuels to burning clean hydrogen.

During combustion, hydrogen emits only water vapour and heat. If produced with renewable energy, hydrogen fuel offers a carbon-
free way to power processes that are difficult to run on electricity, such as steel-making. However, if hydrogen leaks into the
atmosphere, it adds to global warming by reacting with other atmospheric gases.

Keith Shine at the University of Reading, UK, and his colleagues compared the impact of such leaks with the benefits of using
hydrogen as an alternative to fossil fuels. They used the latest data on its warming effect, estimated at roughly 12 times that of
carbon dioxide when measured over 100 years. They found that, in a scenario where the world uses lots of hydrogen produced with
renewable energy known as green hydrogen leaks would reduce the climate benefits of the switch by only a bit between
0.4 and 4 per cent, depending on the leakage rate (Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, doi.org/k3sr ).

Ilissa Ocko at the Environmental Defense Fund, a US nonprofit, says she broadly accepts the findings, but notes that hydrogen's
warming effect is more significant in the short run because the gas doesn't last long in the atmosphere. In a worse-case version,
Ocko says the leakage could undo something like 40 per cent of the benefits of using green hydrogen in the near term.

The calculus also changes completely if the hydrogen is made using fossil fuels, as nearly all of it is today. "We will not get the
anticipated climate benefits if we don't take care of the hydrogen emissions problem," says Ocko.

Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2023 For more science news and comments, see http://www.newscientist.com.
http://www.newscientist.com/
Source Citation (MLA 9th Edition)
Dinneen, James. "Hydrogen fuel may add to warming but it still brings benefits." New Scientist, vol. 260, no. 3464, 8 Nov. 2023, p.
18. Gale Academic OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A772161164/AONE?u=fub&sid=bookmark-AONE&xid=14a8d58b.
Accessed 15 Nov. 2023.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A772161164