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

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Lately John Haffner, accountable 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 improvement, was internet hosting a debate he can be a part of in entrance of some subset of the roughly 10,000 attendees.

The talk 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, presumably 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 take 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 might be helpful in a task 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 normally.

As famous, this was a skim, not a deep evaluation, but it surely’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. A lot 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 gasoline. Whereas these amenities assist scale back landfill waste, their emissions are considerably increased than renewable power sources like wind and photo voltaic, elevating issues about their total environmental influence. I take into account them not a local weather answer, however a waste disposal answer.

One other a part of their plan is to exchange coal with fossil gasoline within the ‘short term’. That is extra of the fossil gasoline as bridge gas nonsense that has led to it being the quickest rising fossil gas by way of each world use and local weather change impacts on the earth. Methane leaks from gasoline, LNG, and engines have made it clear that the local weather advantages are a lot decrease than asserted, if any even exist. It will lock Hong Kong into gasoline for an additional 30 or 40 years. There are co-benefits of gasoline 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 quite a lot 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 gasoline for over a century, with its distribution community initially developed within the early twentieth century to energy avenue lamps and households. As we speak, city gasoline stays a key power supply for cooking and heating, but it surely emits roughly 0.65 kilograms of CO2e per kilowatt-hour of warmth produced. Any local weather plan that was full and well worth the identify would spell out alternative of city gasoline with electrification and the way the strategic shut-down of the gasoline community would proceed. Nonetheless, the plan is silent on each of these factors.

All-in-all, the local weather plan is plagued by purple 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 embody the unbaked assertions of deeply low cost hydrogen, simply the implicit assumption that Hong Kong would require gasoline, and hydrogen will provide it. I’ll interject my ordinary 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 have to be in place. Within the absence of actuality, insurance policies, and plans, it’s not a technique, 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 drawback with hydrogen is that in any type, together with unabated fossil hydrogen, it’s far dearer to fabricate, distribute, and use than fossil gases it purports to exchange, and it’s far dearer than electrification full lifecycle. In lots of circumstances, it’s simply dearer for preliminary capital prices.

I’m going to cease calling the doc a technique. It’s a hydrogen advertising and local weather motion delay doc. Any longer, I’ll confer with it because the hydrogen advertising 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’ change to low-carbon hydrogen, so there will probably be damaging local weather worth within the brief run and far increased prices than options in the long term. This isn’t even a inexperienced hydrogen plan, it’s only a doc concerning the different fossil gas.

The hydrogen advertising doc considers the city gasoline system to be an asset as a substitute of a legal responsibility, as it’s really. It consists of regulatory efforts to approve pure hydrogen on the town gasoline methods. To be clear, HK’s city gasoline 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 combination of fifty% hydrogen for many years, so it’s extra technically viable. Definitely grey hydrogen would enhance indoor air high quality, however that once more isn’t a local weather answer, particularly not when much more leaking hydrogen with its 20-year warming potential — about 30 occasions increased 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 will probably be under residential and industrial costs for causes of volumes and energy, so $10 per kg is extra seemingly. $10 per kg H2 would price at greatest $0.65 per megajoule (MJ), the unit of warmth they use to cost for city gasoline immediately. HK prices about $0.30 per MJ of city gasoline, 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 occasions the price to customers. None of that is remotely exhausting to determine, however clearly hydrogen proponents keep away from this just like the plague, therefore the whole lack of price workups within the hydrogen technique.

Hydrogen buses and automobiles, each with targets within the hydrogen advertising doc, are after all a useless finish. They aren’t aggressive with electrical autos when crammed with grey hydrogen and can change into much less so with low-carbon hydrogen. At current, you may’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 gas cell buses are peaking out at 20 months.

And you may’t purchase hydrogen autos for the worth level now you can get equal efficiency battery-electric autos. Electrical buses and automobiles are actually 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}.

In consequence, the brand new power fund for hydrogen autos within the hydrogen advertising doc will probably be wasted.

In my evaluation, Hong Kong’s local weather and hydrogen paperwork are largely written by the gasoline utility to delay and distract from actual local weather motion. It was clearly captured by the unsuitable 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 route or the opposite by way of 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 offered, to see if one facet moved the needle.

Previous to the controversy, 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 controversy, 74% had been against it.

Hong Kong, you have to 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 dangerous ones you could have now. I’m certain many different folks can be too, however you’ll need to deal with TownGas as a hostile contributor and lobbyist, not part of the answer.