Hong Kong’s Climate & Hydrogen Plans Were Captured By Its TownGas Utility

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Lately John Hafnerliable for sustainability at Hong Kong’s US$1.4 billion annual income Hold Lung Property Group, reached out to me. ReThink HK, which payments itself as Hong Kong’s best-attended and most bold 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 controversy body was “The House Believes We Have a Credible Path to Achieving Carbon Neutrality by 2050.” Understanding my observe document 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 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 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, but it surely’s a good evaluation, I believe. I began with Hong Kong’s Climate Action 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 median of 400 to 600 kilograms of CO2-equivalent (CO2e) per megawatt-hour (MWh) generated. That’s the identical ranges as pure gasoline. Whereas these services assist scale back landfill waste, their emissions are considerably larger than renewable power sources like wind and photo voltaic, elevating issues about their total environmental affect. 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 gasoline nonsense that has led to it being the quickest rising fossil gasoline by way of each international use and local weather change impacts on this planet. 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. This may lock Hong Kong into gasoline for one more 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-about a local weather profit.

The effectivity part doesn’t handle the bottom hanging fruit, electrification. HK does a number of water-heating and cooking with a wide range 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 road lamps and households. At present, 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. Nevertheless, the plan is silent on each of these factors.

All-in-all, the local weather plan is affected by pink flags. Then there’s Hong Kong’s Strategy of Hydrogen Development. 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 gasoline, and hydrogen will provide it. I’ll interject my common mini-lecture on technique utilizing this level. I lean on Richard Rumelt’s Good Technique Dangerous 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 features of actuality are required. Motion plans based mostly 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 inventive writing.

With completely zero prices within the doc, Hong Kong’s ‘strategy’ on hydrogen fails the Rumelt check. The basic downside with hydrogen is that in any kind, 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 local weather motion delay doc. Any further, I’ll check with it because the hydrogen advertising doc.

Do you suppose 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 shall be destructive local weather worth within the quick run and far larger prices than alternate options in the long term. This isn’t even a inexperienced hydrogen plan, it’s only a doc in regards to the different fossil gasoline.

The hydrogen advertising doc considers the city gasoline system to be an asset as an alternative of a legal responsibility, as it’s genuinely. It contains regulatory efforts to approve pure hydrogen on the town gasoline techniques. 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 instances larger 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 value. Industrial costs shall be under residential and business 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 gasoline at present. HK expenses 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 instances the price to customers. None of that is remotely onerous to determine, however clearly hydrogen proponents keep away from this just like the plague, therefore the entire lack of value workups within the hydrogen technique.

Hydrogen buses and vehicles, each with targets within the hydrogen advertising doc, are after all a useless finish. They aren’t aggressive with electrical automobiles when crammed with grey hydrogen and can grow 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 worth level now you can get equal efficiency battery-electric automobiles. Electrical buses and vehicles at the moment are cheaper to purchase upfront, cheaper to take care of, 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}.

Because of this, the brand new power fund for hydrogen automobiles within the hydrogen advertising doc shall be wasted.

In my evaluation, Hong Kong’s local weather and hydrogen paperwork are principally written by the gasoline 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 the town.

However again to ReThink’s debate. What did the viewers suppose? In spite of everything, a debate is meant to maneuver the viewers in a single route or the opposite by means of reasoned arguments and well-honed rhetoric — hopefully extra Socratic dialogue than sophistry. To that finish, it’s frequent to ballot audiences each earlier than and after arguments are offered, to see if one facet 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, it is advisable to do higher. I’d be joyful to help you to place collectively an actual technique for each local weather motion and hydrogen to exchange the unhealthy ones you will have now. I’m positive many different folks can be too, however you’ll should deal with TownGas as a hostile contributor and lobbyist, not part of the answer.