The world has a methane gas problem. Methane is over 80 times worse for forcing global heating over 20 years than its greenhouse gas sibling, carbon dioxide.
And yet we love to burn natural gas, which is mostly methane, to make electricity and heat. Our agricultural and food systems leave a lot of biomass lying around where a lot of it turns into methane and enters the atmosphere. Acceptable limits of leakage are suggested at 0.2%, however evidence suggests that actual leakage to be in the range of 1.5% to 3%
Directly related to this, hydrogen is a smaller and lighter molecule and will leak out of gaps that methane cannot pass through. The molecule really messes with steel in pipelines and joints, embrittling the steel and messing with electronics in ways that methane doesn’t. And hydrogen, while not as directly bad as methane, is increasingly being put forward to be a heating source.
Putting hydrogen into pipelines isn’t nearly the solution many pretend it to be.
Source: CleanTechnica: Read The Article
PSR Analysis: This data suggest that we need to seriously tighten any and all legislation relating to methane leakage, and we need to do this before we rush headlong into hydrogen. If we fail to do this, we will undo all the good that hydrogen can offer. PSR
Guy Youngs is Forecast & Adoption Lead at Power Systems Research
