Britain's energy bills problem - and why firms are paid huge sums for unwanted power

[Alan Ambrose]

Thought this was quite well written:

 

The huge sums energy firms get to not provide power - BBC News

 

 

[JohnMo]

They (wind turbines and and excess renewables) will all be generating hydrogen soon, when there is excess power. Scotland is lookin g to be an exporter of hydrogen in the next five years and produce 3.3 million tonnes of the stuff per year by 2045.

[SteamyTea]

Seems the problem is transmission, not the source.

[LnP]

4 hours ago, JohnMo said:

They (wind turbines and and excess renewables) will all be generating hydrogen soon, when there is excess power. Scotland is lookin g to be an exporter of hydrogen in the next five years and produce 3.3 million tonnes of the stuff per year by 2045.

I think you're talking about this Scottish Enterprise Plan. As a UK tax payer, I sincerely hope this doesn't happen. It's got as far as it has because of successful lobbying by vested fossil interests who promote hydrogen as an energy vector because they hope it will be their saviour. It will only happen with tax payer subsidies and it's a waste of electricity. The solution to the curtailment problem is not to downgrade the excess electricity to hydrogen, but as the excellent article by Justin Rowlatt points out, eliminate it by balancing the grid. 

 

The notion that burning green hydrogen makes any sense at all is missing the point that decarbonisation of energy requirements is most efficiently done by electrification - heat pumps, BEVs etc.

 

The priority for large scale green hydrogen production should not be to waste it by burning it, but to use it for applications where there is no alternative like manufacturing ammonia or methanol. Now there's an idea I could get behind, a Scottish chemical industry with well paid jobs making fertiliser and chemicals from green hydrogen from Scottish off shore wind. It will still need subsidies but I'd rather put my tax payer money into that.