The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, has issued a stark warning concerning the “dismal litany of humanity’s failure to tackle climate disruption” in a speech in which he set out “five critical actions to jumpstart the renewable energy transition”.
Speaking at the launch of the World Meteorological Organisation’s State of the Global Climate 2021 Report, Guterres described the global energy system as “broken” and “bringing us ever closer to climate catastrophe”. He called on the world to “end fossil fuel pollution and accelerate the renewable energy transition, before we incinerate our only home”.
Hydrogen gas has long been recognised as an alternative to fossil fuels and a potentially valuable tool for tackling climate change.
Now, as nations come forward with net-zero strategies to align with their international climate targets, hydrogen has once again risen up the agenda from Australia and the UK through to Germany and Japan.
In the most optimistic outlooks, hydrogen could soon power trucks, planes and ships. It could heat homes, balance electricity grids and help heavy industry to make everything from steel to cement.
But doing all these things with hydrogen would require staggering quantities of the fuel, which is only as clean as the methods used to produce it. Moreover, for every potentially transformative application of hydrogen, there are unique challenges that must be overcome.
In this in-depth Q&A – which includes a range of infographics, maps and interactive charts, as well as the views of dozens of experts – Carbon Brief examines the big questions around the “hydrogen economy” and looks at the extent to which it could help the world avoid dangerous climate change.
What is hydrogen and how could it help tackle climate change?
Hydrogen is the lightest and most abundant element in the universe. It is also an explosive and clean-burning gas that contains more energy per unit of weight than fossil fuels.
IRENA says green hydrogen could disrupt global trade and bilateral energy relations, reshaping the positioning of states with new hydrogen exporters and users emerging
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, 15 January 2022 – Rapid growth of the global hydrogen economy can bring significant geoeconomic and geopolitical shifts giving rise to a wave of new interdependencies, according to new analysis by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA). Geopolitics of the Energy Transformation: The Hydrogen Factor sees hydrogen changing the geography of energy trade and regionalising energy relations, hinting at the emergence of new centres of geopolitical influence built on the production and use of hydrogen, as traditional oil and gas trade declines.
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Hydrogen is increasingly seen as a key component of future energy systems if it can be made without carbon dioxide emissions.
It is starting to be used as a transport fuel, despite the need for high-pressure containment.
The use of hydrogen in the production of liquid transport fuels from crude oil is increasing rapidly, and is vital where tar sands are the oil source.
Hydrogen can be combined with carbon dioxide to make methanol or dimethyl ether (DME) which are important transport fuels.
Hydrogen also has future application as industrial-scale replacement for coke in steelmaking and other metallurgical processes.
Nuclear energy can be used to make hydrogen electrolytically, and in the future high-temperature reactors are likely to be used to make it thermochemically.
The energy demand for hydrogen production could exceed that for electricity production today.
Hydrogen is not found in free form (H2) but must be liberated from molecules such as water or methane. It is therefore not an energy source and must be made, using energy. It is already a significant chemical product, about half of annual pure hydrogen production being used in making nitrogen fertilisers via the Haber process and about one-quarter to convert low-grade crude oils (especially those from tar sands) into liquid transport fuels. There is a lot of experience handling hydrogen on a large scale, though it is not as straightforward as natural gas.
Cho đến nay, ngay cả những quốc gia tiên tiến về KH&CN vẫn chưa có giải pháp nào coi là hoàn hảo về một nguồn năng lượng xanh không phát thải carbon.
TS. Trần Chí Thành là một chuyên gia về công nghệ hạt nhân và an toàn hạt nhân. Ảnh: Thanh Nhàn.
Tuy nhiên, ngay cả khi không tồn tại giải pháp nào hoàn hảo thì vẫn có những lựa chọn tối ưu – nghĩa là vừa đảm bảo an ninh năng lượng mà vẫn hạn chế phát thải, TS. Trần Chí Thành, Viện trưởng Viện Năng lượng nguyên tử Việt Nam, cho biết như vậy qua góc nhìn của một chuyên gia về công nghệ hạt nhân và an toàn hạt nhân.
The COVID-19 pandemic is first and foremost a human tragedy, infecting more than 120,000 and killing more than 4,200 people as of March 12, 2020. The loss of human life is heart-breaking and set to continue ticking upwards.
The virus has also hit society like a global tsunami, disrupting travel, cutting off communities, shuttering factories and shaking up economic markets. The global manufacturing sector has suffered its worst contraction since the 2009 recession. Goldman Sachs forecasts zero earnings growth for U.S. companies, while airlines and cruise lines are reeling as people opt to stay home.
Unsurprisingly this major global disruption is leading to lower energy demand, which in turn reduces global greenhouse gas emissions. China’s industrial output has dropped 15% to 40% since the crisis began, leading to a roughly 25% drop in emissions over that same period.
The United Nations climate change conference (known as COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, was billed as historic. By that measure, the conference didn’t deliver. But it nevertheless marks a moment of transition. Glasgow completed the process begun at the 2015 Paris conference, under which nations progressively raised their national commitments to decarbonization. All the major economies of the world are now notionally committed to reaching net-zero emissions between 2050 and 2070. As a result, Glasgow also marked the moment when climate politics began to focus on the energy transition as a matter of industrial policy. It was symptomatic that a prominent commitment to reduce coal burning was included in the final resolution. It was not enough, but it was a significant first. It was also symptomatic that Britain’s conservative government put the emphasis on businesses. That dismayed many activists, but it was a prompt eagerly seized on by U.S. climate envoy John Kerry.
Kerry finished the conference hailing an impending transformation. Firms that were willing to innovate and gamble on the energy transition would be opening up the “greatest economic opportunity since the Industrial Revolution,” he said. In a Financial Times op-ed published in November, Kerry added: “Like the proverbial cavalry, the first movers [in business] are coming. … Companies should seize this opportunity by propelling the shift—rather than being buffeted in its wake.” Meanwhile, in the New York Times, columnist Thomas Friedman chimed in to declare if we are looking to save the world, “we will get there only when Father Profit and risk-taking entrepreneurs produce transformative technologies that enable ordinary people to have extraordinary impacts on our climate without sacrificing much—by just being good consumers of these new technologies. In short: we need a few more Greta Thunbergs and a lot more Elon Musks.”
A statue of late Vietnamese revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh in Ho Chi Minh City.Vietnam has announced a plan to have renewable energy account for three quarters of its national power production capacity by 2045. AFP Pic
VIETNAM has announced a plan to have renewable energy account for three quarters of its national power production capacity by 2045.
Authorities also hope to achieve 70 per cent of actual production through renewable sources under its commitments made during the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2021 (COP 26) last month.
24 November (IEEFA/JMK Research India): Electricity distribution companies (discoms) demand firm and uninterrupted renewable power. A new report by IEEFA and JMK Research highlights the important role that different mixes of generation sources and storage technologies can play in overcoming the intermittency challenge of variable renewable energy (VRE) and ensuring grid stability.
Renewable energy blended with either conventional thermal power sources that have low plant load factors (PLFs) or energy storage systems (ESS) can provide firm round-the-clock (RTC) power required by discoms, according to the report.
Today’s hydrogen business is, in global terms, reasonably small, very dirty and completely vital. Some 90m tonnes of the stuff are produced each year, providing revenues of over $150bn—approaching those of ExxonMobil, an oil and gas company. This is done almost entirely by burning fossil fuels with air and steam—a process which uses up 6% of the world’s natural gas and 2% of its coal and emits more than 800m tonnes of carbon dioxide, putting the industry’s emissions on the same level as those of Germany.Listen to this story
TTCT – Xung quanh Hội nghị COP26, có chuyện dễ hiểu nhầm phổ biến về các mức cam kết khổng lồ và chuyện “thủ phạm” phát thải.
Ảnh: un.org
Đọc tin về COP26 rất dễ bị ấn tượng mạnh bởi mẩu tin hàng trăm ngân hàng, quỹ đầu tư, hãng bảo hiểm có trong tay đến 130.000 tỉ đôla cam kết đặt ưu tiên cho các hoạt động vì khí hậu. Ai cũng nghĩ với những khoản tiền khổng lồ như thế, việc hỗ trợ các nước chuyển đổi từ năng lượng hóa thạch như than đá sang các nguồn năng lượng tái tạo là dễ như trở bàn tay.
Ảnh tư liệu chụp ngày 21/09/2009, tại Sài Gòn, Việt Nam, sau một cơn mưa lớn. Do tác động của biến đổi khí hậu, tình trạng ngập lụt ở các thành phố miền nam ngày càng trầm trọng. ASSOCIATED PRESS – Le Quang Nhat
Là một trong 4 quốc gia gánh chịu những tác hại năng nề nhất của biến đổi khí hậu, tại Hội nghị Thượng đỉnh Paris COP 21, Việt Nam đã cam kết sẽ cắt giảm 8% lượng khí nhà kính phát thải vào năm 2030 so với năm 2005 và có thể giảm đến 25% nếu nhận được sự hỗ trợ hiệu quả từ cộng đồng quốc tế.QUẢNG CÁO
Nhân dịp hội nghị khí hậu COP 26 vừa khai mạc ở Glasgow ngày 31/10/2021, chúng ta hãy tìm hiểu xem các biện pháp ứng phó với biến đổi khí hậu của Việt Nam có những mặt tích cực và những hạn chế nào? Mời quý vị nghe ý kiến của tiến sĩ Huỳnh Long Vân, Nhóm Nghiên cứu Văn Hóa Đồng Nai Cửu Long Úc Châu.
Do phụ thuộc vào quy hoạch nguồn điện, hệ thống lưới điện truyền tải cần bảo đảm sự liên kết các hệ thống điện miền và khu vực. Ảnh: Ngọc Hương
LTS – Bộ Công thương vừa trình Chính phủ dự thảo Quy hoạch phát triển điện lực quốc gia thời kỳ 2021-2030, tầm nhìn đến năm 2045 (Quy hoạch điện VIII).
Ðược xây dựng trong hoàn cảnh hết sức đặc biệt của đất nước nói chung và ngành điện nói riêng, liệu bản Quy hoạch đang được trông đợi này, có giúp hệ thống điện tránh khỏi áp lực nặng nề từ sự bùng nổ thái quá của năng lượng tái tạo gây nhiều hệ lụy như đã từng, cũng như tạo được sự minh bạch trong phát triển để thu hút được các nhà đầu tư?
By Anh Minh October 13, 2021 | 12:33 pm GMT+7 VNExpressWorkers fix electric cables in District 1, Ho Chi Minh City. Photo by VnExpress/Thanh Nguyen
Vietnam will find it hard to mobilize foreign funding for coal-fired electricity plants because many nations have vowed to step up environmental protection.
Most of the investments in coal-fired electricity plants in Vietnam in 2015-21 came from China, South Korea and Japan, but the three countries have now pledged to stop investing in such power stations, Mark Hutchinson, chairman of the Southeast Asia Task Force, Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) Asia, said at an online conference on finance for energy projects on Monday.
Shozo Kudo has risen from local politics in his Nagoya to the national legislature, where he is serving his third term. Formerly the Director of the Committee on Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, Kudo is a strong advocate of hydrogen energy. He talks to Yukie Yamashita about the benefits hydrogen can bring the country
What are the challenges that need to be overcome in order for hydrogen use to become more widespread?
Japan lacks major fossil fuel resources such as oil, coal and natural gas, so the question of how to procure these is a constant issue. Hydrogen, which is found everywhere on the planet, is the ultimate renewable energy source and has the potential to solve Japan’s problem of scarce resources.
How did Japan come to push for research into hydrogen?
Workers fix electric cables in District 1, Ho Chi Minh City. Photo by VnExpress/Thanh Nguyen
CVD 