Energy Provision in Wales - Do We Really Want Nuclear, Hydrogen or Carbon Capture and Storage?
This article looks at energy provision in Wales, framed through the lens of two recent books I've read, which take a historical look at two technologies, nuclear and carbon capture and why they are both being promoted as ‘low carbon’. An understanding of the history of these technologies, set against the political context is necessary in order to understand the current energy landscape in Wales.
Marc Hudson - Carbon Capture and Storage in the UK: History, Policies and Politics (2024)
Mabon ap Gwynfor - Going Nuclear (2023)
Political support for both technologies was assured when Labour introduced the Climate Change Act (2008), which committed the UK to an 80% reduction in carbon emissions relative to the levels in 1990, to be achieved by 2050. When the act was updated in 2019, so that 'Net Zero’ was made the goal, policymakers doubled down on the commitment. In March 2023, a new carbon capture and storage (CCS) funding commitment was made in the Spring Budget, with £20 billion allocated to the development of CCS technology. The target is to capture an ambitious 20-30 million tonnes of CO2 per year by 2050.
With Labour in power in both Westminster and Cardiff their policies are now in lockstep. Since winning the election on July 4th, Keir Starmer has tracked further to the right and outlined a renewed emphasis on austerity as his post-Brexit neoliberal agenda. It’s clear the Labour Party are completely captured now. Starmer’s fanatical zeal for continued economic growth has focused his energy policy on meeting this increasingly delusional goal in a world of ‘ecological limits’.
In order to understand how we've ended up here, we need to realise what these technologies such as nuclear, carbon capture and hydrogen represent and why they are still being considered, despite the risks, the slow timescales for their roll out and their vast costs.
Two recent news stories centring on a tax haven-based hedge fund, Quadrature Capital, indicate that climate policy is being influenced by special interests. The fund has shares worth hundreds of millions of pounds in fossil fuels, arms manufacturers and private healthcare. The £4 million donation, which is the sixth-largest in British political history, was made just before the election but carefully timed so that it was published last week, more than two months after Labour won the election.
Ethan Shone (2024) ‘Labour given £4m from tax haven-based hedge fund with shares in oil and arms'
This was followed by the announcement that Rachel Kyte would be Labour’s new climate envoy. Kyte is a co-chair of Quadrature Climate Foundation (QCF), who are entirely funded by Quadrature Capital.
Steve Topple (2024) ‘Labour just gave a TOP government JOB to someone from its £4m hedge fund donor, Quadrature’
QCF funds a considerable number of environmental NGOs; most could best described as ‘Ecomodernist’ or ‘Bright Green’. The ultimate aim of these NGOs is to promote technofix climate ‘solutions’. Seen in this light, renewables, nuclear, hydrogen and carbon capture are all viewed as valid ‘solutions’. The fund does not seem to be oriented towards solving the climate change problem. It appears to be oriented towards sustaining modern civilisation and economic growth.
Kiran Stacey (2023) ‘Climate groups accept millions from charity linked to fossil fuel investments’
This week it was revealed that a fifth of the climate events that were to take place at Labour’s Annual Conference were sponsored by the fossil fuel industry. Global Witness reported that “Hydrogen UK, Beyond 2050 – a hydrogen lobbying group that has represented BP and British Gas – and the Carbon Capture and Storage Association (CCSA) all spent thousands of pounds to secure a stand in the large space located directly outside the main hall.”
Global Witness (2024) ’Oil and gas-linked groups to sponsor a fifth of climate events at upcoming Labour Conference’
In his conference speech, Ed Miliband appears committed to new nuclear builds, hydrogen and CCS, name checking each of the technologies twice. It seems unlikely that energy policy decisions will be impartial when corporate capture of the political process is so blatant.
The Times and Sunday Times (2024) ‘Ed Miliband gives speech at Labour conference in Liverpool’
A letter from leading UK scientists and campaign groups to the Labour government urged the government to pause its plans and stated that technologies to produce blue hydrogen and capture CO2 are unproven and could hinder ‘Net Zero’ efforts.
Matthew Taylor (2024) Climate scientists call on Labour to pause £1bn plans for carbon capture
The spectre of a new nuclear power station at Wylfa on Ynys Môn returned in Maywhen Rishi Sunak’s Government named the site as it’s preferred location for it’s third large-scale nuclear project alongside Hinkley C and Sizewell C, both of which have been subject to setbacks and delays. However, Labour have not since confirmed they will proceed with Wylfa C and there remains considerable uncertainty over how the project will be funded. In addition, the Trawsfynydd site in Gwynedd also remains under consideration as a potential site for a Small Modular Reactor (SMR) despite the fact that the technology is still only at the design phase. The site itself is part of a decommissioning project that won’t finish until 2083, so seems poorly suited for this purpose. A decision on the UK sites that will be chosen will be made at the end of the year.
Regarding SMRs, nuclear analyst Paul Dorfman recently noted:
“In recent years the #nuclear industry has quietly changed its business model from making and selling products to harvesting subsidies for #SMR ‘development’.”
The recent news about Boris Johnson's links to the uranium mining industry, might explain his enthusiasm for SMRs and support for the nuclear industry over the second half of his term.
Holly Evans (2024) ‘Boris Johnson met with uranium lobbyist connected to new business partner while he was prime minister’
Mabon ap Gwynfor’s book notes that SMRs are also used to propel the UK’s nuclear submarine fleet, designed by Rolls Royce. The clear interdependency between civil and military nuclear projects is apparent. The message from industry and government is clear: SMRs are needed to develop the UK’s nuclear skills base, both for the generation of power and for defence purposes.
Robat Idris has also noted the power of the nuclear lobby whenever key decisions are made. See also his essay ‘Atomic Wales: Embracing Nuclear Colonialism’ (2021) in ‘A Welsh Way: Essays on Neoliberalism and Devolution’ by Parthian Books.
Robat Idris (2024) ‘Has the nuclear lobby hijacked Welsh democracy?’
Nuclear power has been with us in the UK since the 1956. Maintaining a set of nuclear power stations is central to the ethos of the British Establishment, and this has been the case, regardless of which party has been in power, due to their necessity for maintaining our nuclear weapons capabilities.
Cox et al (2016) 'Understanding the Intensity of UK Policy Commitments to Nuclear Power’
This in turn has coupled us to buying American nuclear weapons systems via the Special Relationship, an arrangement that has only deepened since Brexit and the election of Starmer, who is now in alignment with US Democrat Party thinking on all major geopolitical issues. Increased tensions between NATO and Russia has increased the threat of nuclear war with Russia. A recent book by Angus Hanton describes the UK as a Vassal State of the USA, due to the extent of US corporate ownership and control over Britain’s economy.
Angus Hanton (2024) - ‘Vassal State: How America Runs Britain’
As well as doubts over costs and timescales, there is also the problem of how to safely dispose of the waste that nuclear power stations generate and concerns of the safety of coastal nuclear sites that will be prone to storm surges and rising sea-levels. Research by Ensia suggests that at least 100 US, European, and Asian nuclear power stations built just a few meters above sea level could be threatened.
John Vidal (2018) ‘Are coastal nuclear power plants ready for sea-level rise?’
In order to sell an expensive and unsafe technology as an energy provision solution, the nuclear industry have promoted nuclear energy as a low carbon solution, however this is most certainly not the case. Mining and purifying the uranium, building and maintaining the nuclear power stations and processing and storing the waste all incur carbon costs. In order for it to remain safe, waste stored at Sellafield requires a gas-fired power station in order to keep it cool, and this energy input will be required for many years into the future. Seen in this light, and over the longer term, nuclear can never be considered low carbon.
Hydrogen and Carbon Capture and Storage
Hydrogen has been a hot topic in Wales in recent years, yet it appears that many people who appear to support it haven’t researched the topic and why its fate is coupled to the more controversial technology of CCS. In order to sell both technologies on a joint ticket, they have been combined into a concept known as ‘Blue Hydrogen’ and sold within the framework of ‘low carbon’ industrial clusters, which are mooted for a number of locations around the UK coast. In Wales, the principal target location is the north east, where a ‘Blue Hydrogen’ project is among those in the HyNet cluster, planned for the Irish Sea, which also spans coastal areas of the north west of England. The project is a coalition of fossil fuel interests (ENI, Essar and Ineos) and was approved earlier this year. A second project called HyLine Cymru is mooted for the south between Port Talbot and Pembroke Dock, which includes a 130km pipeline between the two locations. The project is led by Wales & West Utilities in collaboration with eight organisations (RWE, Shell, Tata Steel UK, Associated British Ports, Dolphyn Celtic Sea Developments, LanzaTech, National Grid Gas Transmission (NGGT) and Pembrokeshire County Council).
The term ‘Hydrogen Economy’ was first coined by John Bockris during a talk he gave at General Motors in the USA in 1970, in order to address concerns about fossil fuel depletion and environmental pollution. The idea has remained largely on the back burner for some time. Hydrogen hype in the early 2000s led nowhere and interest was revived with the formation of the ‘Hydrogen Council’ in 2017, with hydrogen promoted as an energy intermediary that could help on the pathway to ‘Net Zero’. The diagram shows the members of the Hydrogen Council Steering Committee in 2020, which clearly shows the technology is being promoted by the fossil fuel incumbency.
Marc Hudson’s book looks at the history of CCS, which dates back to the 1970s and the North Sea in Europe. The USA was the first country to implement CCS, but early rollouts of the technology were for methane gas processing with the CO2 removed used for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), where CO2 is pumped into depleted oil wells, in order to displace the difficult to extract last fraction of oil. This approach, sometimes termed CCUS (Carbon Capture, Utilisation and Storage) is clearly a scam intended to sustain business-as-usual for the oil industry. The majority of CCS projects currently in operation are for EOR (29 out of 41).
Jaramillo et al (2009) ‘Life Cycle Inventory of CO2 in an Enhanced Oil Recovery System’
The International Energy Agency notes that “between 300kg CO2 and 600kg CO2 is injected in EOR processes per barrel of oil produced in the United States. Given that a barrel of oil releases around 400kg CO2 when combusted, and around 100kg on average during the production, processing and transport of the oil, this opens up the possibility for the full lifecycle emissions intensity of oil to be neutral or even carbon-negative”.
Christopher McGlade (2019) ‘Can CO2 really provide carbon negative oil?’
However, this overlooks the energy that must be expended to capture and transport the CO2. When the carbon costs were more accurately accounted for a coal-fired CO2 plant coupled to an EOR operation, the footprint of the oil was still 438kg CO2 per barrel of oil (an emission reduction of 36% but most definitely not “carbon negative”).
Azzolina et al (2016) ‘How green is my oil? A detailed look at greenhouse gas accounting for CO2-enhanced oil recovery (CO2-EOR) sites’
In addition, any emission reductions from such a technology coupling can’t be double counted. If CO2 captured from a coal-fired power plant is used for EOR, it may indeed reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of the oil produced, but then it can't also be considered to have also reduced the emissions from the coal-fired plant. Clearly the net impact will be carbon positive as the oil would not have been easily recovered without the CO2. Claims of “carbon negative” oil need are nothing more than industry spin.
In 1996, Norway’s Statoil began to inject CO2 into geological formations in the North Sea in order to avoid paying a carbon tax. Yet without such financial incentives UK industry remained uncommitted to the technology.
Hype around CCS began to snowball in 2005 with the ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and the publication of a special IPPC Report on Carbon Capture and Storage. In 2006, the Carbon Capture and Storage Authority (CCSA) was formed, a European organisation founded to accelerate the commercialisation of the technology. That same year, the release of Al Gore’s film, ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ and George Monbiot’s book Heat, drew attention to the climate change issue with Monbiot claiming that both hydrogen and CCS were viable solutions, although his arguments were unconvincing. However, by the end of the decade, a major global financial crisis and failure to agree a way forward at the COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009 stalled progress.
This trend continued when competitions ran by Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) between 2007-2011 and 2012-2015 both ended in failure with no bids taken forward into development. Thus, although CCS has had political support from both Labour and the Conservatives for some time, it has lacked the coordination needed between government, the fossil fuel industry and investors. The thinking has been that the technology is expensive, unproven and lacks financial incentives, thus attempts to initiate the industry in the UK have failed. This is borne out by the reality that there are currently 41 operational CCS projects in the world, with 26 under construction, but none of these are in the UK.
Global CCS Institute (2023) Global Status of CCS 2023
The Limitations of Carbon Capture and Storage
The executive summary of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report implies the necessity of carbon capture and storage to mitigate emissions. However, the Working Group III report also points to “uncertainty in the future deployment of CCS” and cautions against reliance on the technology, given “concerns about storage safety and cost” and the “non-negligible risk” of CO2 leakage.
IPCC (2022) Sixth Assessment Report (Working Group III)
IPCC assessment reports are known to underestimate costs and overestimate the likelihood of technological advancements.
Just Have a Think (2024) ‘Carbon Capture and Storage. Inconvenient new data’
The majority of Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) which act as roadmaps towards ‘Net Zero’ futures are reliant CCS and Negative Emissions Technologies (NETs), such as Biomass with CCS (BECCS) in order to reach ‘Net Zero’.
IAMs give less weight to future costs using a methodology known as discounting, which act as a bias towards CCS and NETs, with the assumption that these technologies will be ready in the future. There is a lack of transparency of the inner workings of IAMs and their input assumptions leading to a risk of treating IAMs as objective, which can lead to path-dependency at the expense of a more diverse set of approaches.
Gambhir et al (2019) ‘A Review of Criticisms of Integrated Assessment Models and Proposed Approaches to Address These, through the Lens of BECCS’
Workman et al (2020) ‘Decision making in contexts of deep uncertainty - An alternative approach for long-term climate policy'
The scenario that offers the best chance of meeting 1.5-2C targets actually makes limited use of industry carbon capture technologies. Instead, it focuses on a rapid phase out of fossil fuels, and a limited amount of carbon removal by natural sources.
Grubler et al (2018) ‘A low energy demand scenario for meeting the 1.5 °C target and sustainable development goals without negative emission technologies’
In 2021, a landmark paper in Nature Energy noted that:
“Established climate mitigation scenarios assume continued economic growth in all countries, and reconcile this with the Paris targets by betting on speculative technological change. Post-growth approaches may make it easier to achieve rapid mitigation while improving social outcomes, and should be explored by climate modellers.”
Hickel et al (2021) ‘Urgent need for post-growth climate mitigation scenarios’
Everywhere CCS has been attempted, the technology has been plagued with cost overruns and technical inadequacies. To date, barely a single CCS scheme worldwide has collected as much carbon as promised.
Buchsbaum & Donnelly (2023) 'Fossil Fuel Companies Made Bold Promises to Capture Carbon. Here’s What Actually Happened’
One reason why CCS has become embedded in the narrative is due to it's appearance in the 2005 special IPCC Report, which is where the 90% carbon capture rate figure first appeared.
IPCC (2005) ‘Carbon Capture and Storage’
The 90% capture rate is derived from three industrial processes cited in the report with pure CO2 streams. In practice no company has ever achieved anything like 90% with any form of power generation or when making hydrogen via steam methane reforming. Power plants have impure CO2 streams which require energy to be inputed in order to capture CO2 at lower concentrations. Thus the reality seems to be around a 60% capture rate at best, with the additional energy input increasing emissions.
During an extensive literature review conducted in 2020, I could only find one paper that questioned this 90% figure, but nothing that traced the flaw back to the 2005 IPCC report. The compound error has found it’s way into work by scientists modelling low carbon pathways, helping to reinforce industry narratives, which assume that CCS is an effective way to reduce emissions. It’s no wonder policymakers are confused, as reality has repeatedly shown this capture rate isn’t borne out in practice.
CCS coupled to coal-fired power plants has struggled with these thermodynamic limitations and one of the two plants that attempted to pioneer the technology is now closed. Petra Nova in Texas, USA was designed to only capture 33% from one unit, only 9% of the plants total emissions.Even so, it still missed its carbon capture target by 17%. The plant suffered repeated technical problems and suffered outages on 367 days before being shut down, according to a report by the US Department of Energy.
Nichola Groom (2020) ‘Problems plagued U.S. CO2 capture project before shutdown’
The other CCS coal project,Boundary Dam in Canada has also been plagued by problems and has captured much less than expected. When all the plant's emissions are factored in, the average capture rate was only 57%, according to a report by David Schlissel, for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
"If you're going to try to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by capturing CO2, you've got to capture almost all the emissions and you've got to do it year in and year out for decades. Carbon capture hasn't done what its proponents claimed it would do.”
Bob Weber (2024) ‘Missed emissions goals at Sask. carbon capture project raising questions’
Chevron has admitted that its Gorgon CCS gas processing project in Australia is operating at just a third of its capacity, with the plant beset by problems.
Daniel Mercer (2023) ‘World's biggest carbon capture plant running at one third capacity, Chevron Australia reveals’
Until recently, two fields in the North Sea were the only long-term geological storage sites. Both have also been subject to problems.
Grant Hauber (2023) ‘Presentation: Norway’s Sleipner and Snøhvit CCS: Industry models or cautionary tales?’
Capturing CO2 from the flue gases of gas turbines is even an greater challenge than for coal-fired power plants, due to the lower concentrations of the gas. To date, there are no gas-fired CCS plans in operation anywhere in the world, so the technology is entirely unproven. One is planned for the 'Net Zero Teeside' (NZT) project, which alongside HyNet is the other UK project that has been given initial Track 1 approval.
Shell’s Quest ‘Blue Hydrogen’ plan in Alberta, Canada has emitted more greenhouse gases than it captured over the first five years of its operation. Despite having captured 5 million tonnes of carbon, it has emitted a further 7.5 million tonnesof climate polluting gases during the same time, equating to a capture rate of 48%. The project has consumed over 650 million US$ of public money, confirming that these kinds of projects aren’t viable without huge subsidies.
Global Witness (2022) ‘Hydrogen’s Hidden Emissions’
A report earlier this year by Carbon Tracker assessed two carbon capture projects linked to the NZT cluster, reporting that lifetime emissions could be two to three times the values stated in environmental impact assessments. The government has clearly underestimated the upstream emissions from natural gas extraction, processing and transport associated of liquid natural gas (LNG), especially if sourced from the USA. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, 83 times that of CO2 over a 20-year period. The report also states that emission reductions from CCS coupled to gas-fired power could be 30-60% lower than originally claimed.
Carbon Tracker (2024) ‘Kind of Blue’
This is backed up by studies which suggests methane leaks from gas production in North Sea fields are underestimated by a factor of five.
Riddick and Mauzerall (2023) ‘Likely substantial underestimation of reported methane emissions from United Kingdom upstream oil and gas activities’
The war in Ukraine and the destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipeline from Russia to Europe has increased Europe’s dependence on fracked gas from the USA, which has a large carbon footprint even before being liquefied and transported across the Atlantic.
Hart & Schlosser (2022) ’Fracking execs see the Ukraine crisis as an oil and gas goldmine’
The case against carbon capture and storage is summarised in this comprehensive report by Food and Water Watch (2021) ‘The Case Against Carbon Capture’.
Note that carbon capture as a ‘solution’ also includes the spurious concept of Direct Air Carbon Capture (DACC), which is subject to the same thermodynamic limitations due to the very low proportion of CO2 in the air.
Lackner (2013) ‘The thermodynamics of direct air capture of carbon dioxide’
DACC is one of two so-called ‘Negative Emissions Technologies’ that utilises CCS, the other being BECCS. Biomass plants with CCS are not currently a threat in Wales and a detailed discussion is outside the scope of this review. Suffice to say, it’s another speculative and unproven ‘solution’ that poses huge ecological concerns if attempted on a global scale.
fern (2022) ‘Six problems with BECCS’
Drax power station in Yorkshire is currently attempting to design this technology at small scale, with a view to scaling it up for use in one of their flue stacks. As I understand it, they haven't made much progress to date and the project looks more like a mechanism for capturing public money as an additional subsidy than it does for capturing carbon or mitigating emissions.
As Kevin Anderson once said, these are 'Dr Strangelove Options’.
Kevin Anderson (2015) ‘Talks in the city of light generate more heat’
CCS as a Method of Capturing Public Finances
Despite all the problems, support for CCS has not waned. Government restructuring to create the Department of Business Energy Investment & Skills (BEIS) in 2016 and the creation of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) in 2023 has helped streamline political support, with the neoliberal consensus being that if economic growth and fossil fuels are pursued, then CCS must be one of the pathways to emission reductions. This was encapsulated by the idea of the Clean Growth Strategy (CGS) formulated by Claire Perry in 2017, which attempted to reduce costs to industry in order to incentivise projects. CCS became coupled to the ‘Hydrogen Economy’ via the idea of ‘low carbon’ industrial clusters, which are seen to be an integral part of the roadmap towards the mythical 2050 ‘Net Zero’ goal. However, whilst the designs for these new industrials cluster are more modern and less polluting than heavy industries powered by coal, they will never be ‘low carbon’.
Oil Change International has identified how since 2010, previous Tory-led governments have committed or spent almost £500m on CCS projects. Yet, despite hundreds of millions in public investment, companies failed to bring even a single commercial-scale CCS project online in the UK.
Oil Change International (2024) ‘Funding Failure: The True Cost of Carbon Capture in the UK’
Financial incentives in the US via the 45Q tax credits scheme and the Inflation Reduction Act (2022) has enabled the growth of the industry, although public money appears to have been captured more efficiently than carbon dioxide.
Oakley Shelton-Thomas (2022) ’Carbon Capture: Billions of Federal Dollars Poured Into Failure’
The same dynamics have played out in the EU, with hundreds of millions of euros of public money spent, for very little gain. The EU proposes a target of capturing 50Mt of CO2 by 2030, rising dramatically to 450Mt by 2050, but presently just 1Mt of CO2 per year is captured. This means that CO2 capture capacity would need to increase 450 times over the next 25 years to hit these targets. Corporate Europe Observatory note that “fossil fuel industry-dominated groups are increasingly being given an official role in shaping EU climate and energy policy.”
Corporate Europe Observatory (2024) The Carbon Coup
EUobserver reported that although €587 million in subsidies were spent on CCS initiatives between 2007 and 2016, not a single demonstration plant was built during this period.
Peter Teffer (2024) ‘After spending €587 million EU has zero CO2 storage plants’
The Dangers of Carbon Capture and Storage
Labour MS Carolyn Thomas has highlighted some of the problems with CCS plans drawn up for north east Wales by HyNet.
Carolyn Thomas (2024) ‘Carbon capture in north Wales – an expensive white elephant?’
“For the last couple of years, here in north east Wales, local communities, local authorities, politicians, and town & community councils have all been facing a political charm offensive from the carbon capture industry.”
Note what’s been observed is very similar to the picture painted by Mabon ap Gwynfor in his book ‘Going Nuclear’. It’s unsurprising that both industries would adopt similar tactics.
A further analysis of the HyNet project by the same politician shows that approximately 31km of underground pipe will be laid across Flintshire. This will cross the River Dee and twenty-six watercourses, with significant impacts to businesses, farmers, residents and ecosystems.
Carolyn Thomas (2024) 'Pipe will cross the River Dee and twenty-six watercourses'
Carbon dioxide is both an asphyxiant and intoxicant. Exposure can cause symptoms ranging from confusion and dizziness to coma and even death. In Satartia, Mississippi, the rupture of a carbon dioxide pipeline led to 45 people being hospitalised. some now have long-term health issues.
Julia Simon (2023) ’The U.S. is expanding CO2 pipelines. One poisoned town wants you to know its story’
That’s not the only reported incident of a leak. Fortunately, a more recent incident in Sulphur, Louisiana didn’t result in any serious injuries.
Tristan Baurick (2024) ‘A stark warning’: Latest carbon dioxide leak raises concerns about safety, regulation
However, the potential for disaster can be substantial. In 1986, volcanic activity displaced a large bubble of CO2 at Lake Nyos in Cameroon. The CO2 formed a low-lying cloud which spread over 15 miles and killed 1,746 people.
Barberi et al (1989) ‘The gas cloud of Lake Nyos (Cameroon, 1986): Results of the Italian technical mission’
Leaks from pipelines under the sea can increase ocean acidification posing risks to marine ecosystems.
Widdicombe et al (2013) ‘Assessing the environmental consequences of CO2 leakage from geological CCS: Generating evidence to support environmental risk assessment’
There is no guarantee that the CO2 buried underground will remain trapped there. Variations in subsurface geology, fractures or water channels could allow CO2 to rise to the surface.
Qafoku et al (2017) ‘Review of the impacts of leaking CO2 gas and brine on groundwater quality’
Saline aquifers make up the bulk of the CO2 storage capacity, but it’s not clear what proportion are viable. Some studies have assessed the potential geological storage capacity to be a limit.
Scott et al (2015) ‘Fossil fuels in a trillion tonne world’
Storage leaks can also contaminate groundwater and soil, posing risks to human health.
Siirila et al (2012) ‘A quantitative methodology to assess the risks to human health from CO2 leakage into groundwater’
ADM’s Decatur carbon sequestration site in Illinois in the USA was recently found to have violated the Safe Drinking Water Act according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The Illinois Clean Jobs Coalition stated that the companies failure to notify the public was ‘unacceptable and dangerous’.
Andrew Adam (2024) ‘ADM carbon sequestration project violated safe drinking water act per EPA’
The risk of leakage is amplified by earthquakes and other natural disasters. There are no plans to monitor the CO2 reservoirs for leakage beyond 20 years for the HyNet project.
Seismicity and Earthquake Risks
Wastewater injection operations conducted when fracking, are known to cause earthquakes and CO2 storage is no different in this regard. CO2 injection into underground wells has triggered seismic events with magnitude as high as 4.4, which can damage buildings and infrastructure. Extensive oil exploitation may comprise the integrity of some reservoirs. CO2 injection can also result in geomechanical deformation of reservoirs and substantial microseismic activity.
Verdon et al (2013) ‘Comparison of geomechanical deformation induced by megatonne-scale CO2 storage at Sleipner, Weyburn, and In Salah’.
Stork et al (2015) ‘The microseismic response at the In Salah Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) site’
Gan & Frohlich (2013) ‘Gas injection may have triggered earthquakes in the Cogdell oil field, Texas’
Storage in saline aquifers can increase underground pressure, limiting capacity and increasing the risk of fractures or seismic events. Many industry CCS studies tend to overestimate CO2 storage capacities and overlook CO2 transportation, as point sources of emissions may be far from storage reservoirs.
Thibeau & Mucha (2011) ‘Have We Overestimated Saline Aquifer CO2 Storage Capacities?’
Cavanagh & Wildgust (2011) ‘Pressurization and brine displacement issues for deep saline formation CO2 storage’
There was also controversy over an alleged leak at Weyburn in Canada.
Boyd et al (2013) ‘Controversy in technology innovation: Contrasting media and expert risk perceptions of the alleged leakage at the Weyburn carbon dioxide storage demonstration project’
From 2019 onwards, a hydrogen ‘hype cycle’ has been in full swing. The mainstream media decided to go along with the idea, so in 2020, I decided to research it in more depth.
What I found researching hydrogen surprised me. I discovered a paper from 2006 by Ulf Bossel, a leading expert in the field, that was almost completely overlooked by anyone writing about the ‘merits’ of hydrogen. Notably I couldn’t find any reference to it in any of the industry documents or in UK government energy policy documents.
The four page summary completely dismantles the case for a ‘Hydrogen Economy' on thermodynamic grounds. Since hydrogen is an inefficient energy intermediary, the case for ‘Green Hydrogen’ is also largely ruled out. The paper is in a prestigious US journal, the ‘Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers’, is well-cited by academia (451 citations according to Google Scholar as of 20/09/2024). It’s also missing from the HyCymru or HyLine propaganda that’s been used in Wales to sell hydrogen as a ‘clean’ and ‘green’ fuel.
Bossel states clearly in this paper, that due to its inherent inefficiencies, physical properties and the materials intensity required to convert existing gas grids into being ‘hydrogen-ready’, it doesn’t appear to be the silver bullet it’s being made out to be. Hydrogen combusted in a boiler or gas turbine can also produce nitrogen oxides (NOx), which contribute to air pollution.
Ulf Bossel (2006) Does a Hydrogen Economy make sense?
That wasn’t the only paper I found that had a comprehensive critique of the ‘Hydrogen Economy’.
“No currently available hydrogen pathway, irrespective of whether it uses fossil fuels, nuclear fuels, or renewable technology as the primary energy source to generate electricity or heat is as efficient as using the electric power or heat from any of these sources directly.”
Kreith and West (2004) ‘Fallacies of a Hydrogen Economy: A Critical Analysis of Hydrogen Production and Utilization’
This does beg the question, if this was well understood two decades ago, why has the idea again come to prominence? Thermodynamic arguments don't change over time and that nobody ever won an argument with the second law of thermodynamics, although many are still trying to this day.
An analysis by Tom Baxter for The Chemical Engineer agreed that hydrogen isn’t low carbon and that better alternatives are available.
Tom Baxter (2020) ‘Net Zero: Alternatives to Hydrogen’
A 2021 paper by Robert Howarth and Mark Jacobson demolished the argument that integrating hydrogen with carbon capture reduces emissions. ‘Blue Hydrogen’ was shown to be more greenhouse gas intensive than directly burning the methane without carbon capture.
Howarth and Jacobson (2021) ‘How green is blue hydrogen?’
Hydrogen is a small molecule and prone to leakage. It’s also an indirect greenhouse gas with a global warming potential of 12 estimated over a 100 year period (GWP-100). This rises to 37 over a shorter 20 year period (GWP-20). Potential leaks are excluded when estimating the climate impact of hydrogen, so its true greenhouse gas intensity is underestimated. There is no consensus in the literature on how much leakage a ‘Hydrogen Economy’ would incur. It seems strange that more research has not been conducted in this area, given the extensive ‘Hydrogen Economy’ that is being proposed.
Sand et al (2023) ‘A multi-model assessment of the Global Warming Potential of hydrogen’
Warwick et al (2023) ‘Atmospheric composition and climate impacts of a future hydrogen economy’
The climate impacts of hydrogen are summarised in this Guardian article by Kevin Anderson and Simon Oldridge, who outline how lax UK regulations offer up the opportunity for the hydrogen industry to siphon off huge amounts of public money. The UK’s ‘Low Carbon Hydrogen Standard’ has also been rigged to make ‘Blue Hydrogen’ look low carbon by allowing the following assumptions:
Underestimating methane leaks from production and distribution
Overlooking the impact of LNG
Using the lower GWP-100 instead of the GWP-20 for methane.
Ignoring the emissions from constructing the hydrogen plants and associated infrastructure
Overlooking hydrogens role as an indirect greenhouse gas
Anderson and Oldridge (2024) ‘Warning: the UK government’s hydrogen plan isn’t green at all, it’s another oil industry swindle’
In 2021, Chris Jackson, resigned as CEO of the UK Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association stating: “I believe passionately that I would be betraying future generations by remaining silent on the fact that ‘Blue Hydrogen’ is at best an expensive distraction, and at worst a lock-in for continued fossil fuel use that guarantees we will fail to meet our decarbonisation goals.”
Last year a consortium shelved plans to build the 700MW Cavendish ‘Blue Hydrogen’ project in the Thames Estuary, following concerns about the project’s technical and economic challenges and uncertainty about government support for hydrogen for heating homes.
Rachel Parkes (2023) ‘Shell-backed blue hydrogen project shelved amid cost concerns’
The UK scrapped plans to trial using hydrogen to heat homes until at least 2026, after schemes in Whitby and Redcar were cancelled. Local opposition to the pilot scheme in Whitby, Cheshire led to the scheme being abandoned after concerns about safety were raised. The village trial planned for Redcar was also scrapped as Northern Gas Networks were unable to source ‘low carbon' hydrogen for the scheme. Many also questioned why more efficient domestic solutions such as heat pumps weren’t being implemented.
Adam Duckett (2024) ‘UK shelves hydrogen town trial’
When solutions are imposed on communities they tend to fight back. We saw this in the decade long struggle against fracking in England.
At present the two main uses for hydrogen areto refine petroleum and make ammonia for fertiliser via the Haber-Bosch process. Neither of these two uses are really sustainable in the long-term.
‘Green Hydrogen’ made from renewable energy via electrolysis is still three times more expensive than fossil hydrogen and only makes up only around 1% of total UK hydrogen production.
Intermittency represents a challenge for electrolysis systems powered by renewable energy. Alkaline electrolysers are the most common method of making hydrogen from water but require 30-60 minutes to restart after shutdown and repeated intermittency can impact on the efficiency of production and the operational lifespan of the electrolyser. Proton Exchange Membrane systems offer a faster cold start and therefore better coupling to renewable energy systems, but are still in commercial development.
Wang et al (2024) ‘Water electrolyzer operation scheduling for green hydrogen production: A review’
Tackling climate change will place huge demands on renewable energy, which will be expected to meet much of our electricity, heating and transport energy needs. Although often framed as ‘zero carbon’, renewable energy technologies have a carbon and ecological footprint, which should be minimised by using them as effectively as possible. A ‘Hydrogen Economy’ appears to be steering society towards less efficient outcomes, which will consume more scarce, non-renewable resources, impact biodiversity and increase pollution.
Kleijn and van der Voet (2010) 'Resource constraints in a hydrogen economy based on renewable energy sources: An exploration’
There are increased material requirements of a large-scale ‘Hydrogen Economy’, as we will be required to roll out a whole new pipeline infrastructure and compressor stations in order to support the hydrogen gas grid, as the current polyethylene pipe network won’t work with pure hydrogen. Having two parallel distribution systems raises costs significantly and has ecological impacts. Hydrogen can cause embrittlement of iron or steel pipes, which cause cracks when pipeline pressure is cycled so more expensive, durable materials such as stainless steel are required. Wider stainless steel pipes add significant costs for national grid networks and require scarce metals such as chromium and nickel. Costs of compressors are also higher, as hydrogen requires three times more power per unit of energy transmitted than methane.
Ogden (1999) ‘Prospects for Building a Hydrogen Energy Infrastructure’
We should question the low carbon credentials of ‘Green Hydrogen’. The carbon footprint of renewable energy is often understated, a commonly cited figure in the scientific literature is that renewables have a carbon footprint that is 5% of fossil fuels. These lifecycle analyses often underestimate the embodied energy costs. At least 25% of the energy is lost during the electrolysis step when making ‘Green Hydrogen’ and more work still has to be done to make use of the hydrogen created.
It’s notable that whilst there there will be ecological impacts on Wales’ delicate ecology if renewable energy is scaled to enable a ‘Hydrogen Economy’, the greater impacts will be seen overseas where the required metals and minerals are mined, leading to a form of ‘Green Colonialism’. In addition to the often overlooked ecological footprint, many of the metals for the set of technologies that's needed (solar, wind, batteries and electrolysers) are constrained by resource limits.
Watari et al (2018) ‘Analysis of Potential for Critical Metal Resource Constraints in the International Energy Agency’s Long-Term Low-Carbon Energy Scenarios'
Natural History Museum (2019) ‘Leading scientists set out resource challenge of meeting net zero emissions in the UK by 2050’
‘Green Hydrogen’ is often touted as a way of producing and storing energy from surplus renewable energy production. Yet this is one of the lowest efficiency storage solutions available, with a round-trip efficiency of around 25%.
The hydrogen industry’s response has been to ignore such findings and double down on rhetoric that the technology is 'clean’ and ‘green’. Such vague terms sound great on paper but neither can be really clearly defined. By contrast there are metrics by which we can define a technology as ‘low carbon’ and ‘sustainable' can be defined as meeting “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” as per the UN ‘Our Common Future report’ (1987).
United Nations (1987) ‘Our Common Future’
Wales has a groundbreaking piece of legislation that effectively enacts this definition, the ‘Well-Being of Future Generations Act’ (2015).
What’s needed is for politicians and local councils to stay within the guidelines of the act when deciding energy policy. But will planning permission be decided by local councils or by Westminster if they are deemed to be Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects? Ambitions to make the infrastructure consenting process faster and ‘greener’ were made in the in the National Infrastructure Strategy (2020) and reinforced in the British Energy Security Strategy (2022).
National Infrastructure Strategy (2020)
British Energy Security Strategy (2022)
What is the business use case for ‘Green Hydrogen’? The most coherent case can be made is as a reducing agent for certain industrial process - steel being one, so-called Green Steel, or as a replacement for fossil hydrogen in ammonia production.
The recent confirmation of the closure of the last blast furnace at the Tata Steel plant in Port Talbot, means that Wales will no longer be able to make new steel.
Huw Thomas and Adrian Browne (2024) ‘The UK Government confirms Tata Steel subsidy’
Tata will only be able to recycle steel via the new electric arc facility when that comes online in a few years. So there will be an immediate loss of steelmaking capacity, but Wales will never be able to produce the same quantities as before unless the ability to make new steel is restored. There appears to be no argument being made for Green Steel by Labour, either in Wales or in England, so the business case for low carbon Green Steel isn't there at present.
There is a also real danger of framing the problem in carbon terms when environmentalists talk of a ‘Climate Emergency’ and invoke technofix ‘solutions’ in order to address this perceived crisis. We need to ask who is promoting this narrative.
Tim Hayward (2024) - ‘Who says there is a climate emergency?’
This skewed perspective is concerning given that the latest ‘Planetary Boundaries’ health check suggests that 7 of the 9 boundaries may be transgressed.
Daimen Gayle (2024) ‘Earth may have breached seven of nine planetary boundaries, health check shows’
Freeports are ‘Special Economic Zones’, where taxes and regulations are removed to encourage business and investment. Their aim is also to foster simplified customs procedures and relief on customs duties. There are serious concerns they will enable corruption and money laundering.
Richard Murphy (2023) ‘Freeports are dangerous’
Three of the four major energy projects in Wales referenced in this essay are within areas bounded by freeports. Deregulating heavy industry poses serious environmental risks and raises concerns human rights will be violated.
Welsh Government (2023) ‘Wales’ new freeports unveiled’
The Wylfa nuclear site lies within the Anglesey Freeport. The HyLine project lies within the Celtic Freeport. Some of the HyNet project lies within the area bounded by the Liverpool City Region Freeport but is also within the Deeside Enterprise Zone, which is similar to a Freeport.
Welsh Government (2024) ‘Deeside Enterprise Zone’
The claim is made that freeports in Wales will be compliant with the ‘Well-Being of Future Generations Act’ (2015) and Wales’ ‘Net Zero’ commitments but laws may be more difficult to enforce when areas are placed under the control of corporations. Richard Murphy notes that freeports are basically tax havens and that “countries with low levels of taxation and regulation are almost always associated with high levels of crime, low levels of income for the population as a whole, unstable government, and corruption”.
Richard Murphy (2024) ’Why freeports are basically tax havens’
Conclusion: How Have We Ended Up Here?
Why have these so-called low carbon energy 'solutions' not been properly debated in Wales? The questions I've posed in this article, aren't just about energy provision, carbon accounting or ecological impacts. They also concern land rights, the centralisation of power, resource extraction and how rural and coastal communities are impacted by the decisions made by neoliberal technocratic thinking.
Media, NGOs, think tanks and academics have been deployed to make a case for hydrogen and that’s opened the door to CCS. Narratives have been promoted by the hydrocarbon industry, which needs ‘Blue Hydrogen’ to stay relevant in a world that recognises that we must reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The ideas have been pushed down into the public realm by media outlets like BylinesCymru, where authors have clear conflicts of interest and it appears that quite a few have swallowed the greenwash peddled by HyCymru and their lobbyist coordinator, Guto Owen. However, his views are clearly not impartial as he’s Director of energy company, Ynni Glân with interests in hydrogen fuel cells. Unfortunately, people seem to have accepted the myths of a ‘clean’ and ‘green’ technology, without researching the limitations of what has been proposed. Often ‘Green Hydrogen’ is presented as a ‘clean’ technology without providing use cases for why it’s required in the first place and can considered in isolation, as though we’ll only get ‘Green Hydrogen’ and not fossil hydrogen. This isn’t just an oversight, it's the only way that the large-scale 'Blue Hydrogen’ projects can be given any legitimacy. But without economies of scale, ‘Green Hydrogen’ is less viable as a solution as it's much more expensive than ‘Grey Hydrogen’, which is how the majority of hydrogen is manufactured.A UK ‘Hydrogen Economy’ is dependent on having the publicly subsidised industrial clusters to create economies of scale. Without these larger projects, the idea of a ‘Hydrogen Economy’ falls apart.
Neoliberal governments of the UK, be they Conservative or Labour love the idea of a ‘Hydrogen Economy’ as it creates a new industry and the jobs that go with that. However, due to it’s increased ecological and climate impacts, a ‘Hydrogen Economy’ is not a ‘Well-Being Economy', so within Wales, hydrogen as an energy intermediary fails that key legal test.
In conclusion, carbon the reduction potential of hydrogen and CCS is difficult to assess and modelled on speculative technologies which are not yet operational. The fossil fuel incumbency has been able to sell the idea of ‘low carbon’ industrial clusters and ‘Green Hydrogen’ to the public via a captured, compliant media. This approaches provides a false assurance that prolongs the combustion of fossil fuels. Delayed mitigation could affect vulnerable low-emitting countries and future generations hardest, raising concerns about equity. The fossil fuel industry have repeatedly made it clear that scaling up CCS and hydrogen isn’t viable without public funding and it appears to be more of a money making scam than a viable attempt to mitigate emissions. The ‘Hydrogen Economy' reinforces middle class perceptions about climate change and how it can potentially be solved by tech-solutions. There appear to be a lack of critical voices in the Welsh commentariat highlighting these issues.
The problem appears to be one of narrative capture by the nuclear, hydrogen and carbon capture industries. Yet it's 2024 and we don't have time for these expensive, dangerous distractions.
This article has framed the issue through a Welsh lens. Yet, many of the same issues are in play in England.
The imposition of several large wind farms planned for upland areas of central Wales between our two largest National Parks is also of concern to this narrative. I’ve recently did a trip to Machynlleth and back and noticed that campaigns against the proliferation of wind turbines and the pylon network to support an energy corridor running south west from Maldwyn to Caerffyrddin were quite prominent. I spoke to several people during my trip who are unhappy that the companies such as Bute Energy planning these developments are headquartered outside Wales.
Martin Shipton (2024) ‘We’re not Nimbys but defenders of rural Wales’ says Bute Energy’s leading opponent’.
Reading between the lines, it seems that the electricity supply is being put in place to power Birmingham and the ‘low carbon’ cluster that’s being proposed for south west Wales, which encompasses the HyLine project between Port Talbot and Pembroke Dock. It’s another debate we’re not having, as the full picture is being hidden from us. The extractive nature of the Welsh energy economy was summed by Carolyn Thomas in the article I linked to earlier.
“Whether it is foreign fossil fuel polluters or the Crown Estate, non-Welsh entities are exploiting Welsh natural resources and syphoning the profits outside of the country.”
Starmer’s plans for ‘Great British Energy’ (GBE) are indeed quite different to the vision of energy democracy, where local communities own and run the infrastructure, that was offered by his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn. Which kind of future do we want for Wales? Without independence it seems that the people of Wales are likely to have unsustainable and dangerous energy solutions imposed on them. GBE isn’t a strategy to decarbonise the economy; it’s a Private Finance Initiative project whose aim is to grow the economy and reindustrialise coastal regions. Since ‘Green Growth’ is a fallacy, the likelihood is that the UK will continue to fail to meet its ongoing carbon budgets.
On September 30th, the UK’s last coal-fired power plant will close. Port Talbot steelwork’s final blast furnace will shutdown on the same day and Grangemouth in Scotland is set to close next year too.
Jillian Ambrose (2024) 'Powering down: end times for the UK’s final coal-fired station’
Andy Davies (2024) ‘Nearly 2,000 jobs to be lost as Port Talbot braces for closure of blast furnace’
I suspect we are now looking at the high watermark of progress on the road to 'Net Zero’. Reducing the UK’s dependency on coal was a long-term objective, but there are concrete plans to mitigate or turn off gas-fired power and there has been no ‘Just Transition’ for communities. Instead we are being sold the illusion of ‘Blue Hydrogen’. Investment decisions for HyNet's project and NZT (both designated Track 1 projects) are imminent. NZT is subject to a legal challenge which will delay that decision.
Future articles will look into the people who are lobbying for hydrogen in Wales and also how energy provision intertwines with land rights and the debate over the devolution the Crown Estate in Wales.
