Climate goals could make gas heating obsolete. So why do gas companies keep adding customers? Building more gas infrastructure is like investing in video rental stores 15 years ago, says expert
Climate goals could make gas heating obsolete. So why do gas companies keep adding customers? Building more gas infrastructure is like investing in video rental stores 15 years ago, says expert
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Natural gas infrastructure and heating could be transitioned to hydrogen or biogas.
Most hydrogen is produced from natural gas so would not really be a replacement for the foreseeable future. Gas infrastructure is not designed for transporting hydrogen so leaks would be significant. Hydrogen can also penetrate into steel piping and cause it to crack and deteriorate more rapidly.
Biogas, sure if there were enough production available.
No reason we can't produce hydrogen from solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal.
Add carbon dioxide to the hydrogen, and you get methane that you can transport through existing gas pipelines without the issues of hydrogen
A perfect Electrolysis reaction takes about 39kwh to produce 1kg of hydrogen that if burned at 100% efficiency would yield 33kwh of power. More realistically it takes 50-60kwh to produce 1kg that is burned to produce ~25kwh of usable energy.
I'm not too sure about converting hydrogen to methane but that will have energy overhead as well, and then you have to deal with the fact that 6% of natural gas production today is leaked into the air, which both further hurts the efficiency of synthesizing it and also has a significant climate impact.
I think it willl almost always be cheaper to just provide electricity directly except in cases where energy density is far more important than efficiency, which is not the case for stationary homes.
It doesn't have a negative climate impact if the source is renewables. That's the point. Its basically free gas.
Solar energy doesn't run at night. Wind doesn't always run. Hydro doesn't work during droughts.
This is a battery that solvers these issues.
If you take co2 and convert it to methane and then release that methane you are increasing the impact of that co2 by 6x.
Something like 90% of hydrogen is produced from methane and coal, so there clearly are reasons. Most likely cost effectiveness.
Add carbon dioxide to the hydrogen, and you get methane that you can transport through existing gas pipelines
Well sure, since those pipes are already transporting methane. I dont think requiring each home to have its own methane pyrolysis infrastructure is particularly practical or efficient either.
Because its a waste product, but once we make digging up fossil fuels illegal, that will change. Then we can repurposed the infrastructure in ways that are not harmful
I have no idea what to make of this vacuous comment, so unless you have something meaningful and specific to say I think I am done with this conversation. Good Day.