The problem with Renewables and the Promise of Hydrogen
Photography by Max Topchii
Electricity makes up a sixth of our national emissions, around 10 million tonnes equivalent. However, this may be one of the easiest sectors to decarbonize, if we figure out the solution to the problem with renewables.
We are a country that is light on fossil fuels, save for peat, so we end up spending lots of money, around €5.7 billion every year, importing 85 percent of our fossil fuels (1). Why would we not want to create our energy on our island? To then use the savings to invest in a low-carbon future? On top of this, in 2015 alone, 430,000 deaths in Europe could have been avoided if we didn't have air pollution from the burning of fossil fuels (2).
Investing in renewables makes further financial sense - in 2018 we avoided having to import a total of €280 million in fossil fuels for electricity generation due to our use of wind power (3). Expanding renewables is just a no-brainer. But they have a problem. Renewables are inherently unreliable. Their output can fluctuate, and certain weather conditions can lead to a severe reduction on their power output. Currently, at least 30% of our grid needs to powered by a stable source of electricity to keep the frequency of the grid inside safe limits. Offshore wind is a more reliable form of renewable electricity that we should be considering as our primary source of Energy .
We have one of the highest potential for wind energy in Europe, with the unrestrained Atlantic battering our Western coast. Offshore wind is more reliable and you don’t have to be worried about communities being upset by wind turbines being installed in their area. Offshore wind on its own however, won’t be enough. When we move forward with renewables, it is essential to have a fuel we can guarantee on when the clouds come out and the wind stops. Some say that this is the death knell for renewables, that fossil fuels are the only thing that can ensure this stability.
A cleaner way of solving this problem of renewables failing us is in storing the excess electricity we generate until we need it later. Batteries could be used for domestic settings, and incentivizing domestic storage should be something that the government should consider along with its micro-generation scheme. They are not efficient enough yet to hold enough power for the national scale we need, although this will change in the future as more companies invest in battery technology.
A fuel that could be used to keep the grid going is the first element in the periodic table, hydrogen. This idea requires having enough potential renewables so that we are regularly generating more electricity than we need. When we are exceeding our requirements we use this excess electricity to create hydrogen. Hydrogen isn't very complicated to make, most people my age will have done an experiment in Junior Certificate Science class to make it. Through the process of electrolysis, which is just a fancy way of saying putting an electric current through a liquid, we can split the water into its constituent elements. Water’s chemical formula is H2O (two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen), so all we get is hydrogen and oxygen.
This hydrogen can be siphoned off and used a fuel, similarly to how we use natural gas, all that needs to be done is increase the pressure in storage containers and pipes. The difference is that when you burn hydrogen, the only byproduct is water. We could have reservoirs where we electrolyze water, fresh or seawater, then transport this hydrogen to existing power stations.
Of course, this won’t be cheap. Building these plants will have a high upfront cost, especially if we are at the forefront of this industry. Generation costs at the minute are six times higher than the fossil fuels equivalent (4). This will fall though, as we begin to develop the technology at scale. The price is expected to fall by 30% as soon as 2035. We should remember that back at the very beginning of our status as an independent nation, we built the Ardnacrusha hydroelectric plant, which when it was built cost a fifth of our national budget and was the biggest dam in the world. Transformative events cost a lot of money.
Having a carbon neutral grid is necessary. Electricity will be used in the future for heating houses through air pumps and transport through electric cars. If all of these are running on clean power, then that may be the biggest thing we could do to reduce our emissions, reduce our air pollution and help build a better future for all.
1. https://www.epa.ie/media/Chapter11_Environment_Energy.pdf
2. https://www.forbes.com/sites/rogerpielke/2020/03/10/every-day-10000-people-diedue-to-air-pollution-from-fossil-fuels/
3. https://www.seai.ie/publications/Energy-in-Ireland-2018.pdf
4. https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/opinion/what-is-the-real-cost-of-greenhydrogen/
5. https://www.iea.org/reports/the-future-of-hydrogen
