How is it the future of energy? As the article later states, "All the social and environmental issues associated with fossil fuels apply to gas hydrates ". It's later awkwardly explained as a transitional energy source, sure methane is more short lived but do we really want to gamble with the possible tippings that we have set ourselves up for?
The Japanese masterplan is to build a national hydrogen infrastructure, with H2 delivered to buildings and homes where it would both power domestic fuel cells and be burnt for heat, as well as provide fuel for Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles.
The primary motivation is energy independence: currently, Japan is the world's largest importer of both coal and natural gas.
As H2 would be supplied by reformation of methane hydrates, it is still a fossil fuel and does not solve carbon emissions. But the idea is that emissions would be substantially reduced compared to the current situation, where a large portion of Japan's energy is supplied by burning imported coal and oil.
Wouldn't it be easier to create a national methane infrastructure, reforming on the spot where pure H2 is required and methanate H2 when/where/if you can get it from non-fossil sources? Methane is much easier to handle for transport/storage.
It’s definitely an option, although methane reforming will produce carbon monoxide as a by-product and separating that from the hydrogen in a distributed setting (as opposed to centralized plant) is so energy intensive that it would likely offset any savings. Solid oxide fuel cells that run directly on methane are yet another alternative, but their problem is they run at around 600C...
It seems to be easier to upgrade a hydrogen distribution network to use carbon neutral hydrogen than to use a methane distribution network to use carbon neutral methane.
it would be BETTER to produce hydrogen from sustainable non-contributing-to-climate-change-further sources such as electrolysis of water from onsite hydrogen generation such as wind farms, when the grid is not buying, rather than spinning down, produce hydrogen.
Japan has very limited wind energy currently (< 1% of grid generation).
Unlike many European countries, Japan is surrounded by deep waters, which makes constructing offshore turbines more difficult and expensive. But the recent development of floating wind turbines which can operate in much deeper waters means that may change.
However, there is an argument that hydrogen electrolysis is not an efficient use of electricity. By the time you've electrolysed water, transported the H2, and converted it back to electricity in a fuel cell, you've lost at least 70% of the original energy.
So unless there is a lot of surplus electricity generation that would otherwise be wasted, it makes more sense to use it directly where possible. Storage technologies (such as chemical batteries, heat batteries) may be more economic than H2 electrolysis/distribution.
It is not emitted in similar quantities to CO2. It is remarkable that practically all of the charts of greenhouse gases show methane as a fraction already multiplied by its Global Warming Potential factor. Its sensible to present the gases already weighted, but when its not explicit enough and raw figures by weight are hard to come by - its pretty natural to do the math again and re-multiply by the GWP factor - resulting in a shocking discovery that methane is widely misunderstood or misreported.
However, global anthropogenic emission of methane is about 300 Tera-grams per year [1]. Anthropogenic emission of CO2 is about 35 Giga-tonnes per year.
300 Tera-grams is 0.3 Giga-tonnes
300 Tera-grams of CH4 degrades in about 10 years into about 0.5 Gigatonnes of CO2. About 1.5%, one sixtieth of the CO2 problem which can last hundreds of years. Methane emissions present 10-15% of the immediate and near term problem - thats less than half, less than a quarter... seriously, its about an eighth. After 10-15 years the elimination of methane, eliminates about a sixtieth of the global warming emissions problem. This will be why the IPCC presents CO2 as the major issue, because they do find and show that it is.
Well there is a lyrical aspect, 300 Tera-grammes is also 300 Mega-tonnes but that sounds like the familiar nuclear weapon rating.
There are many sources in broad agreeance for these heavily researched measurements. I included one recent source for methane emissions by weight, since its a bit harder to dig that up.
I should have rephrased that! The main point is it seem to put us in a very risky situation with methane release. They're mentioning how doing the extraction can potentially destabilize the whole reserve and lead to massive releases.
Then there's also the eco system aspect. The environments surrounding the reserves have unique organisms. What's going to happen with that? Just because we don't see it, it doesn't seem to matter..
