About CPS Energy’s ‘Modern Hydrogen’ Efforts
Isai Fouche Rivera
San Antonio’s municipally owned gas and electric utility, CPS Energy, recently entered into a partnership with Modern Hydrogen to convert natural gas into so-called “clean hydrogen” to enhance its power generation capacity.
Hydrogen is often pitched as a cleaner alternative to fossil fuels. However, a closer look shows us that making hydrogen from gas is not the game-changer its supporters claim.
Extracting hydrogen is done through methane pyrolysis, a method that uses heat to convert the methane into hydrogen and solid carbon, thus producing turquoise hydrogen. The project’s proposal claims that there are no carbon emissions, as the carbon will be extracted in a solid form and can be utilized by other industries, such as those involved in asphalt production for construction. The project will also use existing infrastructure to minimize costs. Although CPS has not yet decided where the hydrogen will be used, the best predictions indicate that the company will use the hydrogen by-product to blend into its natural gas-fired plants.
However, the problem with any form of hydrogen other than green hydrogen produced by water electrolysis is that these energy platforms remain reliant on fossil fuels as the primary drivers of production. Specifically, in the methane pyrolysis process, pyrolytic hydrogen from natural gas has been attributed to the same climate emissions as using the same amount of natural gas directly. The climate impact stems from natural gas leaks across the production fields and from the pyrolysis infrastructure itself, and pyrolysis requires twice as much natural gas to produce an equivalent amount of hydrogen. The pilot project has also failed to detail the current vulnerabilities within the existing infrastructure, as hydrogen can be prone to leaking and has the potential to embrittle existing pipelines.
Another glaring issue with this project is that the color-coding of the hydrogen rainbow is presented as a potential indicator of the technology’s sustainability; however, it amounts to greenwashing, since climate-neutral hydrogen involves enormous hurdles in terms of clean energy (Böck). Methane pyrolysis is touted as a zero-emission method for producing hydrogen. However, it can be conceived as a process for carbon production, as the marketability of the process is exceedingly reliant on selling carbon by-product to other industries that will eventually emit it (Böck). The substantial solid carbon yield relies on a market demand that is significantly smaller than hydrogen demand, creating a market mismatch that is detrimental to the program’s sustainability. Additionally, the technology has a low readiness level for scalability, with the process still in its very preliminary stages and making little progress toward widespread adoption (Moghaddam et al.). Greater investments that are not reliant on fossil fuels would represent an advancement in a proper renewable pathway, rather than CPS inadvertently finding methods to continue propagating their natural gas use through greenwashing that relies on fossil fuels.
A similar project has been implemented in Oregon, where the energy corporation NW Natural has injected hydrogen into the gas system in Southeast Portland. This initiative sparked backlash from environmentalists, physicians, and sustainability advocates due to the disregard for a multitude of sectors that resulted from furthering the use of fossil fuel-reliant systems. In terms of public health, burning hydrogen has been shown to exacerbate respiratory diseases due to the increased potential of health-harming nitrogen oxides. As mentioned earlier, there is also a risk of pipeline embrittlement, an increased likelihood of leakage from natural gas pipelines, and a higher chance of dangerous explosions. The process itself is highly inefficient, with significant potential for harm to the climate, as an estimated 42% of energy is lost during the chemical transformation. The process also requires increased gas extraction, which results in transmission issues that lead to additional climate-hazardous methane leaking, posing safety hazards, and environmental impacts to the marginalized communities affected. Ultimately, despite hydrogen’s “clean” image, using the material would only reduce residential climate emissions by a maximum of 7%. These same fears are replicated in the proposed San Antonio pilot project, through the disregard of injustice and blatant ignorance toward more affordable and efficient climate measures.