(Bloomberg) --Three million miles of natural gas pipelines criss-cross the U.S., and the fight against climate change could render them all obsolete.
The last two weeks alone illustrate the stakes. President Joe Biden canceled the permit for the $9 billion Keystone XL oil pipeline on his first day in office, a clear signal any new fossil fuel pipeline project in the U.S. will face long odds.His climate envoy, former Secretary of State John Kerry, warned that natural gas pipelines could become “stranded assets” within 30 years as the administration seeks to end carbon emissions from power plants. And NextEra Energy Inc. wrote off $1.2 billion of its investment in the Mountain Valley gas pipeline from West Virginia to Virginia, which has been tied up in regulatory and legal delays.
So pipeline owners are eyeing another, possibly future-proof fuel: hydrogen.
Unlike natural gas, hydrogen can be burned without pumping carbon dioxide into the air. Run it through a fuel cell to generate electricity and the only waste is water; produce hydrogen using electrolyzers powered by solar plants or wind farms and it becomes a way to store massive amounts of renewable energy—far more than any of today’s batteries can hold. And the best part for pipeline companies: getting it where it needs to be, in bulk, could require the same basic infrastructure that now carries natural gas - Link
So pipeline owners are eyeing another, possibly future-proof fuel: hydrogen.
Unlike natural gas, hydrogen can be burned without pumping carbon dioxide into the air. Run it through a fuel cell to generate electricity and the only waste is water; produce hydrogen using electrolyzers powered by solar plants or wind farms and it becomes a way to store massive amounts of renewable energy—far more than any of today’s batteries can hold. And the best part for pipeline companies: getting it where it needs to be, in bulk, could require the same basic infrastructure that now carries natural gas - Link
No comments:
Post a Comment