France expressed doubts about proposals to keep building natural gas infrastructure such as power plants on the assumption that the fossil fuel will eventually be replaced with hydrogen.
“A strategy which consists in replacing the word ‘gas’ by ‘hydrogen-ready’ seems fragile to us,” French Energy Transition Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher said on Monday. She didn’t criticize any particular country, but within Europe Germany is the main proponent of this approach.
“Hydrogen won’t answer all the needs” because it isn’t the most efficient form of energy, Pannier-Runacher told the AJEF association of financial journalists in Paris.
The minister’s implicit criticism of Berlin’s energy policy comes weeks after the European Union managed to overcome months of public bickering between a pro-nuclear group of countries led by France and an anti-nuclear group led by Germany over the EU’s strategy to quit fossil fuels. While Germany is planning “hydrogen ready” gas plants to supplement swathes of renewables, France wants to build more nuclear power stations alongside wind and solar farms.
The German plan has raised concern about the country’s ability to buy or make enough green hydrogen at an economical cost. Power plants that want to burn hydrogen could potentially be competing with industries such as refiners or chemical makers, which also seek to reduce their carbon emissions by using the clean-burning fuel.
“There are uses for which hydrogen have a lot of value, and that’s where we want to focus,” Pannier-Runacher said. Hydrogen meets the decarbonization needs of several industries, she said. It could also work for heavy-duty vehicles, but would be unsuitable for lighter forms of transport like taxis, she said. Biogas and nuclear power can also provide low-carbon alternatives to produce heat, she said.
SOURCE: BNN BLOOMBERG
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