Alberta Tarsands: This photo is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
JWN Energy claims green hydrogen is set to be competitive with fossil fuels by 2040. Green hydrogen is made from renewable energy such as solar or wind. Blue hydrogen is made using natural gas. It’s more environmentally friendly than traditional fuel sources, but not as friendly as green hydrogen
Last month I published an article saying, Alberta eyes a cleaner future as a hydrogen superpower. It includes a quote by Simon Dyer, deputy executive director of the Pembina Institute, an environmental think tank. “Alberta has a lot of the building blocks in place to be able to compete in this space and develop a thriving hydrogen economy.” He said, “Hydrogen could represent a lifeline to Alberta’s oil and gas industry,”
Naturally, I envisioned Alberta becoming a world leader in producing and distributing hydrogen. It would give us the edge. When the world wanted Alberta’s bitumen, there wasn’t any mention of reaching tidewaters to get it to the market. They came and got it. Now that it’s the dirtiest and least valued oil in the world, no-one wants it. The government, whose budget relies on oil revenue to meet it’s budget, is completely delusional to think we can turn back time, to when it was in high demand.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney feels if markets were more accessible, Alberta could move more oil. He bemoans the province’s lack of pipelines to get the precious cargo to the coast. He’s sure if he had a way to load it onto tankers, that international markets would quickly snap it up. He needs to produce more oil, in fact, as we patiently wait for this opportunity that will never come. Unfortunately, the province has limits.
There is a 100 megatonne annual limit on provincial carbon emissions. In the oil industry, emissions are produced mainly from extraction, transportation and production. Rather than turning Alberta into a world leader in the production and distribution of hydrogen, Alberta will use hydrogen to reduce emissions and increase oil production.
According to a news article, “Alberta will announce, no later than October, a strategy to develop “blue hydrogen” as a cleaner alternative to using natural gas to extract crude at steam-driven oil sands sites, Associate Minister of Natural Gas Dale Nally told Reuters in an interview.
Robert Tremblay of the Alberta Party wrote in the Lethbridge Herald that Alberta is in desperate need of economically viable energy construction projects. This hydrogen project isn’t one of them. We are also in desperate need of politicians who have the vision to lead us into the 21st century, rather than mire the economy in the mistakes of yesterday.
Mr Tremblay says, “Even better, the domestic and global movement for climate action shows us that these projects are not risky and will not face the severe legal and social headwinds that other energy projects have faced over the past two decades.”
