Bill Gates advocates 'clean hydrogen is the key to decarbonization'
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In his personal blog, Gates Notes, Microsoft founder Bill Gates said, 'Cheap and clean hydrogen that is not made from fossil fuels helps decarbonize.' He appealed for a wide range of applications and promotion of hydrogen energy.
To cut emissions, use this Swiss Army Knife | Bill Gates
https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/Clean-Hydrogen
In discussions on greenhouse gas emissions, the use of automobiles and power generation will be the main topics. However, according to Gates, greenhouse gases emitted by automobiles and electricity are only about one-third of the amount emitted by society as a whole. The remaining two-thirds are discharged in situations that are difficult for many to see, such as making or transporting various materials and products around us, such as cement, plastic, and iron.
Therefore, Gates proposed 'clean hydrogen' as a new technology to reduce greenhouse gases emitted in such situations. Hydrogen itself is already used in 70 million tons per year worldwide and is useful in fields such as fertilizer production, but most of it is hydrogen produced by burning fossil fuels. As a starting point, simply replacing these hydrogens with clean hydrogens can reduce greenhouse gas emissions from around the world by 1.6%.
Since hydrogen also has a use as energy, it will be possible to replace fossil fuels with hydrogen if a large amount of hydrogen can be obtained at low cost. It is also being considered for use in the field of freight transportation, where there are limits to EVs, such as sea transportation by aircraft, long-distance trucks, and ships.
Gates proposed four technologies for producing hydrogen with a wide range of uses. One of them is
The second is to generate hydrogen using fossil fuels as usual and recover the carbon dioxide generated in the process. So far, there is no technology to recover 100% of carbon dioxide, but while waiting for new technologies to replace industrial facilities around the world that produce hydrogen, reduce greenhouse gases emitted in the process of producing hydrogen. It is expected as a means to do.
The third method is to generate hydrogen by thermally decomposing methane. Current technology produces hydrogen by reacting methane and water at high temperatures to generate hydrogen and carbon dioxide. However, if you use a method called pyrolysis that heats methane in the absence of oxygen, you can leave carbon in the solid while generating hydrogen from methane, so you do not have to generate greenhouse gases.
The fourth method is to extract and utilize hydrogen stored in strata around the world. If this method is put into practical use, it will be possible to supply a large amount of hydrogen at low cost and with zero emissions, but it is still a research stage technology at the time of writing the article.
With the Ukraine War initiated by Russia in February 2022, hydrogen has become important not only in environmental issues but also in energy security debates. The EU has already indicated that it will produce and import 20 million tons of green hydrogen by 2030, and with this amount of hydrogen energy, it will reduce its dependence on natural gas imports from Russia to more than one-third. Is possible.
On the other hand, hydrogen, like other clean technologies, faces the cost challenge. No matter how environmentally friendly hydrogen is, if the cost is high, hydrogen utilization will not progress slowly. That's why Breakthrough Energy , a climate change initiative launched by Gates in 2015, is investing and funding the commercialization of clean hydrogen.
'The more interest we have in the benefits of clean hydrogen, the more companies and governments can accelerate their efforts to make hydrogen a true alternative to fossil fuels,' Gates said at the end. If we do, we will be able to avoid disasters caused by climate change. 'He pointed out that it is important for each person to be interested in the use of hydrogen in order to realize a hydrogen-based society.
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