Is there a place for E-Methane in a Climate-Neutral Future?
Methane made from green hydrogen and carbon dioxide can directly replace fossil gas. The company TES wants to produce such e-methane, but critics say: that only works due to stacked subsidies and could delay important transformation steps.
Incredibly detailed article, thanks for sharing. I would like to see more detail on the conversions efficiencies however. We already know the economics of green hydrogen are quite poor without free renewable energy, so adding more conversion steps, accounting for losses and warming impacts from leaks, and then finally burning such fuels, often for low value uses like process heat (steel is another story) seems just awful when we have so much lower hanging fruit to worry about.
Clearly there will be some niche uses for these types of fuels and ergo they must have a pathway to be carbon neutral, but at this stage it all feels like a massive distraction that conveniently preserves existing fossil infrastructure, which will undoubtedly result in it being used for fossil interests in the meantime.