The Latest Color of Greenwashing: Blue

The industry came up with the notion that if they captured and sequestered the carbon that was separated from the hydrogen during the steaming process, this would make the process and resultant hydrogen worthy of a better, less onerous label than gray, i.e, blue. (Gray hydrogen is the most common source of hydrogen today. It takes methane gas (aka “natural” gas) and subjects it to a steam pressure reforming process to separate the hydrogen and carbon. Gray hydrogen is considered slightly cleaner than coal-derived “black and “brown” hydrogen.)

But is this process really deserving of a more positive label, or is it just another example of industry greenwashing? For starters, consider that the capture and sequester stage occurs after any drilling and fracturing, and is therefore separate from the issues with fracking fluid, flowback, produced water, and injection well disposal of wastewater. Then there’s the steaming process itself. As reported in the Cornell Chronicle, peer-reviewed research done by Professors Mark Jacobson of Stanford and Robert Howarth of Cornell revealed that “the carbon footprint to create blue hydrogen is more than 20% greater than using either natural gas or coal directly for heat…” This is due in part to the fact that the steaming separation process requires additional energy inputs, energy which comes from burning more methane gas.

Because of this, blue hydrogen reduces emissions compared to gray “…only by about 9% to 12%.” And this is before we consider the other aspects of the gas production life cycle, now needing to include the long-term storage and/or disposition of the sequestered carbon.

So blue hydrogen may be not much “cleaner” than gray hydrogen, if cleaner at all. But true cleanliness may never have been the motivation behind the blue hydrogen campaign.*

* Harv Teitelbaum | Colorado Rising Board of Directors