Re: The Climate, Environment and Energy Thread
Reply #491 –
And yet you don’t deal with the fact that the creation of methane byproduct isn’t calibrated to the level needed to satisfy demand; instead it will be proportional to the entire amount of hydrogen produced by the process you admire. It’s unlikely that demand for methane will be exactly equal to the methane byproduct and you haven’t provided any grounds to believe there won’t be excess supply.
The demand for hydrogen won't be 100% exclusive meet by gasification methods which are just a bridge to hydrogen production via seawater electrolysis. Gasification probably can't even meet a significant fraction of the demand needed, just as Solar PV alone cannot possible meet base load demands.
Only renewables alarmists paint gasification by-products as the reason to ban the hydrogen economy.
Methane is going to be need from somewhere, it is never going to 'cease', the percentage of methane produced by hydrogen production through gasification will only provide a fraction of the methane needed for modern economies, so it's likely some gasification might be needed to help bridge the gap as mining of fossil fuels gets scaled back, but that will take decades as there are many more products produced by mining than fuels. They may even run gasification facilities to produce methane along with other heavy gases with hydrogen as the by-product.
It's completely naivé to imagine methane will cease, it's as naivé as people thinking logging will cease, or gold mining will cease, or cars will cease, or planes will cease. It's just used as an argument in renewables / climate debate because the public is oblivious to what methane is needed to produce other than burning it as a fuel.
btw. The formula for methane is CH4, there is no O in there!