Energy transition and politics: a mad world

In Saudi Arabia's Dammam, where I am writing this column, I am allowed to give a training on green hydrogen to the largest oil company in the world, Aramaco. You may know this company from the advertisements at Formula 1, just like the oil and gas company I visited last week: Petronas from Malaysia. There I was allowed to update them on the energy transition and CO2 trading.

These trainings force me to look at the Netherlands as well. And to explain to people from other parts of the world how the energy transition is going in our country and in Europe and what opportunities it brings for them. Let's look at green hydrogen. This is hydrogen that is made by splitting water (H2O) in a so-called electrolyser into hydrogen (H2) and oxygen (O), using CO2-free electricity from wind, sun or nuclear.

In recent years, green hydrogen has been presented by European politicians such as Frans Timmermans and Ursula von der Leyen and our own Rob Jetten as the solution for the energy transition. Some call green hydrogen the 'Swiss army knife' for the energy transition, others the 'champagne' among energy carriers. The latter mainly because of its high price. These two statements immediately indicate the problem. Hydrogen is not the solution for all applications. For example, it is not really suitable for cars and heating our homes. Electricity through batteries and heat pumps is a better solution for that. Moreover, it is certainly still far too expensive to compete with the current hydrogen produced with natural gas, which releases a lot of CO2.

Postponing ambitious plans for years
The Netherlands would like to be the frontrunner, but has had to postpone its ambitious plans for the construction of a pipeline infrastructure for years. The EU has also set its sights high. And thinks that by 2030, we will need 20 gigawatts (GW) of green hydrogen in Europe. Half of this must come from 'local' production and the rest must be transported by ship from other parts of the world, where they have access to very cheap solar power. The port of Rotterdam is fully committed to this. 2030 is of course not that far away and you would therefore think that new production capacity will be built in Europe to achieve the goals. But that is a big disappointment. Despite many announcements and resounding press releases from all kinds of companies, only 3,6% of the desired 10GW production capacity has been invested in so far.  

How is it possible that politicians seem to live in their own paper reality and have so little idea of ​​what it is like in practice? This is mainly because they have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. This is what I thought of when I wrote a column in the Telegraaf read from Ronald Plasterk. He illustrates the ignorance with a statement by our previous climate minister during a debate on nitrogen, in which he said that nitrogen was like a 'suffocating blanket' over the world. Which is of course complete nonsense. Nitrogen gas does not suffocate anything and without it there would be no life on earth. Jetten probably had no idea about the difference between nitrogen and the 'suffocating blanket' of the greenhouse effect.

Most Nonsense Wishful Thinking Goals
I suspect that such basic knowledge is also completely lacking among politicians, such as our current EU climate commissioner Wopke Hoekstra and Ursula von der Leyen, as well as our new climate minister Sophie Hermans. As a result, they can send the most absurd wishful thinking goals into the world without blinking an eye. That is one thing, but it also involves enormous financial support packages that ultimately have to be coughed up by us, the citizens.

Back to green hydrogen. It is now clear that these political goals are unachievable and that in practice it remains to be seen how a green hydrogen economy will develop. Nevertheless, the EU is pushing ahead. As a result, countries such as Saudi Arabia and Malaysia are rubbing their hands in anticipation of how they can sell their green hydrogen produced there to Europe. As Tears for Fears sang: it's a mad world.

Kasper Walter

Kasper Walet is a former board member of the agricultural futures market. He has now been working under the name Maycroft for years as an independent adviser on energy and climate to governments and companies from all over the world.

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