"Government’s plan to use ‘blue’ fossil-fuel hydrogen alongside green version raises concern, say campaigners"
"Opting for hydrogen that is made using fossil fuels rather than renewable electricity could create up to 8m tonnes of carbon emissions every year by 2050, according to an analysis of government data.
The figures show that the use of fossil-fuel hydrogen, or “blue hydrogen”, would create the same carbon emissions each year that more than a million petrol cars would produce, compared with using zero-carbon “green hydrogen”.
Ministers plan to use both blue and green hydrogen to replace fossil gas in factories, refineries and heating, but new figures show that an over-reliance on blue hydrogen would still lead to millions of tonnes of carbon emissions entering the atmosphere every year.
Blue hydrogen is extracted from fossil gas in a process that requires carbon capture technology to trap emissions – but this method still fails to capture between 5% and 15% of the CO2. Carbon emissions are also released when the fossil gas is extracted from oil and gas fields."
