Climate change: Is 'blue hydrogen' Japan's answer to coal?

[Jilly_in_VA]

It's a glorious autumn afternoon and I'm standing on a hillside looking out over Tokyo Bay. Beside me is Takao Saiki, a usually mild-mannered gentleman in his 70s.

But today Saiki-San is angry.

"It's a total joke," he says, in perfect English. "Just ridiculous!"

The cause of his distress is a giant construction site blocking our view across the bay - a 1.3-gigawatt coal-fired power station in the making.

"I don't understand why we still have to burn coal to generate electricity," says Saiki-San's friend, Rikuro Suzuki. "This plant alone will emit more than seven million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year!"

Suzuki-San's point is a good one. Shouldn't Japan be cutting its coal consumption, not increasing it, at a time of great concern about coal's impact on the climate?

So why the coal? The answer is the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59525480

[hunter]

1. Geez. Not hydrogen again. The math never works.

Worse, if you convert hydrogen to ammonia you've got a toxic gas as well, something like propane's evil sibling that will burn out your eyes, lungs, and mucous membranes if it escapes containment.

And then they claim they'll sequester the carbon dioxide? Yeah, right.

This isn't anything but a bold faced lie meant to make the unconscionable use of coal palatable to people who don't know any better. It's business as usual at any cost.