this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024
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Why was this even a question? Of course hydrogen leaks like crazy when you just put it in existing methane pipes. Hydrogen is notorious for leaking through the smallest faults and our existing infrastructure is ancient and just not designed for it. Hell, my house still has threaded and doped iron gas pipes and that is not at all uncommon in the US even on the main grid. If you want to use hydrogen instead of methane then you need to replace all of our gas pipes with brazed or welded pipes and replace all of our gas appliances with appliances designed for use with hydrogen.
As much as I love my gas stove, that just isn't practical. The only way I can see us continuing to use existing gas infrastructure in a somewhat environmentally friendly way is if we made synthetic methane in mass with electrolysis produced hydrogen and atmospheric CO2 via the Sabatier Process. Hovever that is a horribly energy intensive process so unless cold fusion suddenly becomes a thing or something I doubt that will ever happen. Even then it would still be nowhere near as practical as just switching to electric appliances.
....or you could just, you know, not use gas.
I know it's upsetting to some folks but the health concerns are wild (especially if you have kids in the house, seriously) and it's use and the leaky infrastructure pour too much into an already overburdened env.
seems like the logical move.
That's why this was the last thing I said in that text wall.
As much as I love my gas stove and my water heater that needs no electricity, I do acknowledge that they need to go at some point. I'm personally waiting for heat pump appliances to get cheaper or for my finances to get better so I can afford them. Heat pump water heaters and driers are far more efficient than their resistive electric counterparts. Decent induction stoves are also too spendy for me right now.
There is some nuance here. The efficiency of electric depends partially on how it's produced, and if (emphasis on IF) your local power station burns fossil fuels, and what you're after is heat, then burning the gas inside your house is (generally) far more efficient than burning it in a power station to generate electricity that you then turn back into heat inside your house. There are exceptions, but
Of course the best thing to do is to turn renewable (or long-lasting) forms of energy into electricity. The sun ain't gonna stop shining, the wind ain't gonna stop blowing, magma ain't about to get cold, and those spicy rocks are gonna stay spicy. There's no reason for us to be turning carbon into heat into electricity and back into heat in current year.
I'm fortunate that the vast majority of our power comes from hydro.
I hope we can convert to wind and solar before that snow melt ends.
It was a question because the methane gas utilities tried to promote it as a means of creating social permission to continue extracting and burning fossil methane. Making the point that it's a bad idea is a way to push back against that.