Climate Change > In NL, it now takes 20 years for solar panels to pay for themselves; Cows don't actually contribute to CO2 in the atmosphere; NL's €1bn green hydrogen turning blue

 

It now takes 20 years for solar panels to pay for themselves: Homeowners’ assoc

Saturday, 15 March 2025 - 08:15

NLTimes

The time that it takes to earn your money back after purchasing solar panels has increased to 20 years due to the abolition of the netting scheme. The Dutch homeowners' association (VEH) reported this based on new calculations of research agency Berenschot.

At the end of last year, the Senate voted in favor of abolishing the netting scheme in 2027. This scheme ensures that people are currently able to offset the electricity generated by their solar panels against their energy usage. With the new plans, consumers who supply electricity will receive compensation from their supplier over two years.

The time it takes to earn your money back is also dependent on the electricity prices, the costs related to supplying electricity back to the grid, and the resupply compensation.

According to the research, the supply costs are expected to be as high as compensation given for supplying electricity, which would mean that homes with a solar panel would receive hardly anything for their electricity generated from the solar panels.

"The payback period is even longer than previously thought," said Judith Scholte of the VEH. "Consumers are in danger of completely dropping out of buying solar panels."

VEH did add that the new calculations apply to people who have yet to buy a solar panel. The payback period is shorter for people who already own a solar panel.

According to VEH, solar panel owners are best using the solar energy themselves to shorten the payback period. Currently, the homes use an average of 30 percent for themself, but VEH stated that if the homes were to use 60 percent themselves then the payback period drops to 12 years.

The homeowners association wants the Cabinet to take additional measures to make solar panels more attractive. “The government said that they want to reach climate goals. Solar panels on roofs are a huge necessity for this,” said Scholte. 

Reporting by ANP

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Julius Ruechel

@JuliusRuechel

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10h

Your periodic reminder that a cow cannot add a single atom of carbon to the atmosphere that wasn't previously removed from the atmosphere by a plant. So, cows cannot increase atmospheric CO2, they merely recycle CO2. It's not a new source of carbon. And without cows, bacteria would, over time, rot plant fibers and return the exact same amount of carbon to the atmosphere. But grazing cows help grass sod fix carbon in the soil, thus increasing soil fertility over time. The climate crusade is built on scientific fraud. And many of the proposed solutions, like reducing cows, are directly causing much of the soil degradation and forest fires (because of ungrazed fuel in the forests), which activists and dishonest scientists then blame on "climate change".

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Billion-euro hydrogen plant in Rotterdam may never open as industry stalls

A massive hydrogen plant on the Tweede Maasvlakte, heralded as a key part of Rotterdam’s green energy transition, is now at risk of never becoming operational. The 1 billion euros Holland Hydrogen I project, developed by Shell, has been plagued by financial concerns, shifting regulations, and an uncertain market. Insiders told AD the plant may not start production at all.

This setback reportedly reflects broader stagnation in the hydrogen sector within the Port of Rotterdam. Other major hydrogen plant projects announced in the past three years face an uncertain future, with investment decisions delayed or abandoned altogether.

The vision for Rotterdam as Europe’s hydrogen hub took shape five years ago. At the time, hydrogen was widely seen as the fuel of the future, and Shell was among the first to commit. The energy giant unveiled plans in 2020 to build a 200-megawatt hydrogen plant—ten times larger than any existing facility. Shell executives framed it as a bold step in the energy transition. "The energy transition requires courage, daring, and action," said then-Shell Netherlands CEO Marjan van Loon.

The Port of Rotterdam also allocated 24 hectares on the Tweede Maasvlakte for hydrogen plants, branding it a “conversion park.” Officials anticipated the area would host multiple large-scale hydrogen plants by 2030, making Rotterdam a global leader.

Following Shell’s lead, other energy companies unveiled their own hydrogen plans. Uniper aimed to build a 100-megawatt facility by 2026, while BP proposed a much larger 250-megawatt plant. French firm Air Liquide planned a facility of similar scale to Shell’s. Eneco set its sights on an even bigger project—an 800-megawatt plant, covering an area equivalent to 20 football fields.

However, in 2024, the Dutch government introduced a so-called "corrective factor," effectively reducing financial incentives for using hydrogen in the fossil fuel industry. The measure was designed to push hydrogen toward the transport sector but severely undercut Shell’s economic model for Holland Hydrogen I. “It’s essentially a penalty,” Lydia Boktor, a key figure behind the Shell project, told AD. “It slashes revenue and directly impacts our business case.”

Port of Rotterdam CEO Boudewijn Siemons echoed those concerns. “This corrective factor needs to be scrapped,” he said. “Companies in other countries don’t face this barrier. If we want the industry to invest, hydrogen use in the industrial sector must be just as attractive as in transportation.”

Industry shifts away from hydrogen

The struggles in Rotterdam reportedly align with a broader global trend. BP, once a strong advocate for hydrogen, has pivoted back toward oil and gas. The company, which in 2020 pledged to cut fossil fuel production by 40 percent within a decade, is now reversing course under shareholder pressure. Investments in renewable energy have been significantly reduced.

This shift has major consequences for Rotterdam. BP’s H2-Fifty project, once planned to be even larger than Shell’s, has reportedly been abandoned. “We simply can’t make it work under current conditions,” admitted BP Netherlands CEO Corné Boot. “The Netherlands has strong potential, but the economic framework isn’t right.”

Even if companies wanted to move forward, practical challenges would reportedly remain. The Netherlands has some of the highest electricity costs in Europe, making hydrogen production more expensive. These costs are passed directly to industrial consumers, further eroding profitability.

Additionally, Rotterdam lacks sufficient infrastructure to distribute hydrogen. The Delta Rhine Corridor pipeline, a crucial route to transport hydrogen from Rotterdam to Germany, has been delayed by several years. Originally scheduled for completion in 2028, the pipeline is now unlikely to be operational before the early 2030s.

“If you can’t move the hydrogen, there’s no point in producing it,” said Iris Olivier of Uniper. She stood atop Uniper’s 120-meter-high coal plant, overlooking the empty conversion park where hydrogen plants were supposed to be operating by now, AD reported. The site where Uniper’s facility should have been built remains vacant. The company has even returned a European subsidy due to its inability to use the funds in time.

“We’re ready to start,” Olivier said. “We have the blueprints, and in theory, construction could begin tomorrow. The only thing stopping us is a lack of government support. It’s incredibly frustrating.”

Experts warn that delays and shifting policies are pushing hydrogen investment elsewhere. “Other European countries are making faster progress,” Martien Visser, an energy transition professor at Hanze University of Applied Sciences, told AD. “The Netherlands has become an unreliable partner for investors. The government changed the rules mid-project, making it impossible for Shell to turn a profit. On top of that, electricity costs are far higher here than in neighboring countries.”

A shift to blue hydrogen?

With green hydrogen struggling, some suggest Rotterdam should pivot to blue hydrogen—a less clean alternative produced from natural gas with carbon capture.

Port alderman Robert Simons sees this as a necessary compromise. “Blue hydrogen is much cheaper. It’s not perfect, but it’s a step in the right direction,” Simons said. “I think we’ve been too focused on the ideal scenario and not realistic enough about what companies can actually deliver.”

I think you can say that about most 'climate change' projects.

The idea is reportedly controversial. H-Vision, a blue hydrogen project backed by BP, is also stalled. Critics like Rotterdam city councilor Mina Morkoç argue that delaying green hydrogen investments will only slow the energy transition further. “These corporations always say they want to go green, but only if it’s profitable,” she told AD. “This delay costs us valuable time. What do they care more about: their profits or a livable planet?”

EU policymakers, including European Commissioner Wopke Hoekstra, are considering policies to stimulate green energy demand, such as requiring companies to use green steel. A reduction in Dutch energy taxes is also under discussion, though no decision has been made.

Climate Change > Understanding Hydrogen and Why It Will Not Save the World

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The Idiot's Answer To Global Warming: Hydrogen

August 12, 2021/ 

Francis Menton

Hydrogen!  It’s the obvious and perfect answer to global warming caused by human CO2 emissions.  Instead of burning hydrocarbons (fossil fuels) we can leave out the carbon part, burn just the hydrogen, and emit nothing but pure water vapor.  H2 + O = H2O!  Thus, no more CO2 emissions.  Why didn’t anyone think of this before now?

Actually, the geniuses are way ahead of you on this one.  President George W. Bush was touting the coming “hydrogen economy” as far back as 2003.  (“In his 2003 State of the Union Address, President Bush launched his Hydrogen Fuel Initiative. The goal of this initiative is to work in partnership with the private sector to accelerate the research and development required for a hydrogen economy.”).  Barack Obama was not one to get left behind on an issue like this.  In the run-up to the Paris Climate Conference in 2015 Obama’s Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced, “[F]uel cell technologies [i.e., hydrogen-fueled motors] are paving the way to competitiveness in the global clean energy market and to new jobs and business creation across the country.”   Then there’s the biggest hydrogen enthusiast of all, PM Boris Johnson of the UK, who promises that his country is at the dawn of the “hydrogen economy.”  (“Towards the end of 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson released details of a 10-point plan for a so-called ‘green industrial revolution.’. . .   This year will also see the government publish a Hydrogen Strategy that will “outline plans” to develop a hydrogen economy in the U.K.”)  

And let us not forget California.  If you look at my post from two days ago about California’s plans for “zero carbon” electricity, you will find a chart showing that by 2045 they plan to have some 40 GW of what they call “Zero Carbon Firm” resources.  What does that mean?  In the print below the chart, they reveal it: “hydrogen fuel cells.”  (Their current amount of hydrogen fuel cells contributing to the grid is 0.)

So basically, hydrogen is the perfect answer to our problems, right?  Wrong.  Only an idiot could think that hydrogen offers any material useful contribution to the world’s energy supply.

For much of the information that follows, I’ll be relying on a June 6, 2020 Report written for the Global Warming Policy Foundation by John Constable.  However, and not to downplay Mr. Constable’s excellent Report in any way, but I made many of the same points in one of the very first posts on this blog in November 2012, titled “The Hydrogen Economy.”   That post was based mostly on my layman’s understanding of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.  Really, that’s all you need to know to realize that hydrogen as a major source of energy for the economy doesn’t make any sense at all.

So what is the fundamental flaw in the idea of a hydrogen-based energy economy?  Constable puts it this way:  “Being highly reactive, elemental hydrogen, H2, is found in only small quantities in nature on the earth’s surface but is present in a very wide range of compounds.”   In other words, the hydrogen is not free for the taking, but rather is already combined with something else; and to separate the hydrogen so that you have free hydrogen to use, you need to add energy.  Once you have added the energy and you have the free hydrogen, you can burn it.  But that’s where the Second Law of Thermodynamics comes in.  Due to inevitable inefficiencies in the processes, when you burn the hydrogen, you get back less energy than you expended to free it up.  No matter how you approach the problem, the process of freeing up hydrogen and then burning it costs more energy than it generates.

Do you think somebody in our political leadership or bureaucracies might understand this?  Don’t count on it.

Constable then goes into much more detail, and the deeper he gets into it the more ridiculous the hydrogen project looks.  Since essentially all of the hydrogen starts out combined with something, where might you look to find a source of large quantities of hydrogen?  Constable:  “[T]he sources are few in number, being limited to either water, fossil hydrocarbons or biomass.”  

The bond of hydrogen and oxygen in water is a high-energy thing that therefore takes a lot of energy to undo.  So let’s consider getting the hydrogen from natural gas.  Indeed, that is the main source today of substantial quantities of pure hydrogen for industrial purposes.  Constable describes a well-established process called “steam methane reformation” (SMR) by which steam is passed through natural gas (methane, or CH4).  The bond is broken and the hydrogen breaks free.  Voila!  Oh, but what happens to the carbon?  Why obviously, it is released also, and thereupon combines with oxygen from the air forming CO2.

Wait a minute!  The whole idea behind undertaking this expensive process was to avoid the release of the CO2.  So clearly, we need another step.  In the British proposal to create the “hydrogen economy,” they have had to include the addition of processes for “carbon capture and storage” to capture the CO2 before it gets away and prevent it getting into the atmosphere.  Except that they haven’t figured out how to capture it all.  They are hoping for capture rates of maybe 85 - 90%.  So it turns out that this process, for all its additional costs, is not emissions-free at all.

And then there’s the next obvious question:  Why not just burn the natural gas?  Instead of having to input energy in the “steam reformation” process, this way you will release a large amount of useable and useful energy when the carbon gets burned.  And as to CO2, you get the exact same amount.  If you have a fetish that the CO2 must be captured, you can try to capture it from this process instead of from the “steam reformation” process.  Again, you will not get 100%, but it’s really no different.

Except for the optics.  In the first scenario, you claim you are burning “clean, pure hydrogen.”  In the second scenario, you are burning natural gas, just as we have been doing for decades.  Can people really be fooled by this?  It seems like “smart” people like Bush, Obama and Johnson have all been fooled, so I guess there’s no reason not to expect most of the rest of the people to go along.

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Zero-emissions fable: Blue hydrogen worse for environment

than natural gas – study

14 Aug, 2021 07:21

The logo of a zero emissions vehicle during a launch event for a hydrogen electrolysis plant at Shell's Rhineland refinery in Wesseling near Cologne, Germany, July 2, 2021. © Reuters / Thilo Schmuelgen

Blue hydrogen, the kind that involves fossil fuels combined with carbon capture, could be worse for the environment than natural gas or even coal, a new study has suggested.

The study, conducted by researchers from Cornell University and Stanford, also suggested that the carbon footprint of blue hydrogen is as much as 60% higher than that of burning diesel for heating, Energy Live News reported.

“Politicians around the world, from the UK and Canada to Australia and Japan, are placing expensive bets on blue hydrogen as a leading solution in the energy transition,” one of the authors, ecology and environmental biology professor Robert Howarth from Cornell University, said in a statement.

“Our research is the first in a peer-reviewed journal to lay out the significant lifecycle emissions intensity of blue hydrogen. This is a warning signal to governments that the only 'clean' hydrogen they should invest public funds in is truly net zero, green hydrogen made from wind and solar energy,” Howarth also said.

Of course, you have to build, transport, and then erect the windmills and solar panels which requires considerable energy, as well as mining the materials needed to make them.

The study's authors have suggested that because of the enormous amounts of natural gas that blue hydrogen requires, its emission footprint is bigger than gray hydrogen, which does not use carbon capture at all. The emission footprint also does not depend on the specific carbon capture and storage technology used.

“There really is no role for blue hydrogen in a carbon-free future,” the authors said. “We suggest that blue hydrogen is best viewed as a distraction, something that may delay needed action to truly decarbonize the global energy economy.”

Hydrogen is considered to be a big part of the future net-zero energy system. The cleanest kind is green hydrogen, which, rather than produced from renewables, is produced from water, electrolyzed using electricity from wind and solar farms. However, the cleanest hydrogen is also the most expensive, although forecasts see a fast decline in costs.

Currently, gray hydrogen is the most widely produced and the cheapest. It is produced from natural gas through a process called steam methane reformatting, where the methane in the gas is heated with steam – a process that yields hydrogen and carbon monoxide.

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France's Engie Warns of $10 per Barrel Oil as Renewable Energy Surges

Don't worry, left-wing governments will ensure there are so many taxes to be paid that energy of any kind will never be cheap

© Daniel Becerril / Reuters

Crude prices could plunge as low as $10 per barrel within a decade as a result of five energy “tsunamis,” according to Thierry Lepercq, innovation chief for French energy company Engie.

In an interview with Bloomberg in December, he said falling costs of solar power and battery storage, increasing sales of electric vehicles, increasingly “smart” buildings and cheap hydrogen will all weigh on crude.

“Even if oil demand continues to climb until 2025, its price could drop to $10 if markets anticipate a significant fall in demand,” said Lepercq.

After a decade of acquisitions, the former French gas monopoly Engie has become the world’s largest non-state power producer.

It is now investing in renewables while selling coal-fired plants and exploration assets. By 2018 the company plans to spend $1.57 billion on technologies including grid-scale battery storage, hydrogen output, “mini-grids” that serve small clusters of homes, and smart buildings that link up the heating, lighting and IT systems to save energy and cut costs.

Lepercq said the cost of solar power would probably drop below $10 per megawatt-hour before 2025 in the world’s sunniest places, turning it into the cheapest source of electricity. With the falling costs of battery storage, solar will become even more competitive which means electric vehicles could challenge traditional passenger vehicles.

“As carmakers offer more electrical vehicles with a range exceeding 500 kilometers, charging stations being progressively deployed and more cities banning gasoline and diesel cars, a shift will gradually take place,” said Lepercq.

I can see China moving in this direction to address its brutal smog problem in its cities. That's a huge market. They are developing electric cars like crazy in China, so it won't be long before gas and diesel are forbidden in major cities.

Forbes - The market for electric cars and all sorts of other electric vehicles keeps booming in China. Subsidies can be as high as 90,000 yuan ($13,000) and more and more consumers and companies are buying in. This year’s Guangzhou Auto Show saw the debut of over 30 new energy vehicles (NEVs).

Data from the International Energy Agency shows the number of battery and plug-in vehicles around the world has surged to one million cars.

According to Lepercq, in less than 10 years hydrogen which can turn solar power into transportable fuel may be as cheap as LNG.

“Solar, battery storage, electrical and hydrogen vehicles, and connected devices are in a ‘J’ curve. Hydrogen is the missing link in a 100 percent renewable-energy system, but technological bricks already exist.”

Engie has recently conducted a “very deep modeling” of the French Provence-Alpes-Cote d’Azur region. The results showed the region with five million inhabitants could run entirely on renewables by 2030 for as much as 20 percent less cost than the current energy system. Solar, wind, biogas, large-scale battery storage and hydrogen would be essential elements.

“The promise of quasi-infinite and free energy is here,” said Lepercq.