Community Energy Literature Review

  In his book on the strategy needed to enable the UK to address the threat from climate change, Chris Goodall mentions hydrogen more than a hundred times (Goodall, 2020). Describing the connection between renewable energy and hydrogen, he cites “ the great British biologist J.B.S. Haldane, who foresaw the importance of renewable electricity combined with hydrogen as the basis of the entire energy system as early as 1923”. Here is part of Haldane’s lecture, given in Cambridge:   “Personally, I think that … the power question in England may be solved somewhat as follows: The country will be covered with rows of metallic windmills working electric motors which in their turn supply current at a very high voltage to great electric mains. At suitable distances, there will be great power stations where during windy weather the surplus power will be used for the electrolytic decomposition of water into oxygen and hydrogen. These gasses will be … stored in … reservoirs, probably s...

Hydrogen and tidal energy by Neil Kermode (2017) (IET Engineering and Technology Reference, pp. 1–10, doi:10.1049/etr.2016.0163) Kermode analyses renewable energy in the Orkney Islands, where production exceeds the needs of the local population. The situation of the islands provides abundant energy from wind, wave, and tidal stream [1]. The paper concentrates on tidal production, the output of energy from underwater turbines, and the development of strategies to utilize it. Tidal flow fluctuates due to the rotation of the earth and the movement of the moon in its orbit. The daily ebb and flow of the tides gives peaks in water speed at roughly twelve hour intervals, but these peaks are greatest on the ‘spring tides’ which occur at intervals of approximately fourteen days, and least on the intervening ‘neap tides’. The power produced by tidal stream turbines increases as the cube of water velocity. No power is generated during those hours when there is negligible movement of...

Hydrogen in a low-carbon economy was published by the Committee on Climate Change in November 2018  It is available at https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/hydrogen-in-a-low-carbon-economy/ Its scope is indicated by its section headings, which are: Hydrogen for heat in buildings and industry Hydrogen use elsewhere in the energy system Hydrogen supply Scenarios for hydrogen use Energy system cost implications, and Conclusions and recommendations. This post addresses only the penultimate paragraph of the report (p.126): “ Further work is required to establish whether and to what degree hydrogen acts as an indirect greenhouse gas if emitted to atmosphere.” Some discussions around the effects of hydrogen emissions are to be found in an earlier publication HyCARE Hydrogen Energy Chances and Risks for the Environment Proceedings of the first HyCARE meeting, Hamburg, 16-17 December 2004, available at https://pure.mpg.de/rest/items/item_994975_6/co...