The Daily Telegraph tells us that white hydrogen (geologic H2, that may be archaic or other theories suggest constantly generated) may or may not be the solution to some or all of our climate change woes.
Estimates of the flow of hydrogen from these process are imprecise, varying from very little to all of the current global annual consumption of hydrogen. In addition there might be potentially vast quantities of primordial hydrogen. And the great thing about all this white hydrogen is that we do not need to use large quantities of electricity or fossil fuel to produce it: this is not an energy store like all the other colours of hydrogen, it is a dispatchable primary energy source like nuclear or fossil fuels.
They’re right too - too much is unknown to be able to decide on whether this is some mildly interesting but marginal issue or of some great import.
The bit that amuses us is the sheer serendipity of this other announcement made on the same day:
Significant concentrations of hydrogen and helium have been encountered in sections of the Ramsay 1 well, confirming historic measurement and demonstrating an active hydrogen system in the Ramsay Project area. Testing and laboratory results measured air-corrected hydrogen at 73.3% at 240m below ground level, consistent with the 76% air-corrected concentration of hydrogen reported in the Ramsay Oil Bore 1 in 1931.
This is not investment advice about Gold Hydrogen and it’s most certainly not a recommendation. We just do think that it’s fun.
From that fun we also derive two little lessons. The first is something about mineral resources in general. There never has been a proper survey of the planet and what it holds. The only statistics we’ve got (all those mineral reserves, resources) are listings of what currently active companies claim to have marked out as economic to recover deposits. Anyone claiming that mineral reserves (or that wider definition, resources) is “what we’ve got” is wholly and entirely wrong. Systematically wrong in that they don’t know what they’re talking about, have failed to grasp the basic definition. For example, this find of H2 in Oz - we know it’s there, from that announcement. But it’s not a mineral resource even yet, let alone a reserve. This is also true of all the other places we’ve not gone looking as yet.
The second is that we need some way of working out which of all these possibilities is going to be important and which aren’t. The answer is not to use planning. For obviously planners didn’t know about this white hydrogen find. Nor, really, does anyone’s current plans include any white hydrogen at all. So, what we need is a system that continuously alters course given the new information that flows into it.
You know, markets? Not government plans written into the Climate Change Act 2008 and “legally enforceable” as a result. But prices, markets, the efficient manner of incorporating new knowledge into the body politic. That’s the one way we’ve got of trying everything and so seeing what works.
Sure, perfectly happy to help markets along by incorporating externalities into prices - we’ve been arguing for that for two decades now. We’ve also no complaint at all about the idea of dealing with climate change. It’s the process we use to do this - markets adjusted for externalities rather than the plans of whichever babykisser last got elected - which we insist upon.
Yesterday we didn’t know that white hydrogen existed in Australia. Today we do - great, so, how do we incorporate that into our plans? By not having societal plans other than using prices to inform activity…..