It's not the subsidies that are the problem, it's the lobbying for them

We are not, in general, in favour of subsidies. This is probably fairly generally known too. What is possibly less understood is why we’re not.

Yes, of course, subsidies are the government picking losers. Things that would not happen without baby kissing champions lavishing them with cash are things that probably shouldn’t happen. But what truly harms and costs is the competition to receive those subsidies:

The great hydrogen gamble: hot air or net zero’s holy grail?

An army of lobbyists is trying to persuade the government of the case for the combustible gas as a valuable weapon in the climate crisis, but questions remain

That army of lobbyists.

There are at least 120 paid lobbyists for hydrogen operating in parliament at present, according to estimates from the MCS Charitable Foundation. In the EU, a vast network of fossil fuel companies, trade associations and other interested parties are putting the case for hydrogen.

That vast effort to put the case.

Precisely and exactly because government has taken upon itself that power to subsidise - to pick losers - therefore there is this negative sum competition to capture those subsidies. Even, the permissions.

As it happens we’re very much in favour of hydrogen as part of the energy mix. If - and agreed, it’s an if - green hydrogen does become cheap then we’ve that climate change problem largely licked. Renewables through electrolysis to hydrogen to fuel cells solves the storage and battery problem. Green hydrogen combined with atmospheric CO2 then also solves - to the extent that fuel cells don’t - the automobile challenge, by producing synthetic petrol. And synthetic jetfuel entirely solves flying. That last already around and about economic as it happens. Cheap green hydrogen also entirely solves steel making emissions via DRI.

Sounds like a plan - except it shouldn’t be a plan at all of course. Not from government at least. For the government plan should be that here’s the problem - CO2 emissions - therefore any technology that solves that problem is to be treated equally. We would prefer by not being treated by government at all but at a minimum it should be that any method is treated the same. That is, it’s the result that matters, not the method by which it is achieved.

Because this process of submitting everything to politics as to method does indeed lead to the picking of losers - wood chip burning, E15 and all the other horrors - while also loading society with the costs of the scramble for those choices and subsidies.

We think hydrogen will in fact work for all the opinion of a few wonks matters. What we insist upon is that we must stop using political favour to either calculate that or encourage it. Instead use the one system we have that is absolutely and wholly fact based. If it works in the market then it works - so, leave the market to do the calculating. Any tipping one way or the other is by technology neutral and simple actions, not detailed planning.

The added advantage of this being that all those lobbyists would have to go get a real job, one that adds, not subtracts, societal value. Shame, eh?