Hydrogen here. Hydrogen over there: the word has been on the lips of many people lately. The potential economic and climate benefits are widely touted and presented as the new sesame of the energy transition. This overflowing enthusiasm must however be tempered: hydrogen is not the miracle solution that we are dangled, far from it.
Posted at 5:00 p.m.
“Get ready, you’re going to hear a lot about it,” said François Legault during his visit to the COP26 climate conference last fall. Dominique Anglade and the Liberal Party of Quebec have also made it a cornerstone of their electoral and environmental platform, describing hydrogen as a “social project” of the caliber of James Bay. Sophie Brochu, president of Hydro-Québec, also underlined its “extraordinary” potential and did not hesitate to describe it as our “new dams”.
It is worrying to see the place given to hydrogen in the discourse of our political leaders. Because this new international appetite, which is visibly dragging local elected officials in its wake, is far from trivial or innocent.
This sudden craze that speaks of hydrogen as the energy of the future is first and foremost a maneuver by the fossil industry to continue selling its products (gas, oil, coal) and to slow down the transition to renewable energies all over the world. Because about 95% of the time, it is precisely the transformation of these highly damaging fuels that makes it possible to produce our “savior” hydrogen.
It is the Trojan horse of those who have brought us to the edge of the climatic abyss. We must collectively be aware of this.
The special case of Quebec
That said, in our country, the situation is more complex since hydrogen is made from renewable energy: our precious hydroelectricity. Thus, it must be admitted, the production of green hydrogen is a solution that can help us decarbonize sectors that are more difficult to electrify directly, such as certain industrial processes or even aviation and maritime transport.
However, it is necessary to use hydrogen in an intelligent and very targeted way because to produce it, it takes electricity… a lot of electricity!
At a time when many are rightly pointing out that the province must reduce its consumption of hydroelectricity and manage this strategic resource for several other major projects such as the electrification of transportation or exports to other states, monopolize it in large quantity to make green hydrogen in sectors where it has no added value is a bad idea.
We therefore hope that the new Québec Hydrogen Strategy to be presented in the spring by the Minister of Natural Resources, Jonatan Julien, will be quantified, realistic and that it will take into account the limits of our hydroelectricity production capacities.
Our organizations, Équiterre and the David Suzuki Foundation, have submitted a brief1 during consultations on this strategy in order to inform them of all the potential pitfalls to avoid when developing this sector here.
We will see if, as dictated by common sense and science, we will take it easy.