Winning: Green Hydrogen is a dirty word

More signs that the climate change movement is on the way out

The Australian Hydrogen Council is changing it’s name to the (catchy) Australian Industrial Decarbonisation Council

That’s one way to back out of the Green Hydrogen disaster while pretending not to. They are not even trying to give a sensible explanation:

Australian hydrogen body scraps name as green energy dream collapses

By Max Aitchison, The Australian

Yet, this might be the first recorded instance of a clean energy association scrubbing its original, core identity: the Australian Hydrogen Council has this month quietly renamed itself the Australian Industrial Decarbonisation Council. “Australia’s hydrogen opportunity was initially seen as broad and global,” the industry body says in answer to why it felt it needed a new identity. “As the market developed, attention increasingly turned to the domestic industrial uses needed to support local decarbonisation, build capability and strengthen future export pathways.”

Which is a rather polite, understated way of saying the green hydrogen dream quickly turned into a nightmare.

Australia was going to be a Green Hydrogen Superpower (Stupid-power) only three years ago. Hydrogen was going to smooth out all the ups and downs of weather dependent energy. But that fantasy crashed and burned within 18 months, as project after project collapsed.

To produce Green Hydrogen at $2 a kilogram, our former Chief Scientist Alan Finkel, said the electricity used to make the hydrogen needs to be less than $30 per megawatt hour. So, the grand irony is that the only generator in Australia that can make affordable hydrogen is the one they would never use, brown coal.

Wind  and solar power can operate “cheaper” than that for short periods, but alas, like every other industrial process, once you’ve bought the land, built the infrastructure, hired the staff, and paid the insurance —  it doesn’t make any sense to use it “for short periods” and leave it and the staff sitting around most of the day watching cat videos on Youtube.

Funny how almost nothing works more efficiently on an intermittent basis.

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In other news, the big climate shindig in the Pacific is a dud.

Climate Conferences are not the hottest ticket in town anymore

Perhaps other presidents who want to be re-elected don’t want to be seen lounging around the Pacific playing golf while they sell out their citizens to the UN?

Even the temptation of a UN tropical holiday “conference” wasn’t enough to bring in the presidents and prime ministers that Chris Bowen wanted to hobnob with. So Australia paid $4m for five star hotel rooms, but the stars are not coming:

Chris Bowen’s Fiji climate summit faces global snub from world leaders

— By Ben Packham, The Australian

The Australian can reveal Mr Bowen is struggling to lock in any heads of government or heads of state from outside the Pacific to attend the October 5-8 pre-COP summit and a scheduled side trip to Tuvalu.

“They are not getting much buy-in,” a diplomatic source said.

Angus Taylor said taxpayers’ were forking out for an “empty room” in Fiji when power bills were up by a record 40 per cent and a record number of households were on hardship plans. “It’s time to scrap net zero and get back to having a plan for cheap power and energy abundance,” the Opposition Leader said.

Presumably they’ll still fill the hotel rooms with Foreign ministers and Climate ministers and Greenpeace royalty — who can pat themselves on the back while they investigate how Climate change has reduced the number of severe cyclones hitting Fiji and see how 89% of Pacific Islands are not sinking.

Thanks to satellites looking at 1000 islands and sand bars we know no habitable island in the Pacific, not one, got smaller despite humankind unleashing all that CO2.

Not that long ago, everyone wanted to be at climate conferences with Harry and Meghan, Jane Fonda, Leonardo, King Charles and Al Gore.

This article originally appeared at JoNova