H2 roadmap smoke and mirrors in climate emergency

Climate Justice Taranaki is challenging the environmental and economic arguments for the region's new hydrogen roadmap.

The H2 Taranaki Roadmap, launched on Friday in New Plymouth, looks at how the region can use its existing skills and infrastructure to become a leader in hydrogen production, including using depleted gas fields used to store hydrogen, electricity generation using green hydrogen, and Port Taranaki becoming a key hub for export.

Climate Justice spokesperson Catherine Cheung says the roadmap is full of fanciful ideas and technologies that are still at the experimental or development stages.

She says the world is in a climate emergency with just 12 years left to turn things around, and the focus should be on upscaling proven renewable energy technologies and investing in energy conservation and resilience.

In the roadmap, ‘green’ urea and methanol are supposedly green because they do not rely on fossil fuels in their manufacturing. But when urea is spread on land, there is a release into the atmosphere of nitrous oxide, which is more than 200 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.

Ms Cheung says the roadmap appears to be smoke and mirrors trying to keep the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries afloat despite the climate crisis.

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