Hydrogen – the Net-Negative Energy Option

Photo sourced [here]

 by Viv Forbes 

The same people who promoted intermittent energy (wind and solar) have trumped that with their latest green energy fad – hydrogen fuel.

Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe; it fuels the sun and is the third most common element on Earth. But it is so reactive that it is seldom found in its elemental state - it combines strongly with other elements such as oxygen to form water or with carbon to form methane. It is an essential component in all acids, alkalis, hydro-carbons and organic materials.


To extract hydrogen from natural compounds such as water, methane or coal requires very large inputs of energy. Most commonly hydrogen is produced from methane gas using heat and steam, or by electrolysis of water using large quantities of electricity.

Hydrogen can be used to power rockets, cars and engines of all types. However the energy used to produce the hydrogen can never be fully recovered from the energy in the hydrogen. It is thus NOT a source of energy – it is merely a storehouse for energy - a battery.

It is possible to produce hydrogen from water using electricity from nuclear or hydro-carbon fuels, or even intermittent green energy. The hydrogen gas could then be transported to cities as a clean energy source for cars, thus reducing pollution from petrol/diesel vehicles.

But hydrogen is a very dangerous gas. It has tiny lightweight molecules which have low energy density and are difficult to compress, contain and store. It also forms an explosive mixture with air. To provide a network of hydrogen car-fuelling stations, or to suggest hydrogen as a domestic gas, is inviting explosive disasters in the suburbs – (imagine the Health and Safety regulations!)

Inviting explosive disasters in the suburbs?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MMB2VR0087w

Even the impractical electric cars have benefits compared to the hydrogen car. Electricity is safer and the supply network is easier and essentially in place. Moreover, electric cars do not reduce the oxygen content of city air - every tonne of hydrogen fuel consumes eight tonnes of oxygen to produce nine tonnes of water vapour. So instead of urban smog, we may get urban fog.

And to suggest that hydrogen can provide base-load power tops all green energy idiocy.

Hydrogen is a Net-Negative Energy Option.

Viv Forbes,
Rosewood    Qld   Australia
forbes@carbon-sense.com


Photo sourced Wikipedia

The Newman Government’s Water Act amendments: Part 4 - Stream diversions

by George Houen

McArthur River Mine, photo sourced [here] 

Stream Diversions 

Setting the miners free to dewater as much as they like and without any prior impact assessment is  not consistent with the Bill’s treatment of miners’ authority to divert surface water in streams, which currently also requires a water licence. Under the amended section 98 of the Water Act they may only divert a stream if the particular diversion and its impacts were assessed as part of the grant of an environmental authority and a condition of the authority allows it.  

Comment 

It should be permissible that objections against an environmental authority or its conditions (including any Coordinator General’s conditions) may include objections against a proposed stream diversion.

 

First Refusal for Affected Landholders 

Under the Bill’s clause 334Z of the MR Act, the miner may use the associated water for any purpose anywhere. This could result, for example, in groundwater which the bore owner is entitled to and is relying upon, being taken and used by the miner off lease for a non-mining purpose, or sold to someone else for a non-mining purpose.  

Comment 

Where the dewatering produces associated water in excess of a miner’s requirements for the mining purposes, the miner should be required to treat the surplus by reverse osmosis, then give all potentially affected landholders first right of refusal to take the treated water for their own use, at no cost.

 

Agreement 

A template make good agreement (which is readily adapted for either mining or CSG) is available from landholder Services. It was first adopted at the Callide Mine some 6 years ago and has been subjected to extensive review since. Provisions for baseline testing, monitoring and setting of trigger levels in the original agreement have operated satisfactorily. 

 George Houen

Landholder Services Pty Ltd

13 Cottesloe Street

Toowoomba

Qld 4350

Phone 07 4632 1024

 

 

 

Previous published related posts

The Newman Government’s Water Act amendments: Part 1 - Deregulation of the Dewatering of Mines

The Newman Government’s Water Act amendments: Part 2 - Uncoordinated Approval System

 

The Newman Government’s Water Act amendments: Part 3, Make Good

 

The Newman Government’s Water Act amendments: Part 3, Make Good

Photo sourced: Farmer claims mine water monitoring is flawed

By George Houen

Make Good

Mine dewatering is to be subject to the Water Act provisions requiring underground water impact reports, baseline assessments, general agreements and make good agreements. These will do little if anything to protect the rights of other groundwater users.

 

 

Miners will hide behind the one-side and trivial provisions of the Water Act to frustrate any attempts by landowners to achieve make good agreements that are actually workable and enforceable. The limited  bargaining power which the landowner may have during the current objection process will no longer count for anything as far as a make good agreement is concerned.  

The Water Act make good provisions are so one-sided and fundamentally flawed that in practical terms are they unenforceable, for example:

1. settlement of a make good agreement is not required before dewatering begins, so the landholder has no bargaining power – only a recourse to the Court and the Court would be restricted by these badly designed Water Act provisions
2. no requirement for independent expert testing of bores;
3. bore owner not entitled to the data and reports
4. baseline testing of private bores inadequate (especially as sustainable yield and gas intrusion not tested)
5. no regular monitoring of private bores including for specific capacity (short-form yield test) and gas intrusion
6. no expert-determined declining value trigger levels for individual bores derived from monitoring data (just one-size-fits-all water level decline which is not conclusive proof of diminished capacity)
7. no process for independent expert interpretation of impaired capacity and its cause when trigger levels reached
8. no process for resolving appropriate make good action
9. no dispute resolution process for technical matters requiring expert assessment
10. both make good and compensation are assessed according to the ‘authorised purpose or use’ of the bore, ie. its licensed yield limit (if there is one) and description of its utilisation at the time of baseline testing. Either or both of those parameters may be substantially below the bore’s actual capacity.

Comment

Licenced yield (if the bore is subject to licensing) can be amended. Subject to that upper limit it is the owner’s right to use the bore’s full capacity and it is that full capacity which must be underwritten by the make good system.  

The Water Act make good scheme fails to test (baseline test) and track (by monitoring) an individual bore’s actual capacity and thereby accurately identify any adverse change and its cause. Data from those in-house assessments isn’t required to be shared with the bore owner. Those

broad groundwater assessments and reports under the Water Act will gather a vast bank of data which is of little if any use when it comes to achieving a just outcome for the owner of a damaged bore.

 

More detail of the dysfunctional nature of the make good scheme may be found in ‘Make Good Flaws’, a supplementary document from Basin Sustainability Alliance at the 29thOctober 2014 public hearing of the Agriculture, Resources and Environmental Committee of Parliament.   

As is painfully obvious from experience in make good negotiations with CSG companies, such weak and inadequate terms in the Act are used by resource companies as a shield to deflect and frustrate any attempt by landholders to negotiate realistic and enforceable terms of a make good agreement. 

As stated above, dewatering approval should only granted after the proponent has entered into a make good agreement with each potentially affected bore owner.

 

Private make good agreements can meet all the tests referred to above. In both parties’ interests the agreement must lay out a process for gathering and supplying to both parties the necessary up to date data and fact and independent expert assessment. Both parties require that information as evidence in the event a make good claim arises. The resource company’s right to challenge a make good claim in court must be respected. The onus of proof of damage and its cause is on the bore owner and the standard of proof is demanding, so that the agreement must ensure the necessary data and fact are available if needed.

 A government-sponsored standard make good agreement would be appropriate, but that should be the extent of the Government’s involvement.

Areas in Surat Basin where aquifers will be impacted by coal seam gas
Prepared by the Office of Groundwater Impact Assessment
Managing groundwater impacts of coal seam gas

 

 Previous published related posts

The Newman Government’s Water Act amendments: Part 1 - Deregulation of the Dewatering of Mines

The Newman Government’s Water Act amendments: Part 2 - Uncoordinated Approval System

The Newman Government’s Water Act amendments: Part 2 - Uncoordinated Approval System

 by George Houen

Image sourced Qld Government, water bores

Uncoordinated Approval System
 

Currently mine dewatering must be authorised by a water licence under the Water Act, application for which is a separate process from the mining lease and environmental authority and it occurs separately and much later. It also has its own appeal process, for which the Land Court is also the arbitrator. 
 

The Land Court has found that currently it has only marginal jurisdiction on the issue because the water licence is not part of an objections hearing. This leaves landholders potentially affected by impacts of dewatering with nowhere to go. President of the Court CAC MacDonald, in her judgement on the objections hearing for the Wandoan Coal project², addressed her observations about this undesirable dichotomy to the respective Ministers for Mines and Environment, saying (inter alia) at [608]: 
 

             … The impacts of water diversions and extractions associated with the project seem to me to be highly relevant to any consideration of whether the project should be approved or refused. In my opinion, it is unsatisfactory that the impacts of water extractions and diversions are not properly assessed and considered under the Water Act until after the project has been approved under the MRA and the EPA.

 

The separate (and later) water licence application and approval process doesn’t allow cumulative impacts of mining to be properly addressed and by the time a decision is made on grant of a water licence it is likely that the mining project will already have been approved. Thus it is unlikely the decision maker for the water licence will reject the application and so derail the project. If a landholder did appeal the grant that would be a doubling up of their cost and time spent on an objections hearing.                     

Some water licenses for mine dewatering may have make good conditions, but never on terms that realistically are enforceable – ie. no proper baseline testing of the individual bore for sustainable yield (water levels are not enough), no proper monitoring to develop data and no properly derived trigger values. That is, a bore owner relying on such a make good condition could not meet the onus of proof or the standard of proof required to sustain a make good claim.   

 

Comment

The present legislation governing approval of mine dewatering is dysfunctional and needs to be fixed – not by the process set out in the Bill but by way of a scheme:

1. placing approval of mine dewatering under the Environmental Protection Act;
2. integrating objections with the mining lease/environmental authority approval process, such that cumulative impacts cab be assessed;
3. providing transparency, appropriate assessment of impacts and the right for objectors to be heard before the Land Court;
4. making dewatering conditional upon the proponent having first settled make good agreements with all potentially affected bore owners;
5. putting disposal of associated water from mines on a similar footing to the disposal obligations of CSG producers, ie. requiring it only be released after treatment by reverse osmosis;
6. the miner’s right to use the associated water for any purpose anywhere be subject to first offering it free of charge to landholders affected by the dewatering.

 

It seems inappropriate that this authority to dewater (including by evaporation from a mine pit) is placed in the Mineral Resources Act. Perhaps this is done deliberately to exploit the prohibitions and limitations placed on mining lease objections by the Common Provisions Act. 

 

 

 

Image sourced ABC: Coal Seam Gas by the numbers.



Previous published related post

The Newman Government’s Water Act amendments: Part 1 - Deregulation of the Dewatering of Mines 

Carbon Dioxide is a Weather Wimp and a Climate Pygmy

The Sun and Solar Cycles rule the Climate;

Wind and Water rule the Weather;
Carbon Dioxide is a Weather Wimp and a Climate Pygmy.
by Viv Forbes



Rising carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is blamed for every weather emergency, but as a weather maker, water is far more important.

Without water, Earth’s weather would be dramatically different. We would have no clouds, no rain or snow, no rain or hail storms, no hurricanes, no seas, rivers, lakes or ice sheets – just cold, cloudless nights and hot, clear days with dry winds and fierce dust storms; a dead planet like Mars.

Water has many weather effects. It cools Earth’s surface by evaporation, and transfers that heat to the upper atmosphere as it condenses into drops of rain, hail or snow. Water forms the wispy high cirrus and stratus clouds, the fluffy fair-weather cumulus and the ominous nimbus thunderheads that can produce rain, hail and storms as well as cyclones, hurricanes and tornados. Some high clouds help to retain surface heat while lower clouds shade and cool the surface as they intercept and reflect incoming solar radiation.

Where there is no water in the atmosphere we get hot deserts like Sahara or frigid deserts like Antarctica. And when solar energy wanes, as in ice ages, it is water, not carbon dioxide, that creates a real climate emergency with life-killing sheets of ice.

Carbon dioxide exists in the atmosphere and the oceans as a trace amount of invisible, non-toxic, non-flammable gas – quite a boring unspectacular gas really. But it gets the gold medal for feeding the biosphere – it is the gas of life and increased carbon dioxide is responsible for the recent measurable greening of the planet.

In theory, carbon dioxide can warm the climate by retaining surface heat. However, its so-called “greenhouse effect”, has never been quantified in climate records despite being given a key role in IPCC climate models. There is no evidence that carbon dioxide is creating dangerous global warming. Water vapour has a far bigger “greenhouse effect” over more radiation bands, and there is far more of it - Earth’s atmosphere has about 8,500 times more water than carbon dioxide. Earth’s water cycle also has a large moderating effect on any greenhouse warming from carbon dioxide. A climate tax on water makes as much sense as a tax on carbon.

In our great climate machine, the sun is the combustion chamber, the oceans are the stabilising flywheel and carbon dioxide is merely the temperature gauge – its concentration in the atmosphere rises as the oceans get warm and expel some of their dissolved CO₂.

The sun and cycles in the solar system rule Earth’s long term climate. Solar energy drives winds and water to create the complexities of the weather. Carbon dioxide is a climate pygmy and largely irrelevant in creating the daily weather.

We have enough real environmental problems on Earth without inventing climate crises supposedly caused by the relatively trivial quantities of carbon dioxide recycled by man’s industries and machines.

Water vapour and carbon dioxide are the gases of life – the biosphere needs more of both. We should stop all foolish attempts to capture and bury carbon dioxide and devote those resources to capture and store fresh water.

Barnaby Joyce doorstop - Coalition Dams Report

Ten days ago Senator Barnaby Joyce made this opening statement to the assembled media at the doors to the Senate in what is known as a 'doorstop'. I thought it worthwhile to revisit this issue, one that leads to wider questions of balanced development, nation building, food security and oppotunities for regional areas.

Barnaby found it neccessary to make a doorstop appearance because that morning slashed across all major newspapers were articles based on the leaking of the Coalition's draft policy discussion paper for water management of Australia. This is but one example,Tony Abbott's bold water plan leaked 

I will copy the questions and answers that followed in the first comment below. I don't believe that any copyright applies as this doorstop transcript has been made freely available from Senator Joyce's office.


Photo sourced The Age


You have probably read the front page of the paper and the discussion in regards to the Coalition Dams Taskforce. I think it is really important that we deal with this issue in a positive way. The Australian people want to take the next step. The Australian people want the vision that takes them ahead, that has the capacity to grow the size of our economy to grow areas of opportunity and to create a mechanism to assist us in paying the debt the Labor Party has left behind.

Now water is wealth. Efficient storage and usage of water that is environmentally responsible gives our nation a great capacity to take that next step. There is no one here today who is not the benefactor of public works, of dams the capacity to store water. Let’s face it out in the country you can build it all yourself.  We should not be scared of taking the next step. One of the greatest engineering feat of this nation is not that far from here, which is the Snowy Mountain Scheme which is something even to this day people use as a legacy that makes them feel proud of who they are as Australians. They bought in so many people who were immigrants who helped to construct this nation and so I believe the Australian people will be ready to go on a, progress a stage in their life with a new government that is going to take us the next step forward. 

Now I know there will be cynics out there that say that every dam is evil and to anything to do with dams is environmental vandalism. Some of these people you can never make happy. In fact there are probably many in the Greens who want to pull the dams we’ve got down.

What I can say anecdotally is the investment made some time ago in the town I live in St George, for public infrastructure for a dam is now responsible for a community that was built around it. It produces between three-quarters and a billion dollars worth of renewable    income every year predominantly through irrigation. Who are the benefactors of that? It is every person who collects tax revenue from that area and all the people who have the jobs in that area. When you look at it, there are 5,000 people who live in that area so it’s a pretty good return for us all.

Photo source The Punch

Australians, in many ways we are truly rich

Around the same time the article, Foreign Investment Rules by Jo Rea was published on this site, a facebook friend posted this meme. Jo’s article was about how International tribunals deliberating upon breaches of international investment rules by nation states from third world countries do not take into consideration factors such as human rights or the environment which has a detrimental impact upon these nations’ citizens, resources and genuine conservation.

With this meme I believe that my facebook friend was trying to say that only in the wealthy first world countries we have the luxury to go beyond our own or our community’s immediate survival and have the time and resources to radicalise good basic care of animals to become animal rights activists or a campaigner for a vegan lifestyle. I believe that the same could be said for having a hands on approach to good basic conservation efforts and taking that to a level of radical environmentalism at the expense of all other endeavours, even human life itself. 

I can remember back in 1988 when I attended a national youth rally in Canberra where a speaker of some talent told those of us in the forum something like that if you own a car, just your average car that is reliable and if you own a house even if it is a basic cottage and if you are holding down a job even if it is of humble employment; then you are amongst the richest 5% of the world’s population.

Isn’t it just so easy to always look with envy to those few who have greater economic wealth and not see the millions worst off than you? 

But should measurement of wealth only be determined by the amount of dollars in the bank?

I wish to introduce you to a website that is usually brimming with positivity, About Marc and Angel Hack Life and this article from last year, 10 Reasons You Are Rich. It is very short so with apologies I will copy it in full. 

Even in times of financial uncertainty, it’s always important to keep things in perspective.

Wealth is the ability to fully experience life.
- Henry David Thoreau

1.    You didn’t go to sleep hungry last night.

2.    You didn’t go to sleep outside.

3.    You had a choice of what clothes to wear this morning.

4.    You hardly broke a sweat today.

5.    You didn’t spend a minute in fear.

6.    You have access to clean drinking water.

7.    You have access to medical care.

8.    You have access to the Internet.

9.    You can read.

10.  You have the right to vote.

Some might say you are rich, so remember to be grateful for all the things you do have. 

So when you are next complaining about your lot in life try & remember the image above and this fellow trying to source the most essential element for human survival from a puddle that has been trampled by wildlife and would most likely include animal urine and faeces. Perhaps we should turn our mind to how we could help our fellow man which is what Torben Vestergaard of Holland did with his invention of The Lifestraw. Follow the link it’s very interesting.

PRA: Water management for the CSG industry

The coal seam gas industry does use a lot of water, not only in the construction of gas fields and supporting infrastructure but most of all in the dewatering process where huge quantities water is pumped out of the aquifer where the coal seams are located so as to be able to extract the gas.   Even the conservative if not sanitised report from the Queensland Water Commission says that “Petroleum tenure holders are predicted to extract approximately 95,000 megalitres of water per year over the life of the industry and this extraction will impact on water levels.”  This impact will largely fall upon landowners depending on bores and springs to water livestock and under licence restrictions irrigate crops.

The image is one developed by QWC with lines drawn on the map where they forecast the long term cumulative impacts of the coal seam gas industry will be on underground water. But already in these early stages of CSG production there are reports of bores outside of the 'affected area' predicted by the QWC showing dropped water levels, diminishing recharge rates and capacity.

The Petroleum Act and until very recently Qld government policy describe this water extracted in CSG production as a waste product. The Qld government invited submissions to a draft Coal Seam Gas Water Management Policy 2012. That submission process is over and the final policy has been released. 

Below are selected extracts from Property Rights Australia submission to the draft policy on CSG water management  

The draft policy correctly states that CSG water should not be treated as a waste product. Underground water is a very important resource and should be treated as such.

Landowners are limited by license in their water use but CSG companies are unfettered. The drawdown of aquifers in CSG areas is a primary concern of Property Rights Australia. Any substitute for clean, reliable underground water is a second grade option and should be recognised as such. Depletion of aquifers which service premium agricultural land sterilises that land and makes it unavailable as a reliable resource for an indispensable commodity, namely food, to future generations. 

“Make good” provisions are littered with uncertainty and unfairness.  The store set in the “make good” provisions by government and public officials is alarming. Government and public officials seem unconcerned at water drawdown and depressurisation as a result of this confidence when these provisions are untested.  Too much weight is being given to the inferior action of “make good” provisions when the EPA will only stop local extraction for catastrophic effects if companies are unable to “make good” or provide substitution. This is not good enough!  “Make good” is a poor substitute for a reliable clean underground water source. 

Well drafted, detailed, step by step “make good” agreements seem to be essential in contracts between landowners and CSG companies operating on landowner’s lands. It remains to be tested how difficult it will be to have the implications implemented and what steps are necessary should a dispute arise.

It is a concern that landowner’s bores experiencing impacts of who do not have a company operating on their property may have to jump through extra hoops to access “make good”. 

It is of concern that Government and public officials have not recognised that water quality is just as important as quantity of water available for landowners. Both crops and livestock can experience reduced performance from lower quality water and if this has been caused by CSG activity it must be recognised as an equally severe impact. 

A major failing of the draft policy is that it does not recognise any other contaminant present in CSG water other than salt. The policy does recognise that the quality of CSG water varies greatly. The amount and composition of remaining chemical elements and compounds needs to be known on a consignment by consignment basis.  Once treated the CSG water should be put to a suitable beneficial use. However it needs to be recognised that brine is not the only contaminant present in CSG water. Farmlands, farm aquifers and stock watering facilities should not be put at risk of contamination by any chemical elements and compounds that can cause impairment including substances such as heavy metals.

There are emerging new technologies of water treatment that when used as a replacement of or in tandem to the existing reverse osmosis water treatment plants will provide a far superior result in quality of water available to beneficial water uses and for the less volume of waste produced. 

The draft policy in Section 1.1, Priority 1 states that, “Appropriate plans are in place for mitigating short and long term impacts” It would be a far more satisfactory approach if proactive research is carried out to learn of possible impacts before they occur rather than continuing with the flawed “adaptive management” approach inherited from the previous Government. 

Baseline data needs to be ascertained; priority given to a comprehensive network of monitoring bores including bores to different aquifers at the same geographic location; the level of connectivity between aquifers needs careful research and the work of the Queensland Water Commission soon to be carried out by the new statutory body. Office of Underground Water Assessment should be independent & transparent.

There is no substitute for a clean, reliable underground water supply. All other options are vastly inferior.