Sunday, December 26, 2021

CONSERVATIVE GOVT.

Leadership lacking in Manitoba as COVID-19 cases surge, Omicron spreads, say bewildered experts

'Most dangerous series of human-to-human transmission

 in this province': Dr. Aleeza Gerstein

Nathan Liewicki · CBC News · 
Cars line up for COVID-19 testing on King Edward Street in Winnipeg earlier this week. As cases surge and Omicron spreads, people are waiting several hours to get their tests and up to four days to see their results. The province on Friday said it has a backlog of 10,000 specimens waiting to be processed. (Jaison Empson/CBC)

Andrea Carlson was preparing to host a small Christmas Day gathering with members of her extended family.

She abruptly cancelled those plans after Manitoba's top doctor implored everyone to curtail their holiday gathering plans Friday.

Manitoba reported a pandemic-high 742 cases of COVID-19 on Friday, with Chief Provincial Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin pointing to the rapid transmission of the Omicron variant fuelling the high case counts.

Instead of gathering with loved ones, Carlson will celebrate with her immediate family of three, connect with extended family via Zoom and drive around to deliver the 15 pounds of turkey she is cooking.

"I'm really sad. I'm tired, but it's the right thing to do," Carlson said.

Dee Pearson isn't changing her family's Christmas plans.

"I get the whole COVID thing but you just don't know when the last time is you're going to be with your family, so that's why we are going to continue to go on," Pearson said.

Larry Tornborough isn't changing his Christmas Day plans. He will be watching football and eating turkey with his friend but believes the province shouldn’t have opened things up as quickly as it did. (Randall McKenzie/CBC)

Larry Tornborough isn't changing his Christmas plans either.

He will be watching football and eating turkey with his friend, but believes the province shouldn't have opened things up as quickly as it did.

"They should have left it as it was … all they've got is people going haywire," Tornborough said.

"One day it's on. One day it's off. You don't know what to do."

What's missing is "authentic leadership" from Premier Heather Stefanson, says Dr. Eric Jacobsohn, an intensive care physician at St. Boniface Hospital and Health Sciences Centre.

Stefanson wasn't part of Friday's press conference — virtually or in person.

Health Minister Audrey Gordon defended the premier's absence.

"What I can say is that I have the full confidence of the premier, as does Dr. [Joss] Reimer and Dr. Roussin to communicate to Manitobans how urgent it is that they follow the public health orders," Gordon said.

Jacobsohn, who is also a cardiac anesthesiologist and professor in the Max Rady College of Medicine at University of Manitoba, estimates the number of cases being reported is between 25 and 30 per cent of the actual cases of COVID-19 the province is adding daily.

Dr. Eric Jacobsohn, a Winnipeg intensive care physician, believes the province needs to issue a lockdown order to prevent further spread of COVID-19 and further deaths that may result from the virus. (Tyson Koschik/CBC)

If that's true, those 742 cases would be approaching 3,000 — exorbitantly higher than the 1,000 cases a day Roussin previously warned Manitoba might experience. 

Jacobsohn says the fact the province is pleading with people to stay home, reduce gathering sizes and limit the number of functions they go to is a statement.

"We need to lock down. The question is why aren't we locking down? It's what authentic leadership is about," Jacobsohn told CBC News. "It's not going to be popular, but is this something potentially that will save lives? Yes, and that's how it should have been framed."

Most people in Manitoba's health-care system are calling it "bewildering why a decision wasn't made to lock down," he said.

"We're making a bet here on the health-care system that I would say is a silly bet. I think we're betting on a lame horse."

Dr. Aleeza Gerstein, an assistant professor in microbiology and statistics at the University of Manitoba, also wanted to hear a stronger message from health officials.

"We are now in the middle of the most dangerous series of human-to-human transmission in this province we have yet seen.

"Every single person you are interacting with is a potential carrier of the Omicron variant and you should behave accordingly, which means minimize your contacts to your household unless you absolutely cannot," she said.

Dr. Aleeza Gerstein, an assistant professor in microbiology and statistics at the University of Manitoba, doesn’t understand what is driving policy decisions in the province. (Zoom)

Gerstein knows the timing of enhanced restrictions would be terrible, but believes it's necessary.

"We simply can't afford to do anything except cancel absolutely everything that is not critical because we are already on course for our hospitals to reach unprecedented levels of people requiring acute care in the upcoming weeks," Gerstein said.

She doesn't understand what is driving policy decisions in the province. If she was in charge, a rapid testing drive-thru would have already been created so symptomatic people could know almost immediately if they need to isolate from a positive result.

Instead, Manitoba's COVID-19 testing specimen backlog has reached 10,000 samples and the wait time to receive results is at least four days.

Roussin said Manitobans need to prepare to not have large gatherings next week, but Carlson isn't sure if more restrictions are needed.

"I think the government's doing a good job. I support what they're doing," Carlson said.

"I do in some respects wish that they'd have just come out with a harder line today, but I also think it's up to people to do the right thing."

Changing Christmas Day plans

2 days ago
Duration2:10
After COVID-19 numbers rise, some Manitobans change their holiday gathering plans. 2:10
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Omicron variant has 37 spike protein mutations: Canadian study
The study conducted a near atomic resolution analysis of the variant using a cryo-electron microscope
People queue up for their Covid-19 vaccine booster shots at a clinic inside the Metro Toronto Convention Centre, as the latest Omicron variant emerges as a threat, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. (REUTERS)

Updated on Dec 23, 2021
By Anirudh Bhattacharyya

Canadian researchers on Wednesday revealed, what they say, is the first molecular structural analysis of the Omicron variant of Covid-19 in the country which has shown that it has three to five times more mutations in its spike protein than any previous variant.

A near atomic resolution analysis of the variant using a cryo-electron microscope, “reveals how the heavily mutated variant infects human cells and is highly evasive of immunity,” the Canadian researchers at the University of British Columbia (UBC), which conducted the study, said.

Dr Subramaniam, a professor in the faculty of medicine’s department of biochemistry and molecular biology who led the study, described Omicron having 37 spike protein mutations as “unprecedented”.

“This is important for two reasons. Firstly, because the spike protein is how the virus attaches to and infects human cells. Secondly, because antibodies attach to the spike protein in order to neutralize the virus. Therefore, small mutations on the spike protein have potentially big implications for how the virus is transmitted, how our body fights it off, and the effectiveness of treatments,” he said.

The pre-publication study at bioRxiv noted the Delta variant had seven mutations in the spike protein and had only two in common with Omicron. “Analysis of the sequence of the Omicron genome suggests that it is not derived from any of the currently circulating variants, and may have a different origin,” the Canadian study stated.

“Our experiments confirm what we’re seeing in the real world — that the Omicron spike protein is far better than other variants at evading monoclonal antibodies that are commonly used as treatments, as well as at evading the immunity produced by both vaccines and natural infection,” Dr Subramanian said. It was, however, less evasive of immunity created by vaccines than that produced through natural infection.

“Sera from convalescent patients shows an even greater drop in neutralization potency relative to the Delta variant (8.2x decrease) while the vaccinated group also shows reduction in potency, although to a lesser extent (3.4x decrease),” the study said.

This point was also stressed upon by Dr Subramaniam, as he said, “This suggests that vaccination remains our best defence against the Omicron variant.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anirudh Bhattacharyya is a Toronto-based commentator on North American issues, and an author. He has also worked as a journalist in New Delhi and New York spanning print, television and digital media. He tweets as @anirudhb

Could Omicron have been predicted? First-of-its-kind technology possibly foresees variants

By Noor Ibrahim Global News
Posted December 24, 2021 

What would predicting a variant mean for pandemic preparedness and vaccine manufacturing? Noor Ibrahim talks to a team of researchers that believe their technology can accomplish a first-of-its-kind feat in Canada.

From a fake movie poster allegedly predicting its arrival in the 1960s to a hoax Simpsons episode foreshadowing widespread panic, there’s been no shortage of speculation that the onset of the Omicron COVID-19 variant was foreseen way before its arrival.

But while all of those examples have been downgraded to being just plain misinformation, questions do still remain about whether we could have actually seen Omicron coming.

Health officials have long been warning that the coronavirus, and other viruses, mutates as it replicates and infects new hosts – but could they possibly predict what a variant will look like, and how it will behave, way before the virus even mutates?

READ MORE: COVID-19 mutations make pandemic trajectory unpredictable, experts say

A team of researchers at the University of Waterloo believe they’ve come up with a technology that could come pretty close

“It has been shown by us and other researchers that artificial intelligence and text mining algorithms can be used to model genetic codes and predict virus mutations,” said Mohammad Kohandel, lead of the Mathematical Modelling and Biology Lab at the University of Waterloo, and a pioneer on this project alongside Amir Hossein Darooneh and Michelle Przedborski.

The team believes its technology is the first of its kind in the country.

Their secret? Machine learning and genomes — the building block sequence for the virus.

As a virus is copying itself, it will accidentally make “copying errors” or mistakes in the genome sequence, resulting in a mutation. A variant could have one or many mutations within its sequence.

Delta has two mutations in its genome, Kohandel said. Omicron has 50.

Viruses make ‘copying errors,’ or mutations, when replicating that could make them more or less transmissible. Global GFX for Noor Ibrahim

The parts of the genome that are “conserved,” or stay the same, are the ones targeted by the team’s technology.

Using only the original genome sequence for the COVID-19 virus, artificial intelligence can identify the conserved parts of the genome, and then predict which ones will mutate.

So far, the team has trained the AI to be able to predict — with high accuracy — Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma and other variants. It also predicted 19 out of the 50 highly possible mutations for Omicron.

“It is important to highlight that these predictions are not 100, we just gave which ones are more likely to be mutated,” said Kohandel. “It’s very fast and efficient, so we can have the result during hours.”

Headquartered in Ottawa, a team of 57 national researchers are also doing integral work in studying variants.

The Coronavirus Variants Rapid Response Network (CoVaRR-Net), is closely monitoring COVID-19 variants identified across the globe, and is actively trying to pinpoint which ones could become “variants of concern” – meaning variants that have become stronger, more transmissible or more resistant to vaccine through mutations.

“The focus now is mainly on Omicron, but also we’re casting a wider net,” said Jesse Shapiro, Pillar 6 lead in computational biology and modelling and professor at McGill University.

“We’re looking at, for example, if the Delta variant and the Alpha variant infected the same person, could that create a hybrid strain?”

Shapiro says CoVaRR-Net researchers are able to recognize old mutations they’ve seen before, which helps them assess how dangerous a new variant can be, in order to alert health authorities.

“We brief the deputy health minister on at least a weekly basis, if not more. We are in pretty much constant communication with the National Microbiology Laboratory and the Public Health Agency of Canada.”

READ MORE: Omicron’s community transmission could ‘rapidly escalate’ in coming days, Tam warns

Shapiro also says researchers know virus mutations have constraints.

Think of it as swapping words out in a sentence: there’s only so much you can change before the sentence stops making sense. Similarly, a mutation has to make sense within the overall genome sequence – otherwise, it will become gibberish, and the sequence will “break,” said Shapiro.

All this information gives scientists a good idea of what to expect next from a virus — although not 100 per cent.

In any case, knowing which parts of a virus will stay the same is integral in crafting a vaccine that would not be impacted by new variants, both Kohandel and Shapiro stress.

“Canada has an army that is standing and ready to go. This is the sort of analogy that we’d like to have for pandemic preparedness,” Shapiro told Global.

Meanwhile, back at the University of Waterloo, Kohandel and his team are trying to refine their technology further by training the AI’s “neural” network to potentially predict variants in the exact order that they will mutate.

Alpha variant evolved to suppress the immune system and Omicron shares a similar mutation: study

Alexandra Mae Jones
CTVNews.ca writer
 Saturday, December 25, 2021

New research investigating how the very first variant of concern for the novel coronavirus developed has found that the Alpha variant evolved mutations that suppressed specific aspects of the immune system, similar to mutations seen in newer variants such as Omicron.

The Alpha variant first emerged in the U.K. in the fall of 2020, introducing the world to the frightening idea of variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Although it has since been outstripped by subsequent variants including Delta and Omicron, studying Alpha’s structure and function helps scientists better understand how virus variants evolve.

Researchers from the U.S. and the U.K. worked together to investigate how Alpha attacked the human body, and found that the mutations that allowed it to thrive go beyond just those centred around the spike protein.

Their research, described in the journal Nature on Thursday, discovered that the Alpha variant upped production of a specific protein that could help it suppress how infected cells signalled the immune system.

To look deeper into how the Alpha variant worked, researchers looked at lab-grown cells infected by this variant to monitor protein levels and how the cells functioned.

They then compared the data to how cells responded to infection with the original strain of COVID-19. The biggest difference was in how the body’s innate immune response reacted — or didn’t. This is the body’s first line of defence, which attempts to keep pathogens from entering. Researchers say Alpha interfered with the rallying cry that usually activates this system.

Inside cells infected with Alpha were an abundance of three viral proteins that are known to help COVID-19 avoid the immune response. One in particular, called Orf9b, achieved this by blocking a protein in our cells that normally switches on the genes that signal our immune system to react.

Researchers said in the study that this type of mutation could have contributed to enhanced transmission of the Alpha variant by suppressing more of that early immune response, which may have allowed for the variant to replicate faster.

These findings show that the spike protein isn’t the only factor researchers should be thinking about when designing treatments to help those infected with COVID-19.

As SARS-CoV-2 uses spike proteins on its surface to attach to receptors in a person’s cells, mutations around spike proteins are often talked about more than other types. With the Delta variant, a more efficient spike protein is thought to help it fuse to our cells better, and all of the current COVID-19 vaccines are targeted to get our cells to produce immune responses against this spike protein.

“The mutations in spike allow the virus to get into cells more effectively,” Devan Krogan, one of the authors of the paper and lead of the University of California San Francisco’s Quantitative Biosciences Institute (QBI) and its Coronavirus Research Group (QCRG), said in a press release.

“But what about after the virus gets into cells? There may be other mutations that allow it to replicate more.”

Although each variant is different, many share similar mutations, with both Delta and Omicron appearing as cousins of the Alpha variant. Delta and Omicron both have similar mutations in the areas that researchers studied of the Alpha variant, which means they could be having similar impacts on the immune system.

“The virus will keep evolving and adapting to the host, and every time it will adapt better and better,” Lorena Zuliani-Alvarez, a co-author and senior scientist at the QBI, said in the release. “That’s why Omicron has 53 mutations.”

The research points out that studying mutations outside of those around the spike protein will give scientists a bigger picture of the virus as it evolves, something that will be crucial in fighting future variants.

“Studying the variants of concern gives us ideas about how SARS-CoV-2 evolves,” Mehdi Bouhaddou, a postdoctoral scholar and co-author, said in the release. “Now we have a sense of the proteins that are mutating most frequently, and the biological consequences of those mutations. I think this helps us prepare for what might come next.”

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Moira Donovan · CBC News · 
This is a representation of the kind of tree that is now a 310-million-year-old fossil in the Dawn of Life gallery at the Royal Ontario Museum. (Danielle Dufault)

An ancient tree that began its modern journey after falling out of a cliff in Nova Scotia is now on display in a new gallery in one of the busiest museums in the country.

After decades of preparation, the Dawn of Life gallery opened this month at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, bringing together a unique collection of fossils from UNESCO world heritage sites across the country. 

One of those fossils is an irregular column discovered at the fossil cliffs at Joggins, N.S. It's a fossilized tree that dates back to the Carboniferous era, when the cliffs that now line the Bay of Fundy were an equatorial swamp at the heart of the supercontinent Pangea.

The 310-million-year-old tree is now part of a permanent ROM exhibit that traces life from its earliest origins, four billion years in the past, to the appearance of the first dinosaurs and mammals about 200 million years ago.

The fossilized tree from the site in Joggins, N.S., now sits in the Dawn of Life gallery at the ROM. (David McKay)

"Across Canada, you'll find sites that speak well to fossils," said Jordan LeBlanc, director of operations at the Joggins Fossil Institute. "I love that we are represented there as well — Joggins is represented with the best."

'You reflect on how old life is'

The Dawn of Life gallery draws on Canada's high proportion of UNESCO world heritage sites to trace life from its oldest known evidence.

"This is something that is really often neglected in museums across the world," said Jean-Bernard Caron, the Richard M. Ivey Curator of Invertebrate Palaeontology at the ROM.

The gallery begins with a single-celled organism from approximately four billion years ago, which scientists call LUCA and which was found in Quebec. 

"As you look at this piece, you reflect on how old life is and how we are all connected to a single ancestor," said Caron.

From there, the gallery moves through fossils from Canada's UNESCO sites, from the early organisms found at Mistaken Point, in Newfoundland, where traces of some of the first examples of multicellular life forms are found, to the Burgess Shale in the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia, which tells the story of the origin of animals in what's known as the Cambrian explosion.

"Basically, the roots of our modern world can be traced to the Burgess Shale," said Caron.

Jean-Bernard Caron, the curator of paleontology at the Royal Ontario Museum, said Dawn of Life is a gallery that could only be executed in Canada, given the high number of UNESCO world heritage sites in the country. (Moira Donovan/CBC)

Fossils from a third UNESCO site — Miguasha National Park in eastern Quebec — show important developments from the "age of fishes," including fossils of fish that would give rise to four-legged, land-based animals from approximately 370 million years ago.

Finally, the gallery leads to the Carboniferous period, where the stump from Joggins serves as a centrepiece, Caron said.

A puzzle piece in our understanding

Trees in that period, unlike those today, had rigid exteriors and fibrous centres. When those centres rotted away, it left a hollow tube into which sand or mud would once have poured, eventually forming the kind of column that now sits in the ROM.

This type of "cast and mould" fossil is common at Joggins, although not many are as large, and dates back to a time when tropical rainforests first appeared on the planet, contributing oxygen to the atmosphere that allowed large organisms to flourish.

This is another representation of the Carboniferous period and the tree that now sits as a fossil in the Royal Ontario Museum. Trees at this time were closer to club mosses than the trees of today, and could reach 50 metres in height. (Danielle Dufault)

But this period isn't only significant to the history of life, it's also a crucial part of our understanding of that history, said John Calder, a geologist and paleontologist who has worked for much of his career on the Joggins fossil cliffs.

"It was in those rainforests that the evolution from amphibians to reptiles happened and is recorded," Calder said. "And Joggins happens to have the oldest example, in the fossil record of reptiles, of this seminal step in the evolution or branching of the tree of life."

About 300 million years ago, a number of these early reptiles either fell into the hollow trunks of trees at Joggins, or — Calder's favourite theory — were using them as dens, when they were buried by mud and sand. 

In the mid-1800s, Charles Lyell, a Scottish geologist and pioneer of modern geology, was walking the beach at Joggins and found a fossilized stump containing the bones of one of these reptiles.

The tree now stands in the Carboniferous section of the Dawn of Life gallery, where it can be touched by visitors, just as had been the case when it was at Joggins Fossil Centre. (David McKay)

The discovery was a sensation — so much so that Charles Darwin would go on to refer to Joggins in On the Origin of Species — and played a role in shaping the understanding of evolution. 

Exalting 'the wonders and importance of nature' 

Calder said it's gratifying to see Joggins shaping that understanding once again by appearing in the ROM's Dawn of Life gallery, in part because of the relationship between Joggins and the people of Nova Scotia — and one person in particular, the late Don Reid.

Several decades ago, Reid found the tree now at the ROM, and Calder has given him the title "the keeper of the cliffs."

"Here's an ex-coal miner who [took] his love of the place he lived in, before others really stepped up to do something, to do the proper recognition of Joggins. He was there, he and his family, and others at Joggins before him," Calder said. 

"And this is the same elsewhere around Nova Scotia. There are people that care, and they get the wonders and importance of nature in the broad sense in Nova Scotia, and what we have to offer, and it's those everyday people who really make it work."

Calder said Reid would have been "thrilled" to see the tree, and the care that went into it, now reaching an even broader audience with the opening of the Dawn of Life gallery.

"He was all about sharing the story of the wonders of Joggins, and so he would be tickled pink to have that tree that he had collected on display at the ROM — and to me that's really what's special."

The tree was carefully packed by staff at the Nova Scotia Museum, including curator of geology Tim Fedak, and sent to the ROM in 2019. (Moira Donovan/CBC)

Billions of years in the making

The gallery is opening after a summer and fall of extreme weather events linked to climate change and amid the ongoing instability caused by the pandemic. Caron, the ROM curator, said it's a way for people to understand what happened in the past, and a reminder of the fragility of life. 

"It took billions of years, sometimes, to create the organisms that we see today," Caron said. "And it's actually very fragile in the sense that you can destroy these life forms, which carry all this history in themselves, in the blink of an eye."

He said there have been several mass extinction events in the history of life of Earth, including ones that are represented in the gallery. But none happened with the speed — or because of a single species — as the changes we're witnessing now. 

"The fossil record in this gallery hopefully gives the visitor a way to reflect on the big challenges that we're facing today," Caron said. "And hopefully, to understand and to value what life is, and hopefully to protect it as well."

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Saturday, December 25, 2021

What is green hydrogen and why do we need it? An expert explains



Green Hydrogen might be the fuel of the future

Image: REUTERS/ Jane Barlow
21 Dec 2021
Abhinav Chugh
Acting Content and Partnerships Lead,
 World Economic Forum
Head of the Power Sector Transformation Strategies, 
International Renewable Energy Agency


The world's progress on transitioning to sustainable energy has stalled. Here’s how to fix it.


Read more about this project
Explore context

Hydrogen

Explore the latest strategic trends, research and analysis

Green hydrogen could be a critical enabler of the global transition to sustainable energy and net zero emissions economies.

There is unprecedented momentum around the world to fulfil hydrogen’s longstanding potential as a clean energy solution.

Dr Emanuele Taibi lays out where things with hydrogen stand now and how it can help to achieve a clean, secure and affordable energy future.

The time is right to tap into hydrogen’s potential to play a key role in tackling critical energy challenges. The recent successes of renewable energy technologies and electric vehicles have shown that policy and technology innovation have the power to build global clean energy industries.

Hydrogen is emerging as one of the leading options for storing energy from renewables with hydrogen-based fuels potentially transporting energy from renewables over long distances – from regions with abundant energy resources, to energy-hungry areas thousands of kilometers away.

Green hydrogen featured in a number of emissions reduction pledges at the UN Climate Conference, COP26, as a means to decarbonize heavy industry, long haul freight, shipping, and aviation. Governments and industry have both acknowledged hydrogen as an important pillar of a net zero economy.

The Green Hydrogen Catapult, a United Nations initiative to bring down the cost of green hydrogen announced that it is almost doubling its goal for green electrolysers from 25 gigawatts set last year, to 45 gigawatts by 2027. The European Commission has adopted a set of legislative proposals to decarbonize the EU gas market by facilitating the uptake of renewable and low carbon gases, including hydrogen, and to ensure energy security for all citizens in Europe. The United Arab Emirates is also raising ambition, with the country’s new hydrogen strategy aiming to hold a fourth of the global low-carbon hydrogen market by 2030 and Japan recently announced it will invest $3.4 billion from its green innovation fund to accelerate research and development and promotion of hydrogen use over the next 10 years.

You might encounter the terms ‘grey’, ‘blue’, ‘green’ being associated when describing hydrogen technologies. It all comes down to the way it is produced. Hydrogen emits only water when burned but creating it can be carbon intensive. Depending on production methods, hydrogen can be grey, blue or green – and sometimes even pink, yellow or turquoise. However, green hydrogen is the only type produced in a climate-neutral manner making it critical to reach net zero by 2050.

We asked Dr Emanuele Taibi, Head of the Power Sector Transformation Strategies, International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) to explain what green hydrogen is and how it could pave the way towards net zero emissions. He is currently based with the IRENA Innovation and Technology Center in Bonn, Germany, where he is responsible for assisting Member Countries in devising strategies for the transformation of the power sector, and currently managing the work on power system flexibility, hydrogen and storage as key enablers for the energy transition. Dr Taibi is also a co curator for the World Economic Forum’s Strategic Intelligence platform, where his team developed the transformation map on Hydrogen.

Green hydrogen technologies


What motivated you to develop your expertise in energy technologies and how does your work at IRENA contribute to it?


It was during my Master’s thesis. I did an internship in the Italian National Agency for Energy and Environment (ENEA), where I learnt about sustainable development and energy, and the nexus between the two. I wrote my thesis in management engineering about it and decided this was the area where I wanted to focus my working life. Fast forward almost 20 years of experience in energy and international cooperation, a PhD in Energy Technology and time spent in private sector, research and intergovernmental agencies, I currently lead the power sector transformation team at IRENA since 2017.


My work at IRENA is to contribute, with my team and in close cooperation with colleagues across the agency and external partners such as the World Economic Forum, in supporting our 166 Member Countries in the energy transition, with a focus on renewable electricity supply and its use to decarbonize the energy sector through green electrons as well as green molecules like hydrogen and its derivatives.


What is green hydrogen? How does it differ from traditional emissions-intensive ‘grey’ hydrogen and blue hydrogen?


Hydrogen is the simplest and smallest element in the periodic table. No matter how it is produced, it ends up with the same carbon-free molecule. However, the pathways to produce it are very diverse, and so are the emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4).


Green hydrogen is defined as hydrogen produced by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen using renewable electricity. This is a very different pathway compared to both grey and blue.


Grey hydrogen is traditionally produced from methane (CH4), split with steam into CO2 – the main culprit for climate change – and H2, hydrogen. Grey hydrogen has increasingly been produced also from coal, with significantly higher CO2 emissions per unit of hydrogen produced, so much that is often called brown or black hydrogen instead of grey. It is produced at industrial scale today, with associated emissions comparable to the combined emissions of UK and Indonesia. It has no energy transition value, quite the opposite.


Blue hydrogen follows the same process as grey, with the additional technologies necessary to capture the CO2 produced when hydrogen is split from methane (or from coal) and store it for long term. It is not one colour but rather a very broad gradation, as not 100% of the CO2 produced can be captured, and not all means of storing it are equally effective in the long term. The main point is that capturing large part of the CO2, the climate impact of hydrogen production can be reduced significantly.

Depending on production methods, hydrogen can be grey, blue or green – and sometimes even pink, yellow or turquoise
Image: International Renewable Energy Agency


There are technologies (i.e. methane pyrolysis) that hold a promise for high capture rates (90-95%) and effective longterm storage of the CO2 in solid form, potentially so much better than blue that they deserve their own colour in the “hydrogen taxonomy rainbow”, turquoise hydrogen. However, methane pyrolysis is still at pilot stage, while green hydrogen is rapidly scaling up based on two key technologies - renewable power (in particular from solar PV and wind, but not only) and electrolysis.


Unlike renewable power, which is the cheapest source of electricity in most countries and region today, electrolysis for green hydrogen production needs to significantly scale-up and reduce its cost by at least three times over the next decade or two. However, unlike CCS and methane pyrolysis, electrolysis is commercially available today and can be procured from multiple international suppliers right now.
Green hydrogen energy solutions


What are the merits of energy transition solutions towards a ‘green’ hydrogen economy? How could we transition to a green hydrogen economy from where we are currently with grey hydrogen?


Green hydrogen is an important piece of the energy transition. It is not the next immediate step, as we first need to further accelerate the deployment of renewable electricity to decarbonize existing power systems, accelerate electrification of the energy sector to leverage low-cost renewable electricity, before finally decarbonize sectors that are difficult to electrify – like heavy industry, shipping and aviation – through green hydrogen.


It is important to note that today we produce significant amount of grey hydrogen, with high CO2 (and methane) emissions: priority would be to start decarbonizing existing hydrogen demand, for example by replacing ammonia from natural gas with green ammonia.


Recent studies have sparked a debate about the concept of blue hydrogen as a transition fuel till green hydrogen becomes cost-competitive. How would green hydrogen become cost competitive vis-à-vis blue hydrogen? What sort of strategic investments need to occur in the technology development process?


The first step is to provide a signal for blue hydrogen to replace grey, as without a price for emitting CO2, there is no business case for companies to invest in complex and costly carbon capture system (CCS) and geological storages of CO2. Once the framework is such that low-carbon hydrogen (blue, green, turquoise) is competitive with grey hydrogen, then the question becomes: should we invest in CCS if the risk is to have stranded assets, and how soon will green become cheaper than blue.


The answer will of course differ depending on the region. In a net zero world, an objective that more and more countries are committing to, the remaining emissions from blue hydrogen would have to be offset with negative emissions. This will come at a cost. In parallel, gas prices have been very volatile lately, leaving blue hydrogen price highly correlated to gas price, and exposed not only to CO2 price uncertainty, but also to natural gas price volatility.


For green hydrogen, however, we might witness a similar story to that of solar PV. It is capital intensive, therefore we need to reduce investment cost as well as the cost of investment, through scaling up manufacturing of renewable technologies and electrolysers, while creating a low-risk offtake to reduce the cost of capital for green hydrogen investments. This will lead to a stable, decreasing cost of green hydrogen, as opposed to a volatile and potentially increasing cost of blue hydrogen.


Renewable energy technologies reached a level of maturity already today that allows competitive renewable electricity generation all around the world, a prerequisite for competitive green hydrogen production. Electrolysers though are still deployed at very small scale, needing a scale up of three orders of magnitude in the next three decades to reduce their cost threefold.


Today the pipeline for green hydrogen projects is on track for a halving of electrolyser cost before 2030. This, combined with large projects located where the best renewable resources are, can lead to competitive green hydrogen to be available at scale in the next 5-10 years. This does not leave much time for blue hydrogen – still at pilot stage today – to scale up from pilot to commercial scale, deploy complex projects (e.g. the longterm geological CO2 storage) at commercial scale and competitive cost, and recover the investments made in the next 10-15 years.


Several governments have now included hydrogen fuel technologies in their national strategies. Given the rising demands to transition towards decarbonization of the economy and enabling technologies with higher carbon capture rates, what would be your advice to policymakers and decisionmakers who are evaluating the pros and cons of green hydrogen?


We will need green hydrogen to reach net zero emissions, in particular for industry, shipping and aviation. However, what we need most urgently is:


1) energy efficiency;


2) electrification;


3) accelerated growth of renewable power generation.


Once this is achieved, we are left with ca. 40% of demand to be decarbonised, and this is where we need green hydrogen, modern bioenergy and direct use of renewables. Once we further scale up renewable power to decarbonise electricity, we will be in a position to further expand renewable power capacity to produce competitive green hydrogen and decarbonise hard-to-abate sectors at minimal extra cost.

How green hydrogen can be produced, converted and used across the energy system.
Image: International Renewable Energy Agency
The future of green hydrogen


Where do you see energy technologies relating to hydrogen evolving by 2030? Could we anticipate hydrogen-powered commercial vehicles?


We see the opportunity for rapid uptake of green hydrogen in the next decade where hydrogen demand already exists: decarbonising ammonia, iron and other existing commodities. Many industrial processes that use hydrogen can replace grey with green or blue, provided CO2 is adequately priced or other mechanisms for the decarbonisation of those sectors are put in place.


For shipping and aviation, the situation is slightly different. Drop-in fuels, based on green hydrogen but essentially identical to jet fuel and methanol produced from oil, can be used in existing planes and ships, with minimal to no adjustments. However, those fuels contain CO2, which has to be captured from somewhere and added to the hydrogen, to be released again during combustion: this reduces but does not solve the problem of CO2 emissions. Synthetic fuels can be deployed before 2030, if the right incentives are in place to justify the extra cost of reduced (not eliminated) emissions.


In the coming years, ships can switch to green ammonia, a fuel produced from green hydrogen and nitrogen from the air, which does not contain CO2, but investments will be needed to replace engines and tanks, and green ammonia is currently much more expensive than fuel oil.


Hydrogen (or ammonia) planes are further away, and these will be essentially new planes that have to be designed, built and sold to airlines to replace existing jet-fuel-powered planes – clearly not feasible by 2030: in this sense, green jet fuel – produced with a combination of green hydrogen and sustainable bioenergy – is a solutions that can be deployed in the near term.


In conclusion, the main actions to accelerate decarbonisation between now and 2030 are 1) energy efficiency 2) electrification with renewables 3) rapid acceleration of renewable power generation (which will further reduce the already low cost of renewable electricity) 4) scale up of sustainable, modern bioenergy, needed - among others - to produce green fuels that require CO2 5) decarbonisation of grey hydrogen with green hydrogen, which would bring scale and reduce the cost of electrolysis, making green hydrogen competitive and ready for a further scale up in the 2030s, towards the objective of reaching net zero emissions by 2050.


The World Economic Forum is a longstanding supporter of the clean hydrogen agenda since 2017, having helped -inter alia- with the creation of the Hydrogen Council, the establishment of a hydrogen Innovation Challenge in partnership with Mission Innovation, and the creation, together with the Energy Transitions Commission, of the Mission Possible platform to help transition hard-to-abate sectors to net zero emissions by 2050. Read more on the Accelerating Clean Hydrogen Initiative here.
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Written by

Abhinav Chugh, Acting Content and Partnerships Lead, World Economic Forum

Emanuele Taibi, Head of the Power Sector Transformation Strategies, International Renewable Energy Agency

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.





CleanTechnica
~0.03% Of Hydrogen Is Green Hydrogen



CLEAN POWER
By Zachary Shahan
Published3 days ago

It seems that 95% of headlines and stories about hydrogen focus on green hydrogen, yet green hydrogen is barely present here on planet Earth. So, how much of a disservice is being done to society by all of these headlines and articles implying that hydrogen is clean?

When Mike Barnard interviewed Paul Martin for CleanTech Talk a few months ago, one stat caught my attention above all else — that 0.1% of global hydrogen production came from “green hydrogen” (hydrogen produced by splitting water using electricity produced by clean, renewable power). The focus of their discussion was the “Hydrogen Ladder.” (Read about part one and part two for more commentary, or listen to the podcasts — embedded below.)

While I knew that “green hydrogen” was mostly hype, small science projects, and a dream for the future, I didn’t realize it was just 0.1% of global hydrogen production. That stunningly low figure makes the hydrogen hype all the more irritating. You can listen to the full, super informative interview here:

Looking around the internet (thanks, Google), I couldn’t find much reference to this figure of 0.1% (or actually less than 0.1%) of global hydrogen production being green hydrogen production (ugh, Google). I did find a CNBC article from a year ago citing an International Energy Agency (IEA) report and saying, “less than 0.1% of hydrogen today is produced through water electrolysis.” That led me to this report from June 2019. It stated, “While less than 0.1% of global dedicated hydrogen production today comes from water electrolysis, with declining costs for renewable electricity, in particular from solar PV and wind, there is growing interest in electrolytic hydrogen.” Ah, yes, interest.

Luckily, Google did swiftly show me that there’s an updated report published in October 2021 and revised in November 2021, Global Hydrogen Review 2021. So, with all of this interest in green hydrogen in the past few years, where are we at?

The new report indicates that “water electrolysis made up ~0.03%” of global hydrogen production last year. That’s right — not even 0.3%, but a lowly 0.03%! It doesn’t show up on a pie chart of hydrogen sources, of course. (See image at top.) Nonetheless, headline after headline is about “green hydrogen.” Is the hype around green hydrogen doing more damage than good, or is it spurring on a yet-to-sprout green industry?

If you want to count carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS), it provided another 0.7% of global hydrogen supply in 2020. However, that’s from 16 fossil fuel plants, and the CCUS components of the plants are surely heavily subsidized and are quite expensive methods of getting hydrogen. Many experts argue this can never be cost-competitive.

At the end of the day, the following chart shows three things: “green hydrogen” expectations from projects under construction or planned, the amount of it that is in country pledges by 2030, and the amount needed for an IEA net zero emissions scenario.



As it stands, despite all of the hype, the green hydrogen market is looking a bit anemic, and the 2030 projections based on plans or even pledges are not where the world needs it to be. Green hydrogen proponents will say that means that more money needs to be tossed at green hydrogen. Critics will say that we are throwing our money away on many of these green hydrogen projects and programs, money that could be used to fund more capital-efficient decarbonization tech.

The two bottom lines of this matter, in my opinion, are: 1) any funding for green hydrogen needs to be focused on solutions that have a serious chance at becoming cost competitive and thus truly useful in the effort to decarbonize, and 2) any coverage of green hydrogen needs to put this industry in context, should explain where 99.97% of hydrogen comes from, and should at least bring to mind why it is that fossil fuel companies are so keen on hyping the green hydrogen dream.
 CleanTechnica.com


Namibia eyeing emerging market for green hydrogen: WSJ



https://arab.news/nqvz4
Updated 25 December 2021
ARAB NEWS

RIYADH: Namibia is one of many countries seeking to cash in on the green energy rush and it is positioning itself as a leader in the emerging market for green hydrogen, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Many experts agree that “green” hydrogen, a carbon-friendly nontoxic gas produced using renewable energy, can play a significant role in achieving a green gas-neutral economy by 2050, helping to combat global warming.

The southwest African nation is already “putting up to €40 million ($45.3 million) from Germany to use on on feasibility studies and pilot projects related to so-called green hydrogen.”

“Germany’s government says Namibia’s natural advantages could help it produce the world’s cheapest green hydrogen — a crucial ingredient in policies hoping to cut carbon emissions to the net-zero benchmark by 2050,” the WSJ reported.

“The list is quite short of those new potential large renewable capable countries and Namibia is there,” the reported quoted Noel Tomnay, global head of hydrogen consulting at Wood Mackenzie, as saying. But he also pointed to significant challenges. “Infrastructure, suitable water and just the uncertainty associated with someone who’s not been doing that in the past on a large scale,” he said.

According to the report, several global players expressed interest after Namibia’s government put out a request for proposals to develop two separate but adjacent sites, where it envisions massive desalination plants.

The sites would also include wind and solar farms as well as electrolysers — systems that use electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen—which would be used to produce green hydrogen and ammonia for export.

Namibia received nine bids from six developers for the two sites, including South Africa’s Sasol Ltd., Australia’s Fortescue Metals Group Ltd. and Germany’s Enertrag AG—a shareholder in Hyphen Hydrogen Energy (Pty) Ltd., which has been awarded both sites.

In the global race for green hydrogen, Namibia is the latest sub-Saharan African country with major natural assets to position itself as a potential green energy hub.

The Hydrogen Stream: Storing hydrogen in offshore caverns

Engie unit Tractebel is developing the technology. Elsewhere, the European Commission has approved, under state aid rules, a €900 million German scheme to support investment in green hydrogen production for EU consumption and Spanish company H2B2 Electrolysis Technologies is developing a project to generate up to 1,000kg per day of electrolytic hydrogen in California.

 

Tractebel and its project partners claim to have developed the world's first infrastructure and facilities concept for offshore hydrogen caverns.  Image: Engie Tractebel


The Tractebel engineering subsidiary of French utility Engie is part of a partnership which has developed an offshore concept for the storage of hydrogen in caverns, a system the project partners have called a global first. “The design study … outlines an innovative solution for large scale hydrogen storage on the high seas: A scalable offshore platform for the compression and storage of up to 1.2 million m³ of hydrogen,” Engue wrote last week. “Underground salt caverns will be used as storage and buffer for the hydrogen produced offshore before the gas is transported via the pipeline network to the onshore grid, and finally to consumers and customers.” The storage and compressor platforms can reportedly process 400,000Nm3 (normal cubic meters) of hydrogen per hour, with the energy storage medium stored in underground salt caverns at a pressure of up to 180 bar.


The European Commission has approved, under EU state aid rules, a €900 million German scheme to support investment in the production of renewable hydrogen in non-EU countries, which will be then imported to the EU. “The scheme, called H2Global, aims at meeting the EU demand for renewable hydrogen that is expected to significantly increase in the coming years, by supporting the development of the unexploited renewable resource potential outside the EU,” wrote the commission yesterday. The ten-year project will be managed by special-purpose entity Hint.co. “This intermediary will conclude long-term purchase contracts on the supply side ([for] green hydrogen production) and short-term resale contracts on the demand side (green hydrogen usage),” said the commission. Prices will be determined via a double-auction model, where the lowest bid price for hydrogen production and the highest selling price for hydrogen consumption will each be awarded contracts.

Spanish company H2B2 Electrolysis Technologies is developing a project to generate up to 1,000kg per day of solar-powered emission-free hydrogen in California. The SoHyCal project, in Fresno County, consists of the construction, financing and operation of a renewable hydrogen production plant using polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) technology, and with a nameplate capacity of up to 3,000kg per day.

The government of Western Australia is backing its hydrogen industry with three projects set to receive support from its lead agency services. Province Resources' HyEnergy Project will harness 8 GW of solar and wind power generation capacity to produce around 550,000 tons of hydrogen per year. The Murchison Hydrogen Renewables facility will use solar and wind to produce 5.2 GW of electricity to power the production of hydrogen which will be converted into 2 million tons of green ammonia annually. It is expected InterContinental Energy's Western Green Energy Hub will use up to 50 GW of solar and wind capacity to produce up to 3.5 million tons of hydrogen or 20 million tons of green ammonia per year.

Hydrogen-powered equipment was mentioned as part of Hyundai Construction Equipment‘s plan to invest €150 million into its Ulsan production plant, in South Korea, to increase capacity by 50% to more than 15,000 machines per year. “The move will support Hyundai’s growing presence in the booming global construction equipment market while providing a manufacturing base for a new generation of electric and hydrogen-powered equipment,” the company wrote yesterday.

Sweden has shown it has the potential to become a pioneer in green steel production, according to a note released today by U.S.-owned analyst Wood Mackenzie. The Nordic nation produces 3.2% of the crude steel made in the EU and U.K. Sweden's steelmakers expected to bank on the cost reductions offered by alkaline electrolysis technology, as well as benefiting from the declining cost of renewables and rising carbon prices, according to WoodMac. “At a levelized cost of electricity at $30/MWh, wind power is a highly economical source of power generation in Sweden today,” wrote the analyst. “Further cost reductions are expected, with better financing structures for onshore wind, lower capex [capital expenditure levels] for onshore and offshore installations, technological optimization for asset management, and state support for offshore grid infrastructure.” WoodMac added, the combination of hydrogen from alkaline electrolysis and energy from onshore wind is the most cost-effective option for green crude steel production in Sweden. “Assuming a carbon price of $100/ton, green steel producers could benefit from $85/ton of carbon credits,” wrote the analyst. “Better financing models for onshore wind and 48% lower capex for alkaline technology in 2025, yield [a] steel cost of $360-390/ton in carbon price scenarios ranging between $50/ton and $150/ton.”

This copy was amended on 21/12/21 to add details of the SoHyCal project.

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