EverWind’s ‘green hydrogen’ math rests on double-counting carbon reductions, alleges greenwashing complaint
Joan Baxter in the Hfx Examiner Aug 27, 2025. Intro in Morning File
Writes Tim Bousquet in Morning File (extracts):
“Joan Baxter reports that Kristen Overmyer, an engineer, has filed a greenwashing complaint with Canada’s Competition Bureau about the alleged double-counting of carbon credits that is foundational to making EverWind’s ‘green hydrogen’ project financially viable for the company.
“…Overmyer says that newly proposed European Union (EU) regulations will, if enacted, disallow “power purchase agreements (PPAs) that permit electricity from grids to produce ‘green’ hydrogen and ammonia, if those grids are not 100% powered by renewables.”
“In EverWind’s case, the proposal is to generate renewable power with three giant wind farms that will dump that electricity onto the Nova Scotia Power grid, and then Nova Scotia Power will deliver an equivalent amount of electricity to EverWind’s Point Tupper plant, where it will be used to produce ‘green’ hydrogen, which will then be super-cooled to ammonia and exported to Germany. Once in Germany, the ammonia will be heated back up to hydrogen and burned in power plants to generate electricity for the German power grid.
“…If I can oversimplify that, the gist of it is that the wind power generated in Nova Scotia will be counted towards Nova Scotia Power’s mandated goals of using a certain percentage of renewable power on the Nova Scotia grid, then, via the hydrogen-to-ammonia-to-hydrogen again scheme, the very same wind power generated in Nova Scotia will again be counted towards the mandated goals of using a certain percentage of renewable power on the German grid.
“That is, EverWind’s business case depends on double-counting the same carbon credits.”
From Joan Baxter:
…”Kristen Overmyer has a masters degree in mechanical engineering, and he runs a website called “Get Green Right.” Overmyer is concerned about greenwashing, and poorly informed decisions that could actually impair rather than help efforts to tackle the climate crisis.
“Overmyer, who lives in Nova Scotia, has been studying EverWind’s claims carefully, and also looking closely at the regulations in Europe that govern what hydrogen and ammonia can be considered “green.”…”