Comment on Solar energy storage breakthrough could make European households self-sufficient
TWeaK@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: most new hydrogen technology is snake oil.
Its main source right now is as a byproduct to petrochemical processing, so a lot of the motivation behind it is really about maintaining these production lines, rather than “going green”.
Some things do require hydrogen, eg science applications. Hydrogen can be made using green electricity, but the energy cost is incredibly high. In order to fulfill just the things that require hydrogen, where there is no other alternative, we would need 3x the global renewable capacity solely dedicated to hydrogen production. If we start adding mass transport into that mix, or things like this hydrogen heating system, then we’re only exacerbating the problem.
We need our renewable electricity to power things that already use electricity. We don’t have enough capacity to be pouring it away into all the potential uses for hydrogen - which are often far less efficient. You lose so much energy creating hydrogen (as well as losses due to leaks) that you may as well just power it with electricity directly.
This is anti-hydrogen propaganda. It is basically a marketing spiel for the battery industry. In reality, hydrogen is going to power nearly all transportation, mainly because batteries are not a sustainable solution.
And the notion that we can't build enough renewable energy capacity is a classic climate change denial argument. People who say this are unknowingly (or sometimes knowingly) trying to get everyone back onto fossil fuels.
I can’t tell if you’re trolling or not. Well done.
Absolutely, I see no problem with using excess energy to produce hydrogen or other stuff. Maybe it’s arguably better to put that into battery storage or something, but it takes time to build all of that, and diversity isn’t a bad thing in most cases.
Like I said, we do need hydrogen for some things - what I’m saying is that we should be focusing on using it for things that have no other option, rather than trying to grow the hydrogen consumption market by moving anything that can be over to it, regardless of whether or not that is a good idea. Particularly if we’re basing long term predictions on the current rates of hydrogen production, primarily black hydrogen ie produced from petrochemicals, which would be expected to decline and rise in price alongside a decline in petrochemical use.
And where did I say we can’t build enough renewable capacity? I said we would need at least 3x the current renewable capacity dedicated to producing hydrogen to meet our current demand with green hydrogen for things that have no other option. The point I’m making is that running everything on hydrogen will drastically increase this demand, thus delaying the path to net zero as we’ll need to use fossil fuels for longer while we build even more renewables than if we were just aiming to meet our current, essential hydrogen demand.
If you are totally honest, you'd admit that for a huge percentage of the transportation, we don't have any real option other than hydrogen. That's certainly the case for many types of commercial vehicles, ships and airplanes. But it is also true for a large percentage of passenger cars. Not everyone can accept a battery powered car in their lifestyle. So it is inevitable that transportation is part of what hydrogen is good for. And once we start using hydrogen for this, batteries quickly become the odd-man out. After all, why spend trillions on a highly destructive and arguably unsustainable technology that will have to be replaced anyways?
The reason why it is a climate change denial tactic is that it completely ignores the fact that we can easily build enough renewable energy for pretty much whatever we want. It is thousands of times more plentiful than fossil fuels, and won't run out either. So even if we accept your claim of needing 3x more capacity, that is still no problem. However, it won't actually need that, since renewable energy requires vast amounts of energy storage to be viable. That storage is most easily done using hydrogen. So in reality, hydrogen is pretty fundamental to renewable energy altogether.
We do have another option: electric vehicles. Looking at cars, a hydrogen fuel cell car uses 3.2x as much energy and costs over 5.4x as much per mile driven vs electric. The cost difference is huge, one that no one can ignore. If people can’t stand the charge times, then we’ll start swapping out batteries - this has already been proven successful in some Asian countries with scooters.
Aircraft is another matter, as current batteries are too heavy, but even then hydrogen is worse than conventional combustible fuels. Pending significant advances in battery technology, we’ll probably use biofuels. It would be more efficient to convert hydrogen and CO2 to e-fuels than to use hydrogen directly - airlines prioritise efficiency.
We can easily build renewable technology (I’ve spent the last 7 years building windfarms) but the issue is speed. We need to get off fossil fuels now, or failing that as quickly as possible.
It’s not that we need 3x our current capacity, it’s that we need 3x our current capacity just for essential hydrogen, on top of all the rest of the capacity that renewables have yet to meet. Bear in mind, when a country claims to have “100% of their demand met by their renewable generation” there’s a lot of statisical fiddling involved, where they ignore that they still generate a significant amount through fossil fuels and that they are net exporters to other countries. We have a long way to go to meet even our current electrical demand with renewables, let alone any extra.
Energy storage with hydrogen is not easy. It’s hard, and even if it’s perfect it is still woefully inefficient. Batteries are the best long term bet there, however it’s still a very new sector in the energy market, so it has a ways to go. Elevated water storage is another good one, but the installation costs are pretty high (though not as high as nuclear).
Overall, our current goal should be to phase out fossil fuels as quickly as possible. The best way to do that is to go hard on current renewable technology, over all else. This includes sidelining nuclear, as it takes a long time to build nuclear and we’ll use more fossil fuels waiting for it than we would subsidising renewables when they’re not available. Nuclear also takes finite funding away from renewables, where it would be more effective.
Similarly, hydrogren detracts from these efforts, as it pushes the bar that renewables have to meet even higher. A large growth in hydrogen consumption, beyond that which genuinely requires hydrogen, will only prolong our reliance on fossil fuels.
Yet in some places there’s an excess of wind production at times and it’s economically viable to throw it into hydrogen and ammonia production. Do you think Maersk is designing ammonia powered ships for nothing?
hydrogenisland.dk/en maersk.com/…/maersk-backs-plan-to-build-europe-la…
Production and consumption are two different things. We need more green hydrogen production (currently at 0.1% of all hydrogen production), and we need to heavily tax black and brown hydrogen to balance the environmental cost against the low price of dirty production.
With hydrogen consumption, we already have a significant demand for scientific and other uses that have no alternative. This currently relies on black and brown hydrogen, but will eventually need to be fulfilled by green hydrogen. If we throw anything and everything that could use hydrogen on top of that, then we’ll be using fossil fuels for even longer while we build enough renewable generation capacity for it all to be provided by green hydrogen.
Also, the vast majority use scenarios proposed for hydrogen could be fulfilled directly by electricity at a much greater overall efficiency. Maybe hydrogen would be cheaper right now, while it’s all produced by petrochemicals, but when you factor in the cost of green hydrogen the long term projections simply do not work.
Do you think Maersk is designing ammonia powered ships for nothing?
I think Maersk is designing ammonia powered ships because they’re not far removed from conventional ICE’s, which they’re already proficient in. They’re less concerned with what is the best solution overall, but which is the most profitable to them right now.
roofuskit@lemmy.world 1 year ago
There could not have put up a bigger sign saying, “I didn’t bother to read the article.”
Otherwise I don’t disagree with most of what you’re claiming. But most of the problems you posed do not even apply to this relatively new system.
TWeaK@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Lol you caught me out, I skimmed over most of the article. I’ve also realised later down the thread that one of my main sources actually includes hydrogen for heating as a viable use case.
I still stand by my claim that most hydrogen consumption proposals are snake oil, which would be better served by using electricity directly (particularly in transport), but perhaps this could be good.