Comment on Solar energy storage breakthrough could make European households self-sufficient
TWeaK@lemm.ee 1 year agoAbsolutely, 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.
Hypx@kbin.social 1 year ago
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.
TWeaK@lemm.ee 1 year ago
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.
Hypx@kbin.social 1 year ago
For millions of people, that is not an option. And I'm assuming you mean "BEVs" not electric vehicles. FCEVs are also electric vehicles. Furthermore, the claims of the BEV industry are not to be trusted. It is no different than citing the oil industry's claim that BEVs cost the the equivalent of $17/gallon to drive.
Battery swapping will explode the logistical and resource requirements of BEVs. It makes the problem even worse.
Airplanes will probably use some combo of e-fuels or LH₂ setup. The latter is doable via a new type of airframe like a blended wing body.
If speed is important, you'd support the rapid adoption of hydrogen, not oppose it. These are not credible arguments unless you do not actually believe in climate change.
Renewable energy is leading to vast curtailment and excess production. That energy is pretty much wasted. Turning it into hydrogen will not cost that much money nor require that much more generation capacity.
Large scale storage of hydrogen is done with natural occurring salt caverns. These cost far less than just about anything else ever conceived.
Again, if the goal is to phase fossil fuels, you would go hard in favor of hydrogen, alongside many other ideas.
TWeaK@lemm.ee 1 year ago
The claims of most commercial industries should not be trusted. I prefer academic sources, or at least those that are more energy agnostic.
I’m sure people said the same about gas stations.
[^1]: Dammit, for a moment there I thought you’d done some funky new markdown code to write “LH₂”. But I bet you didn’t know about the citation function that lemmy has - which apparently even works out of order (check the comment source).
I disagree with the latter part of that. I’m sure LH₂ will be tried, and it might temporarily prove effective under current conditions (with cheap, untaxed black and brown hydrogen) but as soon as you start trying to fulfill that with green hydrogen it just won’t be efficient enough.
Who knows though. Hydrogen right now is mainly a byproduct, so maybe there is some scope for that excess cheap hydrogen to be used in the short to medium term.
That is exactly what we should be aiming for. It might be slightly less commercially palatable for renewable generation businesses to be running at curtailment, but what we need right now is to build a large excess of renewable generation. The wind is always blowing somewhere, and (during the day, when most power is used) the sun still shines through the clouds.
Extrapolating from the latest UK National Grid’s Future Energy Scenarios report[^2], we need to focus on building an excess of renewable generation as quickly as possible to get off fossil fuels as quickly as possible. Once we have the excess, we can pad out our generation portfolio with nuclear. Then, when the nuclear is ready to start generating, there is every likelihood that demand will have grown to the point that our excess renewable generation will have become the current requirement.
The report[^2] does include significant use of hydrogen, but that is focused on heating and high energy applications. Transportation is a ridiculously large sector that does not benefit from the inefficiencies of hydrogen.
[^2]: UK National Grid’s 2023 Future Energy Scenarios report: www.nationalgrideso.com/document/283101/download (pdf) The graphs are very pretty, NGESO make exceptionally good documentation.
That’s a new thing to me, I’ll have to read up on that. I’d appreciate any sources you could offer.
My blind guess is that it is similar to elevated water storage in feasibility, though. In particular, investors might not be interested in developing the technology.
I’m all for green hydrogen production. The issue I take is with the reckless expansion of hydrogen consumption. More specifically, I feel that many people who work with hydrogen are too keen to expand the consumption market, because doing so benefits their industry commercially.