It’s FUD. There’s literally more than a dozen different ways to produce hydrogen.
Yes, right now, the cheapest options are some of the “dirtier” ones, however the cost to produce zero emission hydrogen is coming down rapidly and fossil fuel produced hydrogen is going up in price.
The two are expected to cross over in the next few years and green hydrogen, typically using solar power to split seawater, will be the cheapest way to produce hydrogen and nobody in their right mind would get it from any of the more expensive sources.
SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 10 months ago
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production
wikibot@lemmy.world [bot] 10 months ago
Here’s the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
Hydrogen production is the family of industrial methods for generating hydrogen gas. There are four main sources for the commercial production of hydrogen: natural gas, oil, coal, and electrolysis of water; which account for 48%, 30%, 18% and 4% of the world’s hydrogen production respectively. Fossil fuels are the dominant source of industrial hydrogen. As of 2020, the majority of hydrogen (~95%) is produced by steam reforming of natural gas and other light hydrocarbons, partial oxidation of heavier hydrocarbons, and coal gasification. Other methods of hydrogen production include biomass gasification and methane pyrolysis. Methane pyrolysis and water electrolysis can use any source of electricity including renewable energy. The production of hydrogen plays a key role in any industrialized society, since hydrogen is required for many chemical processes. In 2020, roughly 87 million tons of hydrogen was produced worldwide for various uses, such as oil refining, in the production of ammonia through the Haber process, and in the production of methanol through reduction of carbon monoxide. The global hydrogen generation market was fairly valued at US$155 billion in 2022, and expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 9.3% from 2023 to 2030.^article^ ^|^ ^about^
steal_your_face@lemmy.ml 10 months ago
Ah it’s to make the actual hydrogen fuel not the fuel cells. Ty for the info.
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 10 months ago
Essentially if you combine hydrogen with oxygen, you get water. This chemical reaction happens naturally hen the two are exposed to each other and produces heaps of energy which can easily be controlled and used for anything else.
One way to produce hydrogen is to take water, and heaps of energy, and “split” the water into hydrogen and oxygen. You can just release the oxygen into the air (since you’d be making too much to sell it).
The cost largely comes down to where you get your energy from. As solar gets more and more widely deployed, some countries now have more energy during the day than they can use - the price of power in those countries is not just close to zero sometimes it’s negative. The grid will literally pay you to use the electricity during peak production. Since it’s cheaper to provide power than shut down infrastructure that will be needed again in a few hours.
At that point, all you need to produce hydrogen is water. The power is free. And it doesn’t need to be pristine water either - ocean water is fine.