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‘How to greenwash’: propane industry tries to rebrand fuel as renewable (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (13 children)

Its a simple fact, and your belligerent and ignorant promotion of a technology, which for all practice purposes, is a fossil fuel, is deeply immoral and a significant part of the problem.

Show me any meaningful production of hydrogen from non-fossil fuel sources and we can have a conversation. Until then, you are worse than a climate denialist and a significant part of the problem that the world currently faces.

Investing in hydrogen as a solution is the fossil fuel industries strategy for navigating how they'll still be able to keep doing BAU. Its a direct equivalent of clean coal or DAC. Imaginary technology that doesn't exist and wont at scale when we currently have all the technology we need, with a modicum of social change, do reduce most of the planets carbon impact to sustainable levels.

You are a deeply immoral and irresponsible person for the work that you do on behalf of promoting the farce of hydrogen as a solution for climate change.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (7 children)

You seemed to be knowledgeable about this topic, so I have a question:

I thought the process of obtaining hidrogen from the natural gas, naturally (pun not intended) captures all carbon as CO2, which is then can be stored somehow. Is it a valid path?

What do you think about electrolyses?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (6 children)

One kilogram of hydrogen is the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline, which produces 9.1 kg of CO2 when combusted.

Carbon footprints are often reported in terms of energy. For example, power plants usually report carbon footprints in terms of kilowatt-hours (kWh). One million SCF of hydrogen contains 79,100 kilowatt hours of energy.

This converts to 0.28 kg of carbon dioxide emissions associated with one kilowatt-hour of hydrogen production.

This article lays it out, is based on up to date metrics for production, and was written by a qualified chemical engineer, in what I would consider, a very anodyne tone.

The key take-away is here:

On an apples-to-apples basis, it depends on several factors but it is likely that the conversion of hydrogen into power will have a carbon footprint greater than that of natural gas-fired power, but less than that of coal-fired power. However, it is possible in theory to capture the carbon emissions generated in the SMR process.

Right now, today, you would be better off burning the natural gas in a power plant than turning it into hydrogen. Its better than coal. The CO2 could be captured, but that's only a hypothetical. Currently, that isn't part of the process, and doing so will incur an energy cost, at which point the ROI will likely be lower than coal.

In conclusion, you should think of hydrogen as a green-washed fossil fuel, because that's what it is.

[–] [email protected] -4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Except you've actually debunked your own argument.

At 9.3 kg of CO2 for one kg of H2, and assuming 110 km/kg of H2 (normal fuel economy for an FCEV), you get 84.5 grams of CO2 per km of driving.

Meanwhile, a BEV gets anywhere from 70-370 grams per km, depending on dirtiness of the grid: https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/electric-car-emissions/

In other words, an FCEV is comparable to a BEV when it comes to emissions. You can even double the numbers for the FCEV if you want to include possibilities like upstream losses or production. The numbers would still be very comparable to BEVs running on most grids.

And this is the problem here: You're so deep in your anti-hydrogen conspiracy theory that you failed to notice that the math works against you.

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