this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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I don't think it's really fair to throw all hydrogen into one category when we already have terms to describe where the hydrogen is sourced. Green hydrogen specifically is sourced via electrolysis with renewables and isn't really a problem.
Eventually we will get to a point where we have days where we have more solar energy than we can use and storing it in some capacity would be nice. I don't know if hydrogen is a good way to store energy to be used in fuel cells but it can be used by airplanes in ways batteries simply can't manage.
We already do. Electricity is free here at peaks or sometimes you even get paid for it. The main problem is balancing the network but batteries are an easier solution for that.
Balancing a load is not the same as storing surplus load. Batteries are easier and more efficient but they are wildly expensive at scale and don't store power as long.
Personally I think pumped hydro is king in this field but that's not to say hydrogen can't exist at the same time. Airplanes can't use either for power and they can't be line fed but they can use hydrogen. The biggest drawback to green hydrogen storage is how inefficient it is and that's why I say using solar you have to use anyway makes it more viable.
It isnt that its a problem, its that its a fantasy. Its a useful fantasy that fossil fuel companies use to prop up hydrogen as the answer when what the mean is BAU.
Show me some major source of renewable generated hydrogen.
Otherwise, stop participating in the fantasy that gives fossil fuel companies a pass on green washing, because right now, there is no such thing as renewable hydrogen. Its 96% fossil fuels.
Green hydrogen is specifically not fossil fuels. Why are you getting after it like it's the same thing?
This is some peak absolutism. Especially in a world that is so completely controlled by capital and how fossil fuels have the capital to meet scale while every single little project that might one day make a difference is now apparently just fossil fuels because they don't have the capital to meet scale.
The challenge with green hydrogen is it needs to be created using green electricity. If the electricity isn’t green you’re still burning fossil fuels to create it. Creating hydrogen from fossil fuel generated electricity and then burning it is less efficient than just burning fossil fuels directly and results in a net increase not decrease in carbon emissions.
As we build additional green electricity generation, it’s currently more impactful to use that to lower grid demand on fossil fuel generated electricity than to use it make green hydrogen. If it’s used to make green hydrogen instead, we’re only delaying the day we finally eliminate fossil fuel electricity generation, which again benefits the fossil fuel industry.
Only at some point in the future, when we’ve completely eliminated fossil fuels from the electric grid, and have created an excess of green electricity generation does green hydrogen even become possible to create.
And even assuming we can achieve that some day. It’s less efficient to use electricity to create hydrogen to power vehicle than to use batteries. Anything that can be converted to connect to the grid directly or run on batteries is better doing that than running on hydrogen.
It’s not completely crazy… there are some potential use cases for green hydrogen that would make sense in some theoretical future where there’s an abundance of green electricity generation, allowing replacing of fossil fuels where more direct forms of electrification isn’t viable. Aircraft in particular come to mind here since hydrogen stores much more energy per kg than batteries, which are currently too heavy to be viable in aircraft.
But almost all promotion of hydrogen today, including green hydrogen, is either more greenwashing by the fossil fuel industry or the work of well meaning idealists that have unwittingly become their shills.
Green Hydrogen is not a solution for the vast majority of things it gets presented as a solution to.
That is exactly what green hydrogen is. It is exclusively hydrogen made with renewables.
It is not a fantasy. In fact, the opposite is true. The problem is that you are wildly out of touch with recent events. You are still pretending like it is 2004, not realizing that that was 20 years ago. Green hydrogen is a rapidly growing market and is following the trajectory of wind and solar.
You have developed a mental disorder.
And you have developed Ludditism.
No I'm just resilient to fossil fuel industry propaganda and propagandists.
Green hydrogen simply does not exist right now. Any hydrogen you are using is a fossil fuel, directly derived.
Wrong. You have totally fallen for fossil fuel propaganda. All of that rhetoric originated from the oil and gas industry. After all, if "both sides are equally bad" then there would be no motivation to move away from fossil fuels. Unfortunately, the battery industry, which is really just an extension of mining industry and China's governmental policy, is adopting this type of rhetoric.
Again, you are 20 years out of date. As in more than one decade. As in literally decades out of date. You won't even google the term and yet you think you know everything. This is Ludditism at its purist.
The data I provided in this post is accurate as of January 2024.
Itis impossible to get data that recent FYI.
Again, green hydrogen adoption is rapidly growing and is following the trajectory of wind and solar growth in the past. Your rhetoric is just mirroring the anti-wind and anti-solar rhetoric of the past. They too were always looking backwards. You will end up no different.