this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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[–] [email protected] -3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Green hydrogen specifically is sourced via electrolysis with renewables and isn’t really a problem

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 9 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

The challenge with green hydrogen is it needs to be created using green electricity.

That is exactly what green hydrogen is. It is exclusively hydrogen made with renewables.