this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2023
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Yet in some places there’s an excess of wind production at times and it’s economically viable to throw it into hydrogen and ammonia production. Do you think Maersk is designing ammonia powered ships for nothing?
https://hydrogenisland.dk/en https://www.maersk.com/news/articles/2021/02/23/maersk-backs-plan-to-build-europe-largest-green-ammonia-facility
Production and consumption are two different things. We need more green hydrogen production (currently at 0.1% of all hydrogen production), and we need to heavily tax black and brown hydrogen to balance the environmental cost against the low price of dirty production.
With hydrogen consumption, we already have a significant demand for scientific and other uses that have no alternative. This currently relies on black and brown hydrogen, but will eventually need to be fulfilled by green hydrogen. If we throw anything and everything that could use hydrogen on top of that, then we'll be using fossil fuels for even longer while we build enough renewable generation capacity for it all to be provided by green hydrogen.
Also, the vast majority use scenarios proposed for hydrogen could be fulfilled directly by electricity at a much greater overall efficiency. Maybe hydrogen would be cheaper right now, while it's all produced by petrochemicals, but when you factor in the cost of green hydrogen the long term projections simply do not work.
I think Maersk is designing ammonia powered ships because they're not far removed from conventional ICE's, which they're already proficient in. They're less concerned with what is the best solution overall, but which is the most profitable to them right now.