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gregorydgraham t1_j2bizvz wrote

Reply to comment by kokanee-fish in Green Hydrogen - Not The Fuel Of The Future by Realistic-Plant3957

Green hydrogen, as it stands, is a bait and switch scheme to keep petrochemicals in control.

The methane reforming reaction is orders of magnitude more effective at making hydrogen than electrolysis. So Big Oil can back the hydrogen economy, scupper any “green” enforcing legislation, and know that they will eventually be selling petrochemicals and spewing CO2 for billions.

It’s a great long con.

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kokanee-fish t1_j2bmjrh wrote

So, you’re correct to worry about the fact that the efficiency of electrolyzers on the market today is not at all competitive, especially the alkaline electrolyzers. Those of us who are excited about the future of hydrogen are basing our expectations on the performance of next-gen electrolyzers being developed now and economies of scale that are forthcoming.

The implication that this technology is being developed or supported primarily by the fossil fuel industry is a completely fabricated conspiracy theory.

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bremidon t1_j2cx1cu wrote

>The implication that this technology is being developed or supported primarily by the fossil fuel industry is a completely fabricated conspiracy theory.

Are you kidding me?

First, you missed the point. The fossil fuel industry is quite happy to use the current technology for creating hydrogen. They don't care about *or want* green hydrogen. The point is to dangle the idea of green hydrogen in front of us, and once we have committed to hydrogen, then keep us on the hook with cheaper gray and blue hydrogen.

Second, are you honestly expecting an industry making billions *per day* to simply roll over and die? *Of course* they are going to fight back, hard. What would *you* be willing to do for even "just" $1 billion? Even if they can stall people for just a single day, that is how much more money they can make.

Third, who else has the incentive *and* the money to really push something like hydrogen?

Fourth, how are *you* planning to fight them? Once we are on the hook for hydrogen, they will be the ones paying the politicians. You can scream and cry about how this was supposed to be about green hydrogen, but the simple truth is that they have all the levers. You are simply a tool for them right now to avoid being shoved completely out of power. The moment they have successfully positioned hydrogen as the replacement, your services will no longer be needed or wanted.

This is do-or-die for the fossil fuel industry. They know their days are numbered. That is why they are fighting several rear-guard actions at once while desperately looking for a way to keep us depending on them.

I'm not strictly against hydrogen, but we should not allow a single atom to be used until two things happen:

  1. Practical green hydrogen exists on something besides paper
  2. Airtight and near-impossible-to-roll-back legislation to ban all hydrogen production *except* green hydrogen have been implemented.

I have some hope for the first one, although the current state of things probably means we are at least 20 years out from having it solved. We are not really close to a lab solution yet, so we probably need 10 years of research to make it practical. This is an outsider's perspective, so I will be the first to admit it's merely an educated guess. Then it will take about 10 years to get the real production lines set up *if we are fast*. So 20 years. But at least it's doable.

I have serious reservations about the second point. I do not trust any government to be able to resist Big Oil kinda money.

So no, this is not "fabricated". It was and is a logical and obvious continuation to ensure the dominance of the existing players.

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amitym t1_j2d3npo wrote

Right on. We don't hear enough of this kind of constructive critique.

Green hydrogen will be awesome.. when it exists. Until it exists, it's a red herring.

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katamuro t1_j2dgr2y wrote

we need nuclear power stations for green hydrogen. Because if we start adding more and more nuclear power to replace current coal/oil burning power stations then eventually we will have surplus of energy at certain times in the day and that we can use to power the electrolysis for hydrogen which we then can use to bolster the energy grid demands during peak times by burning hydrogen in the former natural gas power stations.

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bremidon t1_j2dvnhf wrote

Or we just use batteries that are better at this.

The only places where hydrogen really excels is where we need some sort of physical interaction (industrial uses) or where the energy density is useful (planes). Only the first one is clearly going to work. The second one is still a bit iffy, because we have not yet figured out a good way to contain hydrogen within a reasonable space without it either being energy intensive or heavy.

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gregorydgraham t1_j2bw19b wrote

Methane reformation has already been scaled, and Big Oil doesn’t even need to conspire for the bait and switch to work. As always, the accountants will do the work for them.

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grundar t1_j2clcsr wrote

> The methane reforming reaction is orders of magnitude more effective at making hydrogen than electrolysis.

That's just not accurate -- industrial electrolysis is around 75% efficient, meaning the amount of energy required to produce hydrogen will be in roughly the same ballpark regardless of whether it's via steam reformation of methane or via renewable-powered electrolysis.

Much of the price difference, then, is driven by natural gas being a cheaper energy source than electricity. There are 293 kWh per mcf, and in the US gas is about $5/mcf, so that's about 1.7c per kwh of energy. That's low, but renewable costs are falling to meet or even beat that -- solar has fallen to 1-2c/kWh in excellent locations, and much US wind is around 2c/kWh.

So the cost of hydrogen from electrolysis is actually not that far off the cost of hydrogen from steam reformation, and it's getting more cost-competitive all the time as scaling up renewables puts downward pressure on their costs.

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zenfalc t1_j2cqogl wrote

All true, but I still don't think hydrogen makes the leap. I wouldn't mind if it did, but the use cases won't stack well against some of the upcoming battery technologies. Much cheaper, higher energy density, more rapid charge and discharge ability, and no toxic chemicals...

Don't misunderstand me: I get hydrogen has a lot of benefits. I just don't think it comes to pass.

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Taxoro t1_j2cwalq wrote

Batteries can't make green fertilizers or steel.

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grundar t1_j2eizy1 wrote

> All true, but I still don't think hydrogen makes the leap. I wouldn't mind if it did, but the use cases won't stack well against some of the upcoming battery technologies.

That's a reasonable assessment, but as others have noted there're use cases that use hydrogen chemically rather than for energy (steel, fertilizer, etc.), so I expect significant hydrogen production for those.

Given that there will be significant hydrogen production, and given that hydrogen can be stored efficiently in the same salt caverns currently used for natural gas, I wouldn't be surprised to see hydrogen have some role in the power grid for seasonal storage.

Hydrogen for transportation is much more questionable; small-scale (cars) seems highly unlikely, but large-scale (container ships) might happen.

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bremidon t1_j2cxmr7 wrote

Agreed. About 15 years ago, I was absolutely convinced that hydrogen was the obvious choice and that batteries were a dead-end. Hydrogen only had a few (admittedly big) problems to solve and batteries seemed like they had a never-ending list of challenges to get past.

Fast forward to today and batteries have pretty much solved all their challenges and are now simply going from strength to strength. Meanwhile, hydrogen has barely moved forward from where it was 15 years ago.

My two observations are:

  1. Hydrogen does not merely need to be better than batteries; it needs to be significantly better than batteries to justify even bothering to develop and roll out. It cannot even keep up with batteries currently, is losing ground, so hoping hydrogen can leapfrog batteries seems unrealistic.
  2. While I readily accept that life is full of surprises and perhaps we'll get yet another twist in the hydrogen-vs-battery fight, there is no indication that something like that is building up.
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FeatheryBallOfFluff t1_j2d5zz0 wrote

There have been more investments and longer development times in battery tech than in hydrogen tech. I believe we should develop both. Who knows what amazing results hydrogen tech can achieve once it's fully developed? Perhaps once hydrogen tech is optimized, it can be synthesized from anywhere (say a boat on sea, or on the moon once water is found) and may provide a higher energy density than any other storage form (solid hydrogen storage is being investigated as it is). Perhaps rockets will make use of new hydrogen tech. Perhaps it can be used to create drinkable water in space, from non-drinkable components.

We should give it a chance before focusing only on batteries, as we would miss out on possible amazing tech by focusing only on batteries.

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bremidon t1_j2d9wze wrote

>There have been more investments and longer development times in battery tech than in hydrogen tech.

I would love to have link on this. It's not surprising that battery tech would be getting more investment now; proving a technology works and a market exists does wonders for encouraging investment. But I would be willing to bet that the situation was quite different even 5 or 10 years ago.

So do you have anything for me?

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tripodal t1_j2d3gbf wrote

Storing hydrogen is insanely difficult. Doing it at grid scale has to have astronomical costs

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grundar t1_j2eiiy9 wrote

> Storing hydrogen is insanely difficult. Doing it at grid scale has to have astronomical costs

Surprisingly, storing hydrogen at grid scale is the only time it's relatively easy to do so.

Hydrogen can be stored in salt caverns, and those are already used extensively for long-term natural gas storage, so the infrastructure for grid-scale hydrogen storage is more-or-less already there (some piping would need to be upgraded).

Small-scale use (like cars) doesn't make economic or logistical sense, but large-scale use (like seasonal electricity storage or green steel manufacturing) is looking fairly reasonable.

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tripodal t1_j2fxar0 wrote

I wasn’t aware salt caverns were airtight to hydrogen; but that’s a relatively small piece of the distribution required.

New power plans or water distributing and or electrical distribution will be needed and contributes

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netz_pirat t1_j2d2uym wrote

Just as an addon: gas is way way way more expensive in Europe, Spot market prices are about triple of what you listed for the us, even before the war.

So gree hydrogen has already broken even here, and there are several agreements in place to generate green hydrogen in spain, tunesia,... And send it to northern Europe per pipeline.

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Eelroots t1_j2d6lr8 wrote

That's where carbon taxes may drive the development in the right direction. We need zero carbon emissions, not a discussion on which color may be fancier or generate more revenues. Zero carbon or nothing.

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tripodal t1_j2d3bxx wrote

It will always be cheaper to make hydrogen from methane than electricity; until the entire grid is renewable.

Then it will still be cheaper because some fraction of the energy required can come from the methane.

The efficiency of electrolysis is dependent on the quality of the equipment and water. Fresh water costs more than oil and that will not change anytime soon.

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FeatheryBallOfFluff t1_j2d61ay wrote

They can already make hydrogen from seawater

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tripodal t1_j2fwvr1 wrote

They can but it’s difficult and requires enormous amounts of consumables as seawater destroys everything it touches.

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grundar t1_j2fpeo4 wrote

> Fresh water costs more than oil and that will not change anytime soon.

Even water from the tap is over 100x cheaper than oil.

For example, Los Angeles homes pay ~$10/hcf; 1 hcf = 748gal, so that's about 1.3c per gallon for tapwater.

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RaffiaWorkBase t1_j2c2fxv wrote

Perhaps.

Gas tried a similar "long con" positioning itself as a "transition" fuel for a clean green energy future - then found solar pv and wind getting cheaper and grid battery becoming available, and suddenly the decades of "transition" they hoped for shrank to years.

It's a risky ploy.

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