However, a new study by researchers from Cambridge University has warned that green hydrogen production processes may not be as sustainable as initially believed.

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Realistic-Plant3957:

However, a new study by researchers from Cambridge University has warned that green hydrogen production processes may not be as sustainable as initially believed.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/zz1fxq/green_hydrogen_not_the_fuel_of_the_future/j28u7w2/

Hydrogen is a decent carrier of energy. It can be used when combined/separated from other elements, like carbon and oxygen. In fact, hydrogen, when combined/separated from carbon and oxygen, is how we power the world today. The energy was captured thousands/millions of years ago, stored as hydrocarbons, and is released when the carbons are stripped from the hydrogen by oxidation.

We can do the same thing today, add energy to hydrogen and carbon, stripping away the oxygen from water and CO2, then using the combined hydrocarbon as a carrier for the energy we added in. This isn't a new science - it is well known how to do it. It may not be the most energy efficient way, but it doesn't rely on new, untested and/or expensive technology to make it work.

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Raj is a blog about science journalism. Here's why that matters: he gets a few things wrong by writing in his own words. The original article is more accurate. here

One example from Raj's blog:

"It concluded that in many cases, there were no incentives for producers to use low-carbon methods such as electrolysis instead of high-carbon ones like steam reforming – which produces more CO2 emissions than their cleaner counterparts when extracting hydrogen from natural gas molecules"

Okay: the Euronews article does talk about grey hydrogen. But this paragraph is all wrong. One does not simply disincentive grey hydrogen; steam reforming scrubs leftover methane from turbine exhaust, making power plants run cleaner.

Next, you're probably not getting grey hydrogen at a fill station - it's best used in the power plant that makes it. These are usually two different supply chains.

I question whether ron knows much about steam reforming.

The actual study focuses mostly on hydrogen leaks and how they can have a negative climate impact. And this is why steam reforming is relevant: it gives us a foundation of data to study regarding hydrogen leaks.

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I think we can trust Europe to be strict about methane emissions. I think the real issue is cost.

So green hydrogen is not the fuel of the future because current regulations don’t effectively require it to be green?

I don’t understand the motives behind these constant attacks on green hydrogen. The fact that gray and blue hydrogen exist doesn’t say anything about the potential of green hydrogen, and the fact that regulations are incomplete is not only also unrelated to the potential but completely unsurprising. Is the expectation that we pass regulations regarding electrolysis before it exists, otherwise the technology is doomed?

Just to help the lazy, what are the impacts of hydrogen leaks? I haven’t ever seen it used as a greenhouse gas example or anything like that.

As long as the concentration isn't high enough to be flammable, it's fine. It will semiquickly react with oxygen in the atmosphere, forming water.

The euroweek article claims that hydrogen leaks change relative concentrations of other gases in the atmosphere and this somehow has a net heating effect. I'm sorry, I'm not the right person. They might have a point. Someone more knowledgeable will have to chime in.

Another very problematic byproduct of electrolysis is brine. Handled improperly, brine disposal on an industrial scale could devastate entire ecosystems. That would include large ocean biomes. Responsible brine disposal is expensive, so will big industry do the right thing? Answer is no. That's not what this article is about, though.

> Another very problematic byproduct of electrolysis is brine. Handled improperly, brine disposal on an industrial scale could devastate entire ecosystems. That would include large ocean biomes. Responsible brine disposal is expensive, so will big industry do the right thing?

I know an industrial employer who just made sure their Brine was dumped 5NM from land and said that was sufficient. I’m still struggling to understand why they believed that.

The study implies that refitting the pipelines to carry hydrogen gas is going to be much tougher than some have previously suggested.

Scale changes everything. I could accept this answer from a power plant running a desalinator to get their pure water. But, larger operations are a problem, and hopefully your person's company is doing continuous environmental impact study.

Turning the gas from hydrogen (H2) into methane (CH4) means you don’t need to change the lines to carry the gas.

I'm not an expert on EPA regulations but the very specific 5NM sounds like it probably comes from some law or permit the company has.

The "attacks" are from organizations that pay attention to actual implementation of the technology, finding it to be nothing more than another distraction & boondoggle by the fossil fuels industry. Like ethanol or biodiesel, both of which similarly require the preservation of a robust petrochemical industry.

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.

And you’re back to using methane reformation but with more steps.

Extracted petro-methane is going to be cheaper always.

Or, and here me out, not breaking the methane back into hydrogen gas at the other end. Methane can be freely burned for heat and/or power, because it wasn’t sourced from fossil fuels.

Hydrogen atoms are minuscule even on the atomic scale, so they pass through metal like its a thick sponge. They happily become part of the metal structure and just wander around until they exit.

Some context on my views here: I work on an R&D team at a company that develops electrolyzer technology. This obviously makes me biased, but I can promise you that every person at this company and all of our customers are investing in hydrogen with the singular goal of solving climate change. Our entire founding team is comprised of former leaders of solar & green power companies, and they recognized that the current bottleneck for onboarding more renewable electricity to the grid is the storage problem. The rollout of new electrolyzer technology is quite literally an extension of and addition to the renewable electricity ecosystem, so it’s weird how people pit hydrogen against electricity. I can assure you that we view the fossil fuel industry as the bad guys.

Yep, 100% agree with you.

The problem has always been the “petro” in petrochemicals, making fuel from the atmospheric CO2 and venting it back to the atmosphere is a valid (and in my opinion excellent) solution to the current crisis.

Still requires legislation to avoid the “petro” sneaking back in and quite a lot of storage to remove the current excess CO2.

It’s a step forward, and that’s progress

Show me the legislation and I’ll agree with “forward” :-)

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.

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.

Hydorogen as a vehicle fuel is a boondoggle that is only being propped up by the oil companies.

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.

The Petro industry approves this comment!

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I don't want an EV. Filling up a tank sounds more efficient. Just blaming oil companies seems like a lazy attack.

I would much rather it be full when I leave home or work every day. That much more convenient than having to go someplace specific to fill up.

Good to see someone who actually knows what they're talking about, tired of redditors all regurgitating the same anti-hydrogen nonsense

Hydrogen hates being hydrogen and basically destroys everything it touches until it manages to combine itself with other elements.

I also work at a similar company, specifically developing green electrolyzers, and we're also just driven (and have been for over a decade) by the idea that we can give a better world to future generations. It's a nice conspiracy theory but from the inside, I can assure you it's just not true.

They also destroy that metal.

You must not have a job or need to do much more than commute a couple miles. I might think an EV is OK for short trips around town, but it doesn't work for real work that requires long distance and hauling.

I have had various EVs since 2013 and have put hundreds of thousands of miles on them since then. It’s not 2010 where charging takes half a day and is impossible to find for road trips.

I don't argue for short trips. Do you tow a trailer or carry equipment / tools? Do you travel for more than 5 hours in a time critical manner?

Where did the energy come from to power your system? Coal? Natural Gas?

> 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.

It would depend on ocean current depth wind patterns etc but the oceans are massive, beyond our understanding. We can never make enough hydrogen to alter ocean chemistry assuming the byproducts are properly dispersed.

It’s not lazy it’s accurate when it comes to hydrogen. The only cheap source of hydrogen is methane right now. Once solar and wind power are built out to the point we have surplus electricity then you can start making hydrogen essentially for free via electrolysis. But until then petroleum companies are going to do what companies do: lie cheat and steal to stay in business.

It’s always the fuel of the future because it’s too expensive. Lithium sulfur batteries or something similar are coming soon with energy densities 4x li ion. That’s good enough for long haul trucking and short to medium range aviation. Hydrogen could be the fuel for container ships some day.

You forget nuke. Seems like building on a strong base is a better plan. Solar / wind can never be base. Battery tech is dirty in the supply chain.

Aviation might actually make hydrogen work, doubt the battery tech is going to solve for larger applications.

Being blinded by anti-oil bias is going to result in suboptimal solutions.

I could see nuclear powered hydrogen generators yeah. Batteries do have some dirty components but they are finding ways around them. And lithium may someday be sourced more cleanly, and if we’re dreaming , from seawater . I’m excited about lithium - sulfur (that’s still in the lab ). But right now they are already starting to build iron batteries and iron salt flow batteries for grid scale storage , and if they live up to the hype I could see wind/solar finally scale up to base load.

Why do you say that? Hydrogen is hydrogen, not gasoline.

Oh, no this wasn’t for making hydrogen. We were making feed water from salt water.

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.

Only nuclear power can make hydrogen a sensible fuel. Otherwise it’s just a crappy battery.

Correct. But there's money involved in doing it properly, so assume many businesses will intentionally do it improperly

No. It really is a boondoggle for most proposed use cases, for a huge number of reasons. Storage and transport are your biggest issues. Production becomes less of an issue as renewables supply the energy to be stored as hydrogen, but that's a post-petro world already. Brine disposal is a big one as well (though I can think of profitable ways to make that work).

Hydrogen will always have a place, but in general it's a loser to other techs that check more boxes.

Batteries can't make green fertilizers or steel.

Seeing as we are talking about GREEN hydrogen, then it has to come from renewable energy sources like wind and solar.

Garbage article

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Yes green hydrogen is more expensive than dirty hydrogen right now. That may not always be the case, and even if it is, it allows consumers to buy with their conscience and brand their product as green.

Yes some places has shitty regulation. So what? That's not a hydrogen problem, that's a shitty regulation problem.

Green hydrogen is mandatory if we wish to reduce emissions from steel and fertilizer production, and it has many other interesting applications to be used in the future.

>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.

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.

Because right now, the big energy companies are the only ones who can create hydrogen at scale that is even remotely close to being practical in terms of cost. Unfortunately, this is using processes that are nearly as (in some case more) polluting as the ones we want to replace.

Dangle the prospect of green energy in front of an uninformed but well-meaning public; when they finally bite and commit to hydrogen, then simply switch in the gray and blue hydrogen. When anyone complains, point out that green hydrogen is still too expensive, but maybe "some day".

Germany checking in here. Forget it. Europe talks a big game, but they'll happily reclassify anything as "green" or "sustainable" if it suits them.

Considering that we have just lost all our cheap energy for industry, expect that Europe will be a little more...practical...when it comes to where energy comes from in the near future.

It's nice to protect our environment and our climate. But if a country is threatened with mass unemployment, then the environment becomes a petty distraction. If you don't think that Europe is facing mass unemployment, keep in mind that we have basically no aluminum coming in, no steel being produced, and the entire petrochemical industry is stalled out because natural gas is limited.

All of this shows that we should have been moving away from Russian Gas a long time ago (perhaps to hydrogen), but the unfortunate fact is we need solutions *now*. Look for some unpleasant compromises to be made.

TL;DR: Europe is not in a very good position to maintain a strict environmental policy.

I travel back and forth from Boston to Toronto in an EV taking about ten hours and as many dollars in fuel.

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So basically the article says:

„Green hydrogen IS the fuel of the future but humans are cheating bastards and will make it all go to shit once again.“

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.

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.

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

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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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.

They can already make hydrogen from seawater

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.

Hydrogen fuel cells have been around since the 80s and working concept cars have been presented since then a well. The fundamental problem of hydrogen is production and storage. It wastes a lot of energy to produce h2 from water and the reverse step is also quite wasteful. Battery cars have a somewhat 73% well to wheel efficiency, meaning 73% of the electricity is converted into motion energy of the car. For h2 this is only 22%. (https://insideevs.com/news/332584/efficiency-compared-battery-electric-73-hydrogen-22-ice-13/). And these numbers have been like that forever since. I don't believe any amount of research will cause these numbers to change as dramatically as it would be needed to be able to compete with BEVs.

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>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?

Exactly: We need the h2 for processes where it's irreplaceable. Burning it for transportation tasks is a pure waste. That's like using drinking water for pools during a drought.

And no, I don't think solving the fundamental problems of h2 tech is a matter of research. Let alone take this: H2 is terrible to store. There are ways to circumvent this, such as storing it in a solution, but that again lowers the efficiency. And h2 storage is a really old problem; like 100+ years. It is very unlikely that this would be solved all of a sudden. And storage is just one of many problems.

H2 cars received more funding until the mid 2000s than BEVs. The ICE car industry kept showcasing them, knowing they would never be a danger for their core business - while receiving state subsidies to research a dead-end tech. Without Tesla, we'd still hear "in 20 years, we'll all drive using h2 cars".

Edit: sorry to bring up cars. But even for storing energy, h2 is a poor choice.

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.

For at least 40 years now, various carmakers have touted hydrogen as the future precisely because they knew it wasn't, and would delay battery electric and give them years more return on the billions invested in ICE.

The last I checked natural gas and petrol are both pretty cheap in Germany.

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.

Have you done the math to see how much electricity it would take? How many windmills and solar panels? Also what happens when the sun sets or the wind calms down.

Solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, etc.

Yea I work in the field.

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Look we need hydrogen in the use of steel manufacturing and for fertilizers. These aer very very important industries.

There's 2 ways to get hydrogen. One you take fossile fuels, typically natural gas, and you get rid of the carbon to leave hydrogen. This uses a limited fossil fuel and is very polluting as the carbon turned into co2. Additionally anything that uses natural gas runs the risk of spills, and natural gas is a even worse greenhouse gas than co2.

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The second way is to use electricity to split water. That takes energy of course, the energy that would otherwise come from fossil fuels.

We don't need hydrogen 24-7 and it can be stored. When we produce hydrogen it's transported in tubes under pressure, the tubes themselves act as a storage site and there's many other ways to store hydrogen. So you produce as much hydrogen as you can while the sun is shining and the wind is blowing and save it for when it's needed.

Another problem we have is that we need low carbon electricity to live our current lives without causing further global warming. A problem with low carbon electricity is that it typically isn't adjustable or reliable. Say you have a ton of solar panels to provide energy for most of the day. Well during midday our energy needs aren't that great, but the solar power is peaking. During that time we could use some of the energy from solar cells to produce green hydrogen.

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If we gonna go low carbon we will have leftover energy to use for hydrogen production, and there's a big need for green hydrogen to further the low carbon efforts.

> 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.

> 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.

Absolutely not true! Hydrogen has way more capabilities to scale as innovation continues to bring prices down and safety increases. Just in 2021 alone, progress has been made in transport and storage. Saltwater to Hydrogen. Hydrocarbons to Hydrogen. Nuclear to Hydrogen. Ammonia as a carrier. Petro is a finite resource that is not clean and not scalable in the long term. Major players are starting to explore Hydrogen. So this is not a post petro movement. Not in the least. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/07/shell-to-build-europes-largest-renewable-hydrogen-plant.html........https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/toyota-s-upcoming-hydrogen-powered-5-0-v-8-engine-has-the-potential-to-bury-evs/ar-AA15Q9mq?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=7ddaeecdb9e647c8c57262dc64bf250b. Oh I can't imagine how many buggy whip manufacturers called the horseless carriage a boondoggle in the late 19th century.

> 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.

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

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

Whoooops your right