I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: most new hydrogen technology is snake oil.
Its main source right now is as a byproduct to petrochemical processing, so a lot of the motivation behind it is really about maintaining these production lines, rather than “going green”.
Some things do require hydrogen, eg science applications. Hydrogen can be made using green electricity, but the energy cost is incredibly high. In order to fulfill just the things that require hydrogen, where there is no other alternative, we would need 3x the global renewable capacity solely dedicated to hydrogen production. If we start adding mass transport into that mix, or things like this hydrogen heating system, then we’re only exacerbating the problem.
We need our renewable electricity to power things that already use electricity. We don’t have enough capacity to be pouring it away into all the potential uses for hydrogen - which are often far less efficient. You lose so much energy creating hydrogen (as well as losses due to leaks) that you may as well just power it with electricity directly.
This is anti-hydrogen propaganda. It is basically a marketing spiel for the battery industry. In reality, hydrogen is going to power nearly all transportation, mainly because batteries are not a sustainable solution.
And the notion that we can’t build enough renewable energy capacity is a classic climate change denial argument. People who say this are unknowingly (or sometimes knowingly) trying to get everyone back onto fossil fuels.
Absolutely, I see no problem with using excess energy to produce hydrogen or other stuff. Maybe it’s arguably better to put that into battery storage or something, but it takes time to build all of that, and diversity isn’t a bad thing in most cases.
Like I said, we do need hydrogen for some things - what I’m saying is that we should be focusing on using it for things that have no other option, rather than trying to grow the hydrogen consumption market by moving anything that can be over to it, regardless of whether or not that is a good idea. Particularly if we’re basing long term predictions on the current rates of hydrogen production, primarily black hydrogen ie produced from petrochemicals, which would be expected to decline and rise in price alongside a decline in petrochemical use.
And where did I say we can’t build enough renewable capacity? I said we would need at least 3x the current renewable capacity dedicated to producing hydrogen to meet our current demand with green hydrogen for things that have no other option. The point I’m making is that running everything on hydrogen will drastically increase this demand, thus delaying the path to net zero as we’ll need to use fossil fuels for longer while we build even more renewables than if we were just aiming to meet our current, essential hydrogen demand.
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?
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.
Do you think Maersk is designing ammonia powered ships for nothing?
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.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: most new hydrogen technology is snake oil.
Its main source right now is as a byproduct to petrochemical processing, so a lot of the motivation behind it is really about maintaining these production lines, rather than “going green”.
Some things do require hydrogen, eg science applications. Hydrogen can be made using green electricity, but the energy cost is incredibly high. In order to fulfill just the things that require hydrogen, where there is no other alternative, we would need 3x the global renewable capacity solely dedicated to hydrogen production. If we start adding mass transport into that mix, or things like this hydrogen heating system, then we’re only exacerbating the problem.
We need our renewable electricity to power things that already use electricity. We don’t have enough capacity to be pouring it away into all the potential uses for hydrogen - which are often far less efficient. You lose so much energy creating hydrogen (as well as losses due to leaks) that you may as well just power it with electricity directly.
This is anti-hydrogen propaganda. It is basically a marketing spiel for the battery industry. In reality, hydrogen is going to power nearly all transportation, mainly because batteries are not a sustainable solution.
And the notion that we can’t build enough renewable energy capacity is a classic climate change denial argument. People who say this are unknowingly (or sometimes knowingly) trying to get everyone back onto fossil fuels.
I can’t tell if you’re trolling or not. Well done.
Absolutely, I see no problem with using excess energy to produce hydrogen or other stuff. Maybe it’s arguably better to put that into battery storage or something, but it takes time to build all of that, and diversity isn’t a bad thing in most cases.
Like I said, we do need hydrogen for some things - what I’m saying is that we should be focusing on using it for things that have no other option, rather than trying to grow the hydrogen consumption market by moving anything that can be over to it, regardless of whether or not that is a good idea. Particularly if we’re basing long term predictions on the current rates of hydrogen production, primarily black hydrogen ie produced from petrochemicals, which would be expected to decline and rise in price alongside a decline in petrochemical use.
And where did I say we can’t build enough renewable capacity? I said we would need at least 3x the current renewable capacity dedicated to producing hydrogen to meet our current demand with green hydrogen for things that have no other option. The point I’m making is that running everything on hydrogen will drastically increase this demand, thus delaying the path to net zero as we’ll need to use fossil fuels for longer while we build even more renewables than if we were just aiming to meet our current, essential hydrogen demand.
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.