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Germany eyes new offshore wind farms dedicated to green hydrogen production

93 points by based2 7y ago

AtlasBarfed 7y ago
All analyses of hydrogen I've read from EROEI conclude that it is more economically and thermodynamically efficient to direct power to the grid and send it to batteries. It always seems anything this is advertised it is the fossil fuel industry trying to prop up a power generation system that will use fossil fuels, and window dressed/greenwashed by a small fraction of alt energy. "Green Hydrogen" smells like "Clean Coal" to me.
- ReptileMan 7y ago
  There is more to a national power system than EROEI. If hydrogen is more versatile and useful it will have advantages even if it's EROEI is lower - lets say powering remote places or powering equipment for which battery powered is not an option, but fuel cells are.
  - AtlasBarfed 7y ago
    Hydrogen is difficult to transport: it leaks out of everything, it's a gas that needs to be liquified or compressed, and it is flammable. I get that grid lines don't appear out of thin air, especially in seas/oceans. Too bad microwave transmission cooks wildlife and humans.
    - Hypx 7y ago
      Leakage is widely exaggerated. From what I read it's something like 0.1% loss from leakage.
- imtringued 7y ago
  You're completely right but the challenge is sending the electricity from the north of Germany to the south. The construction of new transmission lines is being delayed. Generating hydrogen for use in the steel industry could be one way to take advantage of the excess energy. Long term energy storage and load following could be implemented by storing the hydrogen and burning it in natural gas plants. This is strictly necessary to increase the renewable share past 80%.
  - ben_bai 7y ago
    Absolutely, a lot of those wind turbines in the north sea are still not connected to the power grid because of missing infrastructure. They need to be turned by diesel generators, to not corrode. https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-offshore-wind-industry-goes-from-boom-to-bust-a-914158.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-offshore... If they were connected there is still the problem of missing north-south transmission line. So converting wind energy into hydrogen and using it for industry, in cars, or blending it into the natural gas pipelines is a "ok" idea. https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/03/f11/blending_h2_nat_gas_pipeline.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/03/f11/blending...
    - lispm 7y ago
      > Absolutely, a lot of those wind turbines in the north sea are still not connected to the power grid because of missing infrastructure. The wind turbines mentioned in the linked article from 2013 have been in 2014 connected to the grid.
- Gravityloss 7y ago
  You have other uses for hydrogen than using it to produce electricity: You can use it as the reducing gas in steel making. Right now coal is used.
- ben_w 7y ago
  It might well be cheaper when starting from scratch, but it’s also useful to be able to keep using existing equipment that has been built to burn gases. I don’t know how useful — it’s certainly possible it’s better to build batteries than to e.g. make hydrogen, turn that hydrogen into methane, and use that methane in existing gas plants, but I can also believe the hydrogen route might scale up faster than batteries and therefore be a decent stop-gap measure while we build enough battery-building factories. Plus it’s always a good strategic idea to not have a single point of failure in the event of e.g. an export ban of some important input to the battery manufacture from some country you have a trade dispute with.
- reitzensteinm 7y ago
  I've always assumed hydrogen would end up having a place as a spillover. Renewable + battery systems will need to be overbuilt for the worst parts of the year, so in the average case there's going to be an excess. You have to do something with this power, and hydrogen allows you to store a lot of energy very cheaply at poor efficiency, perhaps for heating as gas is used today. In the summer, the excess could be used to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
- manfredo 7y ago
  For thermodynamic efficiency, yes, batteries are better. But they're not available at anywhere near the levels required. The global battery production capacity is at just under 300GWh per year. By comparison, the US's night-time energy consumption is ~4-5TWh. Even if we stopped producing electronics, electric cars, any any other battery product and directed the entirety of the global battery production supply to grid storage, it'd still take the US over a decade at the current production levels. And if we're trying to make the globe carbon free, you're operating on levels of demand that won't be met for the better part of a century.
  - greglindahl 7y ago
    Why are you assuming that we don't know how to build more battery factories? And does the wind not blow at night?
    - manfredo 7y ago
      Lithium ion battery production is estimated to reach 1TWh per year in 2023 and 2TWh per year at ~2030 [1]. If you integrate that curve, you're still looking at several decades to build enough battery capacity to fulfill the world's storage demand if solar is the primary generation source. The wind does blow at night, but intermittently. Wind generation is even when averaged out over long stretches of time, but in the near term it can vary a lot. Some estimates for how much storage we'd need to reliably meet demand for generation that comes from solar and wind at 3 days supply. The US consumes over 10TWh of energy daily. 1. https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/14/global-lithium-ion-battery-planned-capacity-update-9-growth-in-a-single-month-march-charts/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/14/global-lithium-ion-batt...
      - eisa01 7y ago
        Why would growth slow down after 2023? And are you’re comparing primary energy to electricity? That’s a lot of waste heat that would not need to be replicated Anyway, we don’t need all of this by 2030 if we have large scale electrification - that will have made a lot of CO2 savings in other sectors
- new_realist 7y ago
  Batteries are ludicrously expensive for long term energy storage, and costs don’t scale sublinearly.
- xxgreg 7y ago
  Yes - the article states that electricity is more efficiently used directly. Hydrogen is valuable for other processes such producing steel, high temperature heat, and chemicals. German industry already uses large amounts of hydrogen produced from fossil methane. The first step will be to replace this with renewable hydrogen. Interesting fact: Germany has a few 100km of hydrogen pipelines which have been in operation since the 1930s.
  - twic 7y ago
    America has 2600 km of hydrogen pipelines: https://hydrogeneurope.eu/hydrogen-transport-distribution#PIPELINES https://hydrogeneurope.eu/hydrogen-transport-distribution#PI...
  - AtlasBarfed 7y ago
    Can't hydrogen from methane be produced and the resulting carbon/CO2 effectively sequestered at production point?
sgt101 7y ago
It would be better if Germany focused on getting rid of the lignate coal in its domestic power supply. I believe 1/3 of German electricity is generated this way. One option would be build nuclear.
- melling 7y ago
  They are shutting down their nuclear power.
  - Faaak 7y ago
    Exactly ! If the problem is Climate Change (and thus CO_2 production), why would you, in your sane mind, shut down nuclear power ? It's the best method to produce electricity with the less grams of CO2 per kwh..
    - k__ 7y ago
      Isn't this more about self-sufficiently powering the country? I mean, Germany would have to buy uranium.
      - ben_bai 7y ago
        We need to buy coal and gas also. Closed down all the coal mines, and coal is the only resource Germany has in its territory. We are very dependent at the moment. We are at 46% renewable energy, but without proper storage that's just a sad book-keeping trick.
        lispm 7y ago
        Currently there is not much reason to store electricity in large amounts, since there is not that much surplus electricity in Germany. Storage will become relevant after 2030 or later. Means we are still in the stages of R&D and planning.
        7y ago
bathtub365 7y ago
What are the ecological ramifications of turning seawater into hydrogen? Are we depleting the total amount of water on the planet? I realize the scale that it’s happening at is probably relatively small, but I’m curious.
- ben_bai 7y ago
  The scale is way too small for it to matter. Also burning hydrogen you get water as exhaust. So it's a closed loop.
  - unishark 7y ago
    > Also burning hydrogen you get water as exhaust. Indeed the word Hydrogen is Latin for water producing. So the Latin for "hydrogen producing" would presumably be Hydrogengen.
    - gergoerdi 7y ago
      No, it is Ancient Greek, not Latin.
  - elric 7y ago
    > The scale is way too small for it to matter. I suspect that's what people thought when they began burning oil and gas for energy... I don't remember the source, nor can I vouch for the veracity, but I remember reading an article that worked out what would happen if all cars ran on hydrogen. IIRC it had a significant impact on local weather conditions in cities.
    - ben_bai 7y ago
      3/4th of the earth surface is covered by water. Total oil mining since 1850s is estimated between 100-150 billion metric tons. If you pump out 150 billion metric tons of sea water from the oceans the sea level will drop 0.5mm (1/50th of an inch). Moisture levels will increase and water vapor is also a greenhouse gas. Everything is a compromise... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090507072830.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090507072830.h... http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/estimating-glacier-contribution-to-sea-level-rise/ http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/estima... https://climatechangeconnection.org/science/what-about-water-vapour/ https://climatechangeconnection.org/science/what-about-water...
unchocked 7y ago
Hydrogen producing wind farms could be located far offshore without having to tie into the grid. Hydrogen is a great medium for long-term energy storage and is mostly compatible with existing natural gas infrastructure.
- toomuchtodo 7y ago
  Natural gas pipelines do not handle embrittlement from H well. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452321618302683 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245232161...
  - jussij 7y ago
    There are work arounds on their way: Ammonia—one nitrogen atom bonded to three hydrogen atoms—may not seem like an ideal fuel: The chemical, used in household cleaners, smells foul and is toxic. But its energy density by volume is nearly double that of liquid hydrogen—its primary competitor as a green alternative fuel—and it is easier to ship and distribute. "You can store it, ship it, burn it, and convert it back into hydrogen and nitrogen," says Tim Hughes, an energy storage researcher with manufacturing giant Siemens in Oxford, U.K. "In many ways, it's ideal." More details: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/ammonia-renewable-fuel-made-sun-air-and-water-could-power-globe-without-carbon https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/ammonia-renewable-fu...
    - pm90 7y ago
      Pretty cool stuff. Would ammonia be a drop in replacement for LNG? Or is the assertion that existing LNG infrastructure can be upgraded to handle ammonia at little cost? Presumably the vast deserts of the coastal Middle East could continue their dominance of energy if they converted solar to ammonia as well.
    - ncmncm 7y ago
      Ammonia is great. It is also useful directly by farmers, both for fuel and fertilizer. There have been major advances recently in small-scale (single-turbine) production of ammonia from just current, water, and air. It seems like a much better choice than hydrogen for everything except the next generation of aircraft. Aircraft need high energy per unit mass fuel, and hydrogen is king, but tankage is huge, so hydrogen airliners would need to be lifting bodies to have room for the fuel tanks.
afarrell 7y ago
Is there any chemical process which could produce methane from CO2 and water instead? Hydrogen is hard to store.
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  I recall hearing about navy peojwvrs to use reactor power and sea water to produce diesel for easier logistics. Less per Carbon density but a bit safer and easier to work with.
- jcims 7y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction Still need to generate the hydrogen but you don’t need to store it.
- hannob 7y ago
  There kinda is, it's a two-step process: First you generate hydrogen and then methane out of hydrogen and CO2. Problem is: Turning electricity into Hydrogen is inefficient, turning it into Methane is extra inefficient.
aaron695 7y ago
The hydrogen will not be 'created' offshore. It's just a wind farm that transports electricity to shore which then through regulations has to be turn to hydrogen. Right? The TL;DR to me is it's a complicated way to subsidise the hydrogen economy? I get for hydrogen production the power doesn't have to be as clean so you might get some gains there. But I assume they will not be significant to the over all process. Like this example which is still on the grid as you'd expect - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJhm6S3Gs1Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJhm6S3Gs1Q
- jcfrei 7y ago
  > The TL;DR to me is it's a complicated way to subsidise the hydrogen economy? I get that impression too. The widespread usage of gasoline for passenger cars has created lots of jobs: Driving trucks for gasoline transportation, maintaining pumping equipment, gas station attendants, etc. If these jobs disappear due to a switch to electric vehicles in addition to the jobs lost due to the lower maintenance costs of electric cars then it seems reasonable to assume that some companies or organizations will try to maintain the current infrastructure. Even if it requires a switch to hydrogen.
craftinator 7y ago
Still way more expensive per megawatt than nuclear... Probably higher death toll as well.
leptoniscool 7y ago
Here's a map of the hydrogen fuel stations in the US: https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/hydrogen_locations.html#/find/nearest?fuel=HY https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/hydrogen_locations.html#/find/... It looks like this is only in California. Is there a lack of demand from other areas of the country?
qchris 7y ago
For a lot of countries in the world, discussion of a hydrogen economy at any scale seems to be a bit of a hard sell. Barring sources like steam methane reformation from landfill-reclaimed methane, it's stuck between not being nearly as portable due to hydrogen embrittlement of storage container materials and ease of leak because of the small molecular size as traditional fossil fuels (albeit less C02 intensive), but a fair bit less efficient overall than just directly using the electricity. That said, Germany's somewhat unique situation with regard to limited natural capacity for renewable energy means that that, in an argument for any degree of national energy independence, hydrogen could make sense if they can maintain some control the means of production and export. The mention of using hydrogen in heavy industry is also interesting, and aligns with what I think of as a realistic stance. I used to work in the R&D section of a hydrogen fuel cell OEM, and one of the primary applications of hydrogen vs. batteries is in exactly the area stated: things that need quite a bit of consistent power generation, like buses or cranes or forklifts. Areas where recharge rate and up-time are really important, since available voltage doesn't drop with remaining energy capacity (you have the some available voltage until you stop supplying hydrogen to a fuel cell) and tanks can be refilled or swapped out more quickly than batteries. I think it's also worth noting, that at least as far as I know, the tech for that sort of thing isn't years and years away on the energy-conversion side. The manufacturing capacity isn't exactly at scale yet, but because of the work put in by giants like Toyota and for specialty industries like refrigerated warehouses, I'd put the maturity of the fuel cells themselves closer to a TRL-7 or -8 than a TRL-2 or -3. It at least makes expectations seem more realistic than if the ministries were to say, "Well, we'll just hydrogen all the things!"
- xxgreg 7y ago
  There is already a lot hydrogen use by German industry. Including a 240km pipeline built and in operation since the 30s. The first step will be replacing hydrogen from fossil sources with renewable. This also provides industry which cannot be electrified a path to low carbon emissions.
- jillesvangurp 7y ago
  One thing that often comes up with clean energy solutions is the fluctuations in capacity. In the minds of some this translates into a "OMG we need so much battery to survive the post apocalyptic circumstances that will surely make wind + solar insufficient". However in the real world, you can also address fluctuations by simply having over capacity. If e.g. wind is half the cost of other solutions, you can install 2x the capacity that you need so that you still get 100% of what you need when winds drop by 2x. That of course creates the interesting problem of what to do with the extra energy that you don't need under normal circumstances. One solution is to simply transport it around by cable to places that have under capacity but if everyone puts over capacity in place, that's not going to soak up all the over capacity. Solar has the same challenge. Having barely enough production + batteries can work. But when prices for solar + wind continue to drop you can start thinking about installing 2x, 3x or even 10x the capacity that is needed. That then creates a challenge of how to utilize that over capacity. This is not a problem but a huge economic opportunity. Hydrogen is one of several ways to store energy and if we nail cheap & clean mass production, it becomes a very useful source of energy for all sorts of things. The German industry (i.e. Siemens + car manufacturers) are keenly interested in making that happen because there's going to be a world wide demand for components for all of this and that kind of is something they are good at. So, there's a very rational reason for bootstrapping the hydrogen economy like this in Germany.
jokoon 7y ago
I've also read that hydrogen is some kind of way for the petro-industry to maintain its infrastructure and business, since it's a pseudo-green energy which can be advertised as an alternative to batteries. Steam reforming is not green. Electrolysis is great but it's less efficient, although it would work with nuclear energy since nuclear can give energy in abundance. There are 2 sides to reduce the carbon footprint: nuclear energy and energy sobriety.
solarkraft 7y ago
Oh, hydrogen. Do the cost savings in building and transmission infrastructure really outweigh the costs of building hydrogen processing and storing infrastructure and the vast losses encountered therein?

93 points by based2 7y ago

All analyses of hydrogen I've read from EROEI conclude that it is more economically and thermodynamically efficient to direct power to the grid and send it to batteries. It always seems anything this is advertised it is the fossil fuel industry trying to prop up a power generation system that will use fossil fuels, and window dressed/greenwashed by a small fraction of alt energy. "Green Hydrogen" smells like "Clean Coal" to me.

ReptileMan 7y ago
There is more to a national power system than EROEI. If hydrogen is more versatile and useful it will have advantages even if it's EROEI is lower - lets say powering remote places or powering equipment for which battery powered is not an option, but fuel cells are.
- AtlasBarfed 7y ago
  Hydrogen is difficult to transport: it leaks out of everything, it's a gas that needs to be liquified or compressed, and it is flammable. I get that grid lines don't appear out of thin air, especially in seas/oceans. Too bad microwave transmission cooks wildlife and humans.
  - Hypx 7y ago
    Leakage is widely exaggerated. From what I read it's something like 0.1% loss from leakage.
imtringued 7y ago
You're completely right but the challenge is sending the electricity from the north of Germany to the south. The construction of new transmission lines is being delayed. Generating hydrogen for use in the steel industry could be one way to take advantage of the excess energy. Long term energy storage and load following could be implemented by storing the hydrogen and burning it in natural gas plants. This is strictly necessary to increase the renewable share past 80%.
- ben_bai 7y ago
  Absolutely, a lot of those wind turbines in the north sea are still not connected to the power grid because of missing infrastructure. They need to be turned by diesel generators, to not corrode. https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-offshore-wind-industry-goes-from-boom-to-bust-a-914158.html https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/german-offshore... If they were connected there is still the problem of missing north-south transmission line. So converting wind energy into hydrogen and using it for industry, in cars, or blending it into the natural gas pipelines is a "ok" idea. https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/03/f11/blending_h2_nat_gas_pipeline.pdf https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2014/03/f11/blending...
  - lispm 7y ago
    > Absolutely, a lot of those wind turbines in the north sea are still not connected to the power grid because of missing infrastructure. The wind turbines mentioned in the linked article from 2013 have been in 2014 connected to the grid.
Gravityloss 7y ago
You have other uses for hydrogen than using it to produce electricity: You can use it as the reducing gas in steel making. Right now coal is used.
ben_w 7y ago
It might well be cheaper when starting from scratch, but it’s also useful to be able to keep using existing equipment that has been built to burn gases. I don’t know how useful — it’s certainly possible it’s better to build batteries than to e.g. make hydrogen, turn that hydrogen into methane, and use that methane in existing gas plants, but I can also believe the hydrogen route might scale up faster than batteries and therefore be a decent stop-gap measure while we build enough battery-building factories. Plus it’s always a good strategic idea to not have a single point of failure in the event of e.g. an export ban of some important input to the battery manufacture from some country you have a trade dispute with.
reitzensteinm 7y ago
I've always assumed hydrogen would end up having a place as a spillover. Renewable + battery systems will need to be overbuilt for the worst parts of the year, so in the average case there's going to be an excess. You have to do something with this power, and hydrogen allows you to store a lot of energy very cheaply at poor efficiency, perhaps for heating as gas is used today. In the summer, the excess could be used to remove carbon from the atmosphere.
manfredo 7y ago
For thermodynamic efficiency, yes, batteries are better. But they're not available at anywhere near the levels required. The global battery production capacity is at just under 300GWh per year. By comparison, the US's night-time energy consumption is ~4-5TWh. Even if we stopped producing electronics, electric cars, any any other battery product and directed the entirety of the global battery production supply to grid storage, it'd still take the US over a decade at the current production levels. And if we're trying to make the globe carbon free, you're operating on levels of demand that won't be met for the better part of a century.
- greglindahl 7y ago
  Why are you assuming that we don't know how to build more battery factories? And does the wind not blow at night?
  - manfredo 7y ago
    Lithium ion battery production is estimated to reach 1TWh per year in 2023 and 2TWh per year at ~2030 [1]. If you integrate that curve, you're still looking at several decades to build enough battery capacity to fulfill the world's storage demand if solar is the primary generation source. The wind does blow at night, but intermittently. Wind generation is even when averaged out over long stretches of time, but in the near term it can vary a lot. Some estimates for how much storage we'd need to reliably meet demand for generation that comes from solar and wind at 3 days supply. The US consumes over 10TWh of energy daily. 1. https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/14/global-lithium-ion-battery-planned-capacity-update-9-growth-in-a-single-month-march-charts/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/04/14/global-lithium-ion-batt...
    - eisa01 7y ago
      Why would growth slow down after 2023? And are you’re comparing primary energy to electricity? That’s a lot of waste heat that would not need to be replicated Anyway, we don’t need all of this by 2030 if we have large scale electrification - that will have made a lot of CO2 savings in other sectors
new_realist 7y ago
Batteries are ludicrously expensive for long term energy storage, and costs don’t scale sublinearly.
xxgreg 7y ago
Yes - the article states that electricity is more efficiently used directly. Hydrogen is valuable for other processes such producing steel, high temperature heat, and chemicals. German industry already uses large amounts of hydrogen produced from fossil methane. The first step will be to replace this with renewable hydrogen. Interesting fact: Germany has a few 100km of hydrogen pipelines which have been in operation since the 1930s.
- twic 7y ago
  America has 2600 km of hydrogen pipelines: https://hydrogeneurope.eu/hydrogen-transport-distribution#PIPELINES https://hydrogeneurope.eu/hydrogen-transport-distribution#PI...
- AtlasBarfed 7y ago
  Can't hydrogen from methane be produced and the resulting carbon/CO2 effectively sequestered at production point?

sgt101 7y ago

It would be better if Germany focused on getting rid of the lignate coal in its domestic power supply. I believe 1/3 of German electricity is generated this way. One option would be build nuclear.

melling 7y ago
They are shutting down their nuclear power.
- Faaak 7y ago
  Exactly ! If the problem is Climate Change (and thus CO_2 production), why would you, in your sane mind, shut down nuclear power ? It's the best method to produce electricity with the less grams of CO2 per kwh..
  - k__ 7y ago
    Isn't this more about self-sufficiently powering the country? I mean, Germany would have to buy uranium.
    - ben_bai 7y ago
      We need to buy coal and gas also. Closed down all the coal mines, and coal is the only resource Germany has in its territory. We are very dependent at the moment. We are at 46% renewable energy, but without proper storage that's just a sad book-keeping trick.
      - lispm 7y ago
        Currently there is not much reason to store electricity in large amounts, since there is not that much surplus electricity in Germany. Storage will become relevant after 2030 or later. Means we are still in the stages of R&D and planning.
        7y ago

bathtub365 7y ago

What are the ecological ramifications of turning seawater into hydrogen? Are we depleting the total amount of water on the planet? I realize the scale that it’s happening at is probably relatively small, but I’m curious.

ben_bai 7y ago
The scale is way too small for it to matter. Also burning hydrogen you get water as exhaust. So it's a closed loop.
- unishark 7y ago
  > Also burning hydrogen you get water as exhaust. Indeed the word Hydrogen is Latin for water producing. So the Latin for "hydrogen producing" would presumably be Hydrogengen.
  - gergoerdi 7y ago
    No, it is Ancient Greek, not Latin.
- elric 7y ago
  > The scale is way too small for it to matter. I suspect that's what people thought when they began burning oil and gas for energy... I don't remember the source, nor can I vouch for the veracity, but I remember reading an article that worked out what would happen if all cars ran on hydrogen. IIRC it had a significant impact on local weather conditions in cities.
  - ben_bai 7y ago
    3/4th of the earth surface is covered by water. Total oil mining since 1850s is estimated between 100-150 billion metric tons. If you pump out 150 billion metric tons of sea water from the oceans the sea level will drop 0.5mm (1/50th of an inch). Moisture levels will increase and water vapor is also a greenhouse gas. Everything is a compromise... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090507072830.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090507072830.h... http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/estimating-glacier-contribution-to-sea-level-rise/ http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-climate/estima... https://climatechangeconnection.org/science/what-about-water-vapour/ https://climatechangeconnection.org/science/what-about-water...

unchocked 7y ago

Hydrogen producing wind farms could be located far offshore without having to tie into the grid. Hydrogen is a great medium for long-term energy storage and is mostly compatible with existing natural gas infrastructure.

toomuchtodo 7y ago
Natural gas pipelines do not handle embrittlement from H well. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452321618302683 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245232161...
- jussij 7y ago
  There are work arounds on their way: Ammonia—one nitrogen atom bonded to three hydrogen atoms—may not seem like an ideal fuel: The chemical, used in household cleaners, smells foul and is toxic. But its energy density by volume is nearly double that of liquid hydrogen—its primary competitor as a green alternative fuel—and it is easier to ship and distribute. "You can store it, ship it, burn it, and convert it back into hydrogen and nitrogen," says Tim Hughes, an energy storage researcher with manufacturing giant Siemens in Oxford, U.K. "In many ways, it's ideal." More details: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/ammonia-renewable-fuel-made-sun-air-and-water-could-power-globe-without-carbon https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/ammonia-renewable-fu...
  - pm90 7y ago
    Pretty cool stuff. Would ammonia be a drop in replacement for LNG? Or is the assertion that existing LNG infrastructure can be upgraded to handle ammonia at little cost? Presumably the vast deserts of the coastal Middle East could continue their dominance of energy if they converted solar to ammonia as well.
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    Ammonia is great. It is also useful directly by farmers, both for fuel and fertilizer. There have been major advances recently in small-scale (single-turbine) production of ammonia from just current, water, and air. It seems like a much better choice than hydrogen for everything except the next generation of aircraft. Aircraft need high energy per unit mass fuel, and hydrogen is king, but tankage is huge, so hydrogen airliners would need to be lifting bodies to have room for the fuel tanks.

afarrell 7y ago

Is there any chemical process which could produce methane from CO2 and water instead? Hydrogen is hard to store.

Nasrudith 7y ago
I recall hearing about navy peojwvrs to use reactor power and sea water to produce diesel for easier logistics. Less per Carbon density but a bit safer and easier to work with.
jcims 7y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction Still need to generate the hydrogen but you don’t need to store it.
hannob 7y ago
There kinda is, it's a two-step process: First you generate hydrogen and then methane out of hydrogen and CO2. Problem is: Turning electricity into Hydrogen is inefficient, turning it into Methane is extra inefficient.

aaron695 7y ago

The hydrogen will not be 'created' offshore. It's just a wind farm that transports electricity to shore which then through regulations has to be turn to hydrogen. Right? The TL;DR to me is it's a complicated way to subsidise the hydrogen economy? I get for hydrogen production the power doesn't have to be as clean so you might get some gains there. But I assume they will not be significant to the over all process. Like this example which is still on the grid as you'd expect - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJhm6S3Gs1Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJhm6S3Gs1Q

jcfrei 7y ago
> The TL;DR to me is it's a complicated way to subsidise the hydrogen economy? I get that impression too. The widespread usage of gasoline for passenger cars has created lots of jobs: Driving trucks for gasoline transportation, maintaining pumping equipment, gas station attendants, etc. If these jobs disappear due to a switch to electric vehicles in addition to the jobs lost due to the lower maintenance costs of electric cars then it seems reasonable to assume that some companies or organizations will try to maintain the current infrastructure. Even if it requires a switch to hydrogen.

craftinator 7y ago

Still way more expensive per megawatt than nuclear... Probably higher death toll as well.

leptoniscool 7y ago

Here's a map of the hydrogen fuel stations in the US: https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/hydrogen_locations.html#/find/nearest?fuel=HY https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/hydrogen_locations.html#/find/... It looks like this is only in California. Is there a lack of demand from other areas of the country?

qchris 7y ago

For a lot of countries in the world, discussion of a hydrogen economy at any scale seems to be a bit of a hard sell. Barring sources like steam methane reformation from landfill-reclaimed methane, it's stuck between not being nearly as portable due to hydrogen embrittlement of storage container materials and ease of leak because of the small molecular size as traditional fossil fuels (albeit less C02 intensive), but a fair bit less efficient overall than just directly using the electricity. That said, Germany's somewhat unique situation with regard to limited natural capacity for renewable energy means that that, in an argument for any degree of national energy independence, hydrogen could make sense if they can maintain some control the means of production and export. The mention of using hydrogen in heavy industry is also interesting, and aligns with what I think of as a realistic stance. I used to work in the R&D section of a hydrogen fuel cell OEM, and one of the primary applications of hydrogen vs. batteries is in exactly the area stated: things that need quite a bit of consistent power generation, like buses or cranes or forklifts. Areas where recharge rate and up-time are really important, since available voltage doesn't drop with remaining energy capacity (you have the some available voltage until you stop supplying hydrogen to a fuel cell) and tanks can be refilled or swapped out more quickly than batteries. I think it's also worth noting, that at least as far as I know, the tech for that sort of thing isn't years and years away on the energy-conversion side. The manufacturing capacity isn't exactly at scale yet, but because of the work put in by giants like Toyota and for specialty industries like refrigerated warehouses, I'd put the maturity of the fuel cells themselves closer to a TRL-7 or -8 than a TRL-2 or -3. It at least makes expectations seem more realistic than if the ministries were to say, "Well, we'll just hydrogen all the things!"

xxgreg 7y ago
There is already a lot hydrogen use by German industry. Including a 240km pipeline built and in operation since the 30s. The first step will be replacing hydrogen from fossil sources with renewable. This also provides industry which cannot be electrified a path to low carbon emissions.
jillesvangurp 7y ago
One thing that often comes up with clean energy solutions is the fluctuations in capacity. In the minds of some this translates into a "OMG we need so much battery to survive the post apocalyptic circumstances that will surely make wind + solar insufficient". However in the real world, you can also address fluctuations by simply having over capacity. If e.g. wind is half the cost of other solutions, you can install 2x the capacity that you need so that you still get 100% of what you need when winds drop by 2x. That of course creates the interesting problem of what to do with the extra energy that you don't need under normal circumstances. One solution is to simply transport it around by cable to places that have under capacity but if everyone puts over capacity in place, that's not going to soak up all the over capacity. Solar has the same challenge. Having barely enough production + batteries can work. But when prices for solar + wind continue to drop you can start thinking about installing 2x, 3x or even 10x the capacity that is needed. That then creates a challenge of how to utilize that over capacity. This is not a problem but a huge economic opportunity. Hydrogen is one of several ways to store energy and if we nail cheap & clean mass production, it becomes a very useful source of energy for all sorts of things. The German industry (i.e. Siemens + car manufacturers) are keenly interested in making that happen because there's going to be a world wide demand for components for all of this and that kind of is something they are good at. So, there's a very rational reason for bootstrapping the hydrogen economy like this in Germany.

jokoon 7y ago

I've also read that hydrogen is some kind of way for the petro-industry to maintain its infrastructure and business, since it's a pseudo-green energy which can be advertised as an alternative to batteries. Steam reforming is not green. Electrolysis is great but it's less efficient, although it would work with nuclear energy since nuclear can give energy in abundance. There are 2 sides to reduce the carbon footprint: nuclear energy and energy sobriety.

solarkraft 7y ago

Oh, hydrogen. Do the cost savings in building and transmission infrastructure really outweigh the costs of building hydrogen processing and storing infrastructure and the vast losses encountered therein?