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Battery technology isn't very "green" either. Lithium and its alternatives require extensive, polluting mining operations while Hydrogen can be generated from w

Battery technology isn't very "green" either. Lithium and its alternatives require extensive, polluting mining operations while Hydrogen can be generated from water, water vapor, methane etc.

epistasis 5y ago
And how does that hydrogen get transformed from water? Alkaline or PEM electrolyzers, but at what environmental cost? And all the fuel cell materials? Why selectively evaluate only one side of the equation? That seems rather biased.
- throwaway210222 5y ago
  > Battery technology isn't very "green" … while Hydrogen can be generated from … methane. Methane steam reformation is now green?
  - epistasis 5y ago
    You're right, it's not. And the only way to make it halfway palatable, the so-called "blue" hydrogen, is to do carbon capture and sequestration during steam methane reformation. However, for more than a decade, fossil fuel companies have said carbon capture and sequestration will be easy, and then failed to execute on any of their industrial size projects. Plus, what is that captured carbon used for? Extracting more fossil fuels. Plus the sequestration requires transporting carbon long distances, and somehow making sure that the sequestration lasts on geological time scales. So any mention of methane for hydrogen should raise huge red flags and discredit that path. There's only one path for hydrogen in the future, and that's electrolyzers, and making them go through exponential price drops over the next two decades.
twobitshifter 5y ago
Hydrogen fuel cells use platinum catalysts. Platinum also must be mined and unlike lithium is very rare.
- pkphilip 5y ago
  There are existing ways of generating Hydrogen using coated Nickel electrodes
paulintrognon 5y ago
No energy is green. Not a single energy source does not require some mining / oil extracting at some point. We have to choose the solution which impact as little as possible the environment on global scale. Beware of the Nirvana Fallacy! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy

Battery technology isn't very "green" either. Lithium and its alternatives require extensive, polluting mining operations while Hydrogen can be generated from water, water vapor, methane etc.

epistasis 5y ago

And how does that hydrogen get transformed from water? Alkaline or PEM electrolyzers, but at what environmental cost? And all the fuel cell materials? Why selectively evaluate only one side of the equation? That seems rather biased.

throwaway210222 5y ago
> Battery technology isn't very "green" … while Hydrogen can be generated from … methane. Methane steam reformation is now green?
- epistasis 5y ago
  You're right, it's not. And the only way to make it halfway palatable, the so-called "blue" hydrogen, is to do carbon capture and sequestration during steam methane reformation. However, for more than a decade, fossil fuel companies have said carbon capture and sequestration will be easy, and then failed to execute on any of their industrial size projects. Plus, what is that captured carbon used for? Extracting more fossil fuels. Plus the sequestration requires transporting carbon long distances, and somehow making sure that the sequestration lasts on geological time scales. So any mention of methane for hydrogen should raise huge red flags and discredit that path. There's only one path for hydrogen in the future, and that's electrolyzers, and making them go through exponential price drops over the next two decades.

twobitshifter 5y ago

Hydrogen fuel cells use platinum catalysts. Platinum also must be mined and unlike lithium is very rare.

pkphilip 5y ago
There are existing ways of generating Hydrogen using coated Nickel electrodes

paulintrognon 5y ago

No energy is green. Not a single energy source does not require some mining / oil extracting at some point. We have to choose the solution which impact as little as possible the environment on global scale. Beware of the Nirvana Fallacy! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nirvana_fallacy