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That's more or less the pitch of the oil industry. And they seem to be very successful in getting billions in subsidy to do it. That's on top of the subsidies t

That's more or less the pitch of the oil industry. And they seem to be very successful in getting billions in subsidy to do it. That's on top of the subsidies they are getting to exploit fossil fuels. The problem is that this is just green washing their "lets put more co2" in the atmosphere strategy for an other few decades. Because that's exactly what this is. It legitimizes that strategy and they are lobbying hard for this. Nevertheless, transitioning grey hydrogen to blue hydrogen is probably a good thing. There's a lot of demand for hydrogen already in various industrial applications that are currently mostly using grey hydrogen. And transitioning more of our industry to hydrogen is key to de-carbonizing it. So, whether we like it or not, the hydrogen market is going to grow a lot in the next decades and it is probably going to be mostly blue+grey hydrogen for the foreseeable future produced by oil and gas companies and only little bits of green hydrogen. The problem with green hydrogen is that it is magnitudes more expensive than blue hydrogen, which in turn is more expensive than the grey variety. Green hydrogen requires renewable energy and green hydrogen is just not a particularly efficient application of that energy as you need rather a lot of it. A kilo of hydrogen is the equivalent of about 33 kwh. The market price of hydrogen varies wildly depending on how it is produced, transported and stored. The green variety is about 7$ per kilo. Or about 21 cents per kwh. Grey hydrogen (the dirty stuff) is about a dollar in the best cases. That's still about 3 cents per kwh. Grid prices for renewables vary widely but in the areas most likely to get involved with green hydrogen (i.e. middle east) they are between 1 and 2 cents per kwh for some recent renewable setups. So that's a factor of 3-21x depending on how you look at it. Blue hydrogen is somewhere in the bottom of that range.

Robotbeat 5y ago
It’s worse than that. 1kg of hydrogen may be 33kWh from a heating value perspective, but it only gets you like 60 miles of range in a car like a Mirai. Compared to a Model 3, which gets 4 miles per kWh, that puts the hydrogen at roughly 15kWh of useful energy. Also, the automotive price of hydrogen is about $13-16/kg in the only place with hydrogen fueling stations in the US, ie Southern California.
- throwawayzRUU6f 5y ago
  And it's even worse than that The 33kWh per kilo of hydrogen - that's the absolute physical limit of green hydrogen production via electrolysis, assuming 100% efficient production, no leaks, no labor, no maintenance, no electricity losses, frictionless transportation and infrastructure that just magically pops up where needed. It's not the case that technology will push the price down - this is the best anyone can ever hope for
  - diarrhea 5y ago
    > The 33kWh per kilo of hydrogen That's just a physical material property of hydrogen itself. It has nothing at all to do with anything else. 1kg of hydrogen has a (lower, not upper) calorific value of about 33 kWh, period. Doesn't matter where it's going, how it was made, what infrastructure was used, what any of the efficiencies involved were, ... You could magically conjure up 1kg of hydrogen from outer space and it would have that property too.
    - Robotbeat 5y ago
      Pretty relevant what kind of practical efficiency you'd get converting it to useful work.
- diarrhea 5y ago
  > that puts the hydrogen at roughly 15kWh of useful energy. That's not the hydrogen's fundamental fault as a medium. It's the fault of the conversion process. 33 kWh of thermal to 15 kWh of work, according to your calculation. That's in the realm of highly efficient (Diesel) internal combustion engines. As for 4 miles per kWh for a Tesla, you're already comparing apples to oranges. The Tesla feeds off batteries, where the expensive conversion part is already past. You're comparing high-exergy (battery) to low-exergy (raw hydrogen). I don't know anything about fuel cells, but imagine they reach 90% efficiency (is that even theoretically possible? Don't know); suddenly you get 30 kWh of work out of 1kg of hydrogen. We're just starting out, and a hundred years ago ICE efficiencies were atrocious, too.

Robotbeat 5y ago

It’s worse than that. 1kg of hydrogen may be 33kWh from a heating value perspective, but it only gets you like 60 miles of range in a car like a Mirai. Compared to a Model 3, which gets 4 miles per kWh, that puts the hydrogen at roughly 15kWh of useful energy. Also, the automotive price of hydrogen is about $13-16/kg in the only place with hydrogen fueling stations in the US, ie Southern California.

throwawayzRUU6f 5y ago
And it's even worse than that The 33kWh per kilo of hydrogen - that's the absolute physical limit of green hydrogen production via electrolysis, assuming 100% efficient production, no leaks, no labor, no maintenance, no electricity losses, frictionless transportation and infrastructure that just magically pops up where needed. It's not the case that technology will push the price down - this is the best anyone can ever hope for
- diarrhea 5y ago
  > The 33kWh per kilo of hydrogen That's just a physical material property of hydrogen itself. It has nothing at all to do with anything else. 1kg of hydrogen has a (lower, not upper) calorific value of about 33 kWh, period. Doesn't matter where it's going, how it was made, what infrastructure was used, what any of the efficiencies involved were, ... You could magically conjure up 1kg of hydrogen from outer space and it would have that property too.
  - Robotbeat 5y ago
    Pretty relevant what kind of practical efficiency you'd get converting it to useful work.
diarrhea 5y ago
> that puts the hydrogen at roughly 15kWh of useful energy. That's not the hydrogen's fundamental fault as a medium. It's the fault of the conversion process. 33 kWh of thermal to 15 kWh of work, according to your calculation. That's in the realm of highly efficient (Diesel) internal combustion engines. As for 4 miles per kWh for a Tesla, you're already comparing apples to oranges. The Tesla feeds off batteries, where the expensive conversion part is already past. You're comparing high-exergy (battery) to low-exergy (raw hydrogen). I don't know anything about fuel cells, but imagine they reach 90% efficiency (is that even theoretically possible? Don't know); suddenly you get 30 kWh of work out of 1kg of hydrogen. We're just starting out, and a hundred years ago ICE efficiencies were atrocious, too.