5 ms·

Just going to say it, anyone using the mystery colour labels in their comments here, comes off to me (and I suspect others) as combinations of joking, obfuscati

Just going to say it, anyone using the mystery colour labels in their comments here, comes off to me (and I suspect others) as combinations of joking, obfuscating and even a little condescending since I’m familiar with the use of this sort of linguistic abstraction as a mechanism for gatekeeping, limiting the size of the audience that can speak to those that have kept up with current shibboleths. Blue, black, green, grey, white, translucent, gold, purple polka dot… this is a stupid way to name things… If it’s hydrogen derived from oil by industrial petrochemical processes like steam reforming or catalytic cracking, can we just use these terms… it’s not like we’re trying to explain which pump handles to fill up a car with, we’re talking about issues with a proposed concept and obfuscation of what that concept truly is and what it’s competing against, with cutesy colours labels… frankly just puts me off the entire hydrogen industry … Hydrogen is pretty easy to get ahold of chemically speaking because it’s everywhere. If we need to differentiate let’s just use the additional nouns necessary. “Hydrogen from Electrolysis powered by Carbon Neutral electricity” and “Hydrogen by thermochemical decomposition of organic waste powered by Carbon Neutral fuels” are ecologically better than “Hydrogen from Electrolysis powered by Coal” and “Hydrogen captured as a waste gas from existing oil refineries, with no other effort to reduce Carbon emissions“ I don’t normally come across a HN thread that reads so “cliquey” outside of the crypto community stuff… seeing this sort of stuff about Hydrogen is just weird.

plaguepilled 4y ago
Blame marketing teams + policy teams. They're the ones that push this terminology.
- RhodesianHunter 4y ago
  Or just people who prefer to use one simple word rather than a mouthful of technical ones.
  - WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
    Sure but using non-sequitur rainbow pieces to reference complex processes seems like the extreme end of uselessness. Wouldn't words that reflected stand-out parts of the process be more intuitive?
kolinko 4y ago
The reason for this taxonomy is the same reason you use consts instead of plain numbers in computer code. You change the definition of “green” in just one place when someone invents a new loophole, or someone invents a new green method of obtaining sustainable hydrogen. Also, the descriptions would be too long in some cases. To be green, according to the new taxonomy, it’s not enough for hydrogen to be generated using renewables. It has to be generated by renewables built specifically for this purpose, and from water that is not drinking water - so that we don’t drain lakes and rivers to produce it. Now, gold hydrogen is just a marketing gimmick. It’s just brown or black, unless they store generated co2 safely and permamently - then it can become green.
kamray23 4y ago
> I don’t normally come across a HN thread that reads so “cliquey” outside of the crypto community stuff… seeing this sort of stuff about Hydrogen is just weird. Really. Hydrogen in general is just a weird prospect. Hydrogen from SMR of natural gas has like way higher emissions than just burning natural gas, and massively higher emissions than just using diesel. It has exactly zero uses energy-wise other than as a medium for moving a ridiculous amount of energy quickly. Makes it real nice in things like rocketry and real useless for anything else. The most efficient way to produce it is by using electricity and water, which can make a no-emissions solution for that one niche. If you use gas or oil for electricity, reforming is technically slightly more efficient. In any case, it's always worse than fossil fuels by themselves, unless you use green energy. And cramming greenhouse gases underground doesn't make the situation any better, which everybody knows but for some reason pretends is not true. Digging tunnels and caves and building facilities to store monoxide in is far worse than just burning fossil fuels as fuel in the first place. This is a fairly doomed industry, because it has no point in an environmentally sustainable future.
- FreeFull 4y ago
  While I agree that hydrogen for electricity generation/storage doesn't really make sense, there are some industries that either can use or must use large amounts of hydrogen for chemical purposes. For example, the production of ammonia for fertiliser needs hydrogen, and refining metals from ore can use hydrogen.
  - kamray23 4y ago
    That's obviously necessary, yes. It still really doesn't make much sense to do it with microbes when compared with SMR, though. It's entirely possible to store the CO from SMR as with microbes producing CO₂, but there's more CO₂ compared to CO from SMR.
    - thinkcontext 4y ago
      Proton Technologies (mentioned in the article) claims to solve the problem by using a membrane that only lets hydrogen pass through. That way all the co2 just stays in the well. If that works that sounds way superior to SMR plus carbon capture.
jmyeet 4y ago
This is silly. We use color to describe non-color things all the way from fundamental physics (eg quark "color") to emotional metaphors (eg feeling blue, seeing red, green with envy, yellow as a substitute for being a candidate, white for both rage and fear). We use color for political leanings (eg red states, blue states, green parties) We use color for when we have no other language or concept that might apply (eg color and spin for particles) but we also use it as a form of abstraction. We can label something with a particular color because it shares some essential qualities without necessarily understanding all those properties or verbosely enumerating all those properties. Those meanings can change over time. Jargon can be useful and important. Don't be a Literal or Gatekeeper Andy.

plaguepilled 4y ago

Blame marketing teams + policy teams. They're the ones that push this terminology.

RhodesianHunter 4y ago
Or just people who prefer to use one simple word rather than a mouthful of technical ones.
- WarOnPrivacy 4y ago
  Sure but using non-sequitur rainbow pieces to reference complex processes seems like the extreme end of uselessness. Wouldn't words that reflected stand-out parts of the process be more intuitive?

kolinko 4y ago

The reason for this taxonomy is the same reason you use consts instead of plain numbers in computer code. You change the definition of “green” in just one place when someone invents a new loophole, or someone invents a new green method of obtaining sustainable hydrogen. Also, the descriptions would be too long in some cases. To be green, according to the new taxonomy, it’s not enough for hydrogen to be generated using renewables. It has to be generated by renewables built specifically for this purpose, and from water that is not drinking water - so that we don’t drain lakes and rivers to produce it. Now, gold hydrogen is just a marketing gimmick. It’s just brown or black, unless they store generated co2 safely and permamently - then it can become green.

kamray23 4y ago

> I don’t normally come across a HN thread that reads so “cliquey” outside of the crypto community stuff… seeing this sort of stuff about Hydrogen is just weird. Really. Hydrogen in general is just a weird prospect. Hydrogen from SMR of natural gas has like way higher emissions than just burning natural gas, and massively higher emissions than just using diesel. It has exactly zero uses energy-wise other than as a medium for moving a ridiculous amount of energy quickly. Makes it real nice in things like rocketry and real useless for anything else. The most efficient way to produce it is by using electricity and water, which can make a no-emissions solution for that one niche. If you use gas or oil for electricity, reforming is technically slightly more efficient. In any case, it's always worse than fossil fuels by themselves, unless you use green energy. And cramming greenhouse gases underground doesn't make the situation any better, which everybody knows but for some reason pretends is not true. Digging tunnels and caves and building facilities to store monoxide in is far worse than just burning fossil fuels as fuel in the first place. This is a fairly doomed industry, because it has no point in an environmentally sustainable future.

FreeFull 4y ago
While I agree that hydrogen for electricity generation/storage doesn't really make sense, there are some industries that either can use or must use large amounts of hydrogen for chemical purposes. For example, the production of ammonia for fertiliser needs hydrogen, and refining metals from ore can use hydrogen.
- kamray23 4y ago
  That's obviously necessary, yes. It still really doesn't make much sense to do it with microbes when compared with SMR, though. It's entirely possible to store the CO from SMR as with microbes producing CO₂, but there's more CO₂ compared to CO from SMR.
  - thinkcontext 4y ago
    Proton Technologies (mentioned in the article) claims to solve the problem by using a membrane that only lets hydrogen pass through. That way all the co2 just stays in the well. If that works that sounds way superior to SMR plus carbon capture.

jmyeet 4y ago

This is silly. We use color to describe non-color things all the way from fundamental physics (eg quark "color") to emotional metaphors (eg feeling blue, seeing red, green with envy, yellow as a substitute for being a candidate, white for both rage and fear). We use color for political leanings (eg red states, blue states, green parties) We use color for when we have no other language or concept that might apply (eg color and spin for particles) but we also use it as a form of abstraction. We can label something with a particular color because it shares some essential qualities without necessarily understanding all those properties or verbosely enumerating all those properties. Those meanings can change over time. Jargon can be useful and important. Don't be a Literal or Gatekeeper Andy.