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Have you forgotten what your goal is? It is to get ships to zero emissions. Not force a physically nonsensical idea onto the shipping world. You've already adm

by _hypx 3y ago

Have you forgotten what your goal is? It is to get ships to zero emissions. Not force a physically nonsensical idea onto the shipping world. You've already admitted that solar is just $0.02/kWh. You can do the rest of the math and realize that hydrogen will also be very cheap. You're entirely thinking in cliches now. It is "battery = cheap, hydrogen = expensive" despite your own argument contradicting that claim. In reality, people will just some kind of chemical fuels. If not hydrogen directly, then something derived from it like ammonia or synfuels. It is already happening in fact, and your obsession simply won't happen.

Retric 3y ago
I call green hydrogen expensive because that’s what it actually costs today. There’s a reason we only get 4% of hydrogen from electrolysis, it costs more than using fossil fuels. Look at hydrogen fuel station pricing sometimes even using fossil fuels and compare costs vs bunker fuel. There’s projections it could possibly get close to US gas prices in 20 years, but that includes road taxes, high refining costs, transportation, etc and are therefore much higher than bunker fuel actually used by boats. So the optimistic projections are doubling a ship’s fuel costs and current prices are much higher than that. As to your “nonsensical idea” complaint, companies actually saving companies money today using it. This isn’t some hypothetical, actual ships on the ocean are using large scale batteries to save on fuel costs. Further, the absolute largest car carrier in the world is smaller than the largest sailing vessel ever built, they load and unload from the front so sticking sails on top wouldn’t be a problem. Fossil fuels are cheap, but hydrogen isn’t viable today which is why ships aren’t using it and it’s not projected to be viable for decades. Anyone who tried using hydrogen would simply be eaten alive by the competition.
- _hypx 3y ago
  You could've said the same thing about anything before it hits mass production. Wind and solar were expensive too at one point. It is not much of an argument. The thing about hydrogen is that is made from an extremely plentiful resource: water + green energy. That puts the cost floor at below that of bunker fuel. In fact, the cost floor is pretty close to zero. So you are basically repeating the generic "renewable resources can never be cheap" argument. But it has been discredited. Nobody uses anything like a battery powered ship for long distance travel. You are making up imaginary scenarios.
  - Retric 3y ago
    Clean energy isn’t free nor is the actual infrastructure required. Round trip efficiency for hydrogen is currently ~18% excluding horrifically expensive fuel cells which are completely off the table for these ships. On top of this you got to pay for the infrastructure to actually make the hydrogen + infrastructure to store the stuff + the increased costs of building ships to handle it. Even optimistic estimates put Hydrogen well above bunker fuel. > Nobody is using anything like a battery powered ship for long distance travel. Cargo ships with hot swapping batteries are already in use. At that point it’s Europe to Asia is an infrastructure problem not a research problem. People hope to eventually solve Hydrogen’s issues with production and storage but have made minimal progress over the last 20 years. Just because we want technology to work doesn’t mean it’s actually possible to build it. Hell just look at how much people have hyped up Nuclear as a source of cheap electricity as long as we invest in more R&D. Except even with huge investments in new designs etc there’s been zero actual progress in lowering costs.
    - _hypx 3y ago
      Clean energy is regularly free or even negatively priced. It is at the very least, extremely cheap. It's funny how PV panels at 20% efficiency never stopped it from catching on. Making the same accusation against hydrogen is just repeating this already debunked argument. The whole infrastructure for hydrogen will just repurpose or modify natural gas infrastructure. It is not expensive. It will be vastly cheaper than trying to do it entirely with batteries. And without any resource constraints, it is guaranteed to eventually be cheaper than bunker fuel. Again, you are repeating anti-wind and anti-solar argument the past. If those technologies plunged to nearly nothing in cost, why would the next renewable technology that relies on an extremely plentiful substance be any different? Finally, you're entering into the "I'm just making this shit up" phase of your argument. People have already made ships to run on hydrogen. Something similar has happened with a variety of other green fuels like methanol, ammonia, etc. None of this is even that challenging of a problem. The only thing that is proving to be hard is trying to power everything with a battery. It is totally nuts for ships, and that's even before realizing how much it costs. FYI, nuclear has been killed off due to legislation, many due to fears over radioactive waste. But hydrogen and other chemical fuels have no such concerns. It will scale the same as wind and solar did.

by _hypx 3y ago

Retric 3y ago

I call green hydrogen expensive because that’s what it actually costs today. There’s a reason we only get 4% of hydrogen from electrolysis, it costs more than using fossil fuels. Look at hydrogen fuel station pricing sometimes even using fossil fuels and compare costs vs bunker fuel. There’s projections it could possibly get close to US gas prices in 20 years, but that includes road taxes, high refining costs, transportation, etc and are therefore much higher than bunker fuel actually used by boats. So the optimistic projections are doubling a ship’s fuel costs and current prices are much higher than that. As to your “nonsensical idea” complaint, companies actually saving companies money today using it. This isn’t some hypothetical, actual ships on the ocean are using large scale batteries to save on fuel costs. Further, the absolute largest car carrier in the world is smaller than the largest sailing vessel ever built, they load and unload from the front so sticking sails on top wouldn’t be a problem. Fossil fuels are cheap, but hydrogen isn’t viable today which is why ships aren’t using it and it’s not projected to be viable for decades. Anyone who tried using hydrogen would simply be eaten alive by the competition.

_hypx 3y ago
You could've said the same thing about anything before it hits mass production. Wind and solar were expensive too at one point. It is not much of an argument. The thing about hydrogen is that is made from an extremely plentiful resource: water + green energy. That puts the cost floor at below that of bunker fuel. In fact, the cost floor is pretty close to zero. So you are basically repeating the generic "renewable resources can never be cheap" argument. But it has been discredited. Nobody uses anything like a battery powered ship for long distance travel. You are making up imaginary scenarios.
- Retric 3y ago
  Clean energy isn’t free nor is the actual infrastructure required. Round trip efficiency for hydrogen is currently ~18% excluding horrifically expensive fuel cells which are completely off the table for these ships. On top of this you got to pay for the infrastructure to actually make the hydrogen + infrastructure to store the stuff + the increased costs of building ships to handle it. Even optimistic estimates put Hydrogen well above bunker fuel. > Nobody is using anything like a battery powered ship for long distance travel. Cargo ships with hot swapping batteries are already in use. At that point it’s Europe to Asia is an infrastructure problem not a research problem. People hope to eventually solve Hydrogen’s issues with production and storage but have made minimal progress over the last 20 years. Just because we want technology to work doesn’t mean it’s actually possible to build it. Hell just look at how much people have hyped up Nuclear as a source of cheap electricity as long as we invest in more R&D. Except even with huge investments in new designs etc there’s been zero actual progress in lowering costs.
  - _hypx 3y ago
    Clean energy is regularly free or even negatively priced. It is at the very least, extremely cheap. It's funny how PV panels at 20% efficiency never stopped it from catching on. Making the same accusation against hydrogen is just repeating this already debunked argument. The whole infrastructure for hydrogen will just repurpose or modify natural gas infrastructure. It is not expensive. It will be vastly cheaper than trying to do it entirely with batteries. And without any resource constraints, it is guaranteed to eventually be cheaper than bunker fuel. Again, you are repeating anti-wind and anti-solar argument the past. If those technologies plunged to nearly nothing in cost, why would the next renewable technology that relies on an extremely plentiful substance be any different? Finally, you're entering into the "I'm just making this shit up" phase of your argument. People have already made ships to run on hydrogen. Something similar has happened with a variety of other green fuels like methanol, ammonia, etc. None of this is even that challenging of a problem. The only thing that is proving to be hard is trying to power everything with a battery. It is totally nuts for ships, and that's even before realizing how much it costs. FYI, nuclear has been killed off due to legislation, many due to fears over radioactive waste. But hydrogen and other chemical fuels have no such concerns. It will scale the same as wind and solar did.