7 ms·

Hydrogen for cars is dead. However long haul flights, fertilizer, green steel, etc. very difficult to find a carbon free alternative that isn’t hydrogen.

senectus1 3y ago
absolutely. but the interesting thought experiment to have is... once you have converters all over the place for those uses... would that make it more attractive to cars?
dgudkov 3y ago
Quebec now tests a hydrogen train. [1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/hydrogen-train-quebec-city-1.6888891 https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/hydrogen-train-quebec-city-1...
espadrine 3y ago
Sure, but the same companies that lobby for hydrogen for cars & heating, claiming green benefits there one day, don’t raise a finger to decarbonate hydrogen for fertilizers, which does make it seem like they don’t actually care about reducing CO₂ emissions. The article points out the hypocrisy: > Liebreich gives an example of Shell being happy to spend $12bn on a floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) platform, the Prelude, which has seen a host of problems, “but they won't spend $12bn just producing blue, green, pink, or any other sort of clean hydrogen for those [existing] uses where we currently are driving 3-4% of global emissions”.
- Certhas 3y ago
  Absolutely. A sane hydrogen strategy can not be left to the lobbyists. Unfortunately, these companies have a lot of money to throw around, and they have no qualms about speaking to peoples "anti-ideological" impulses. In Germany, we have seen this strategy employed a number of times now politically: There is a clear technological winner (EV, battery, heat pumps, etc...), however with enormous transition costs (new infrastructure, people changing habits). So it's inconvenient. You then simply claim that you are pro-climate, but you want a "technologically neutral" solution, claiming that the slightly inconvenient winning technologies are driven by "green" moralizing and ideology. As no alternative technologies are ready to go, and their trade-offs and inconveniences (e.g. where do you build all the wind farms to produce the electricity to get your hydrogen) are not apparent in the immediate future, you get to not inconvenience your electorate, seem pragmatic/rational (vs the "green ideologues"), while still talking pro-climate. It's not exactly been a winning strategy electorally for those who employ it the loudest, but it's been an effective strategy to prevent political wins of the parties and politicians that actually want to make the sustainability transition happen. So far, it seems to have empowered the anti-establishment populist right instead...
  - tim333 3y ago
    A reason I think carbon pricing makes sense. Then you can calculate the most economical solution rather than going with the slickest politicians.
    - Certhas 3y ago
      Carbon pricing is great theory, but also is a massive cop-out politically. It moves the pain point into the future. If todays governments can't implement measures that are somewhat uncomfortable, why do you believe that a government in five or ten years will actually be able to implement or sustain a carbon price that is effective? I will not believe a policy based around future increases in carbon price unless it is implemented at a constitutional level (i.e. hard to reverse), comes with a detailed plan to redistribute the taxes raised in a manner that makes it socially just, and includes detailed information campaigns what the future price means for investments done now. Having a huge carbon price in 10 years, for example, implies that internal combustion engine cars are worthless then. Just trying to implement a policy to stop selling them in ten years already causes a huge backlash, the idea that there will be the political capital to turn all existing ICE cars into expensive paper weights that only the richest few can afford to drive is wishful thinking. Carbon prices do have an important role to play, but for those situations where we need to transform large systems in our societies (heat sector, mobility) that are incredibly ingrained in the status quo, relying on market mechanisms that depend on a politically backed price does not seem feasible.
- _fizz_buzz_ 3y ago
  Absolutely agree.
toss1 3y ago
Yup. Even Toyota, a big H2 promoter is bailing and announcing high-range. solid-state, fast charging batteries [0, 1, 2]. Makes me wonder if the H2 promotion was just a ruse to misdirect the rest of the industry while it caught up, and possibly even leapfrogged (we'll see if their announcements play out), on battery tech? [0] Toyota Teases Solid-State Batteries in 2027 https://spectrum.ieee.org/toyota-solid-state-battery https://spectrum.ieee.org/toyota-solid-state-battery [1] Toyota reveals its plan to catch up on EV battery technology Three liquid chemistries, solid state cells, and flatter battery packs. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/09/toyota-reveals-its-plan-to-catch-up-on-ev-battery-technology/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/09/toyota-reveals-its-plan... [2] LGES to supply Toyota with batteries, invest $3 billion in US plant https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/toyota-lg-energy-sign-battery-supply-agreement-power-evs-2023-10-04/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/toyota...
- mulmen 3y ago
  I think Toyota also had their hands tied a bit because the entire country of Japan has heavily invested in hydrogen. I can understand why it makes sense strategically for a country like Japan without their own oil (or lithium?) reserves. Toyota is a Japanese industrial powerhouse so I wouldn’t be surprised if they were receiving subsidies and maybe even direction on hydrogen research. Only now that they have invested enough to prove hydrogen is a fantasy can they move on to batteries. I’m not sure it’s such a loss though. Nissan was early with the Leaf but nobody talks about them as cornering the EV market. Toyota can benefit from the battery advancements everyone else made over the last 15 years and catch up quickly. At the time it made sense to invest in hydrogen. And in hindsight it wasn’t as much of a mistake as it might seem. It was a moonshot but they didn’t risk their existence on it and if it had worked they’d look like geniuses. If hydrogen was feasible Toyota and Japan would be world leaders in energy tech or at least have secure domestic energy independence.
  - pauldenton 3y ago
    Maybe it just needs to work in their borders Japan had a unique response to the 1973 oil crisis. Given recent instability in Russia/Ukraine, Afghanistan after the Withdrawal, and now Israel, having a hedge against petroleum primarily sourced in the Middle East and Russia it's a smart hedge to have. Besides, Americans have switched from wanting big extravagant American Made cars to small fuel efficient ones from Japan before
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
xoa 3y ago
>very difficult to find a carbon free alternative that isn’t hydrogen. The basic mistake you're making here is thinking that "carbon free" is key. It is not, what matters is that a given energy source is carbon NEUTRAL. Anthropogenic global warming is driven primarily by net increase in atmospheric CO2 on our timescale. When CO2 in consumed from the atmosphere, and then shortly released again (textbook example being a plant fixing CO2/H2O into sugar and the getting eaten by an animal and the animal the metabolizing sugar back to CO2/H2O) the short term net change is zero. The problem has come from releasing stored carbon that was fixed in geologically long term ways, ie, fossil fuels. We're used to thinking of "hydrocarbons" as equivalent to "fossil fuels" but that's not true. It's perfectly possible to directly synthesize any hydrocarbon from atmospheric CO2, water, and zero carbon energy like solar. Burning those hydrocarbons later will result in net zero change to atmospheric CO2, and thus are perfectly acceptable from an AGW POV (at ground level in particular burning fuels have other pollution issues that may be worth getting away from, but not global warming). The issue is "just" cost, it's much more inefficient and thus costlier to go solar -> fuel synthesis -> combustion -> useful work vs solar -> transmission -> battery -> work. But for applications where battery energy density is insufficient or other properties are required (like high performance aircraft that use fuel as coolant as well as energy) that could be worth it. So green hydrogen directly faces not just batteries, but green methane, gasoline and other hydrocarbons. Which are far, far easier to work with and have many better properties than hydrogen itself. And on top of course feed seamlessly into existing infrastructure and system.
- _fizz_buzz_ 3y ago
  Synthetic fuels are also made from hydrogen. That's actually what i had in mind.
- actionfromafar 3y ago
  Steel production really needs hydrogen though. Hopefully the first test-production facilities will come online soon in Sweden. But I agree on for instance air travel. Don't faff around with hydrogen in planes. Convert the hydrogen to something liquid, like the Porsche e-fuel, then use it in regular jet turbofans.
jillesvangurp 3y ago
For long haul flight, hydrogen's main use is going to be producing fuels that can actually go that distance. Hydrogen has a volumetric problem and it just isn't a great fuel for that reason. Even over short distances this is problematic. It just takes up too much space. It's about 2.5 x that of lng in both liquid and gas form. In liquid form, you need to cool it to a few degrees above 0 degrees kelvin, which makes it very impractical in a plane. And of course lng even in liquid form does not compare that favorably to things like kerosene. Green steel you can do without hydrogen. Basically you need lots of heat and some carbon to produce steel. Generating heat with electricity is not that hard. You can use induction, plasma heating, resistive heating, etc. And doing that is a lot more efficient than using that same electricity to first create hydrogen and then burn it. Hydrogen has its place, mostly as a chemical half product that is used to create other stuff. It doesn't store very well; it doesn't travel very well. It's mostly used close to where it is generated. Which as of yet is done almost exclusively by expending large amounts of fossil methane or coal. Green hydrogen production is minuscule and relatively inefficient and costly. Most uses of hydrogen today are neither green nor sustainable. Or carbon free. And that's going to stay like this for a while. Even just shifting current hydrogen production to being green is going to take a massive investment and take decades.
- nwiswell 3y ago
  > Hydrogen has a volumetric problem and it just isn't a great fuel for that reason. Even over short distances this is problematic. It just takes up too much space. Blended wing body designs may solve the volume problem. It's only intractable if you try to fit the same energy content into a modern airliner that was designed for Jet A. Weight is the usual suspect in aerospace, and fuel weight significantly favors hydrogen over Jet A (factor of ~2), so a blended wing body design with a much larger internal volume wouldn't even have to have equal aerodynamic efficiency in order to be a suitable replacement. To be clear, this is not a simple shift and will probably take decades, but it is merely an engineering challenge rather than a fundamental constraint.
- ben_w 3y ago
  > Green hydrogen production is minuscule and relatively inefficient and costly. Most uses of hydrogen today are neither green nor sustainable. Or carbon free. And that's going to stay like this for a while. Your other points hold, but I don't think this one is necessarily so (depending what you mean by "a while"): electrolysis is so incredibly trivial that I suspect it'll become green as fast as the grid in general, and if current exponential trend continues, that's going to be almost everything within a decade. If the current exponential continues. It might, but such is never assured.

senectus1 3y ago

absolutely. but the interesting thought experiment to have is... once you have converters all over the place for those uses... would that make it more attractive to cars?

dgudkov 3y ago

Quebec now tests a hydrogen train. [1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/hydrogen-train-quebec-city-1.6888891 https://www.cbc.ca/news/science/hydrogen-train-quebec-city-1...

espadrine 3y ago

Sure, but the same companies that lobby for hydrogen for cars & heating, claiming green benefits there one day, don’t raise a finger to decarbonate hydrogen for fertilizers, which does make it seem like they don’t actually care about reducing CO₂ emissions. The article points out the hypocrisy: > Liebreich gives an example of Shell being happy to spend $12bn on a floating liquefied natural gas (LNG) platform, the Prelude, which has seen a host of problems, “but they won't spend $12bn just producing blue, green, pink, or any other sort of clean hydrogen for those [existing] uses where we currently are driving 3-4% of global emissions”.

Certhas 3y ago
Absolutely. A sane hydrogen strategy can not be left to the lobbyists. Unfortunately, these companies have a lot of money to throw around, and they have no qualms about speaking to peoples "anti-ideological" impulses. In Germany, we have seen this strategy employed a number of times now politically: There is a clear technological winner (EV, battery, heat pumps, etc...), however with enormous transition costs (new infrastructure, people changing habits). So it's inconvenient. You then simply claim that you are pro-climate, but you want a "technologically neutral" solution, claiming that the slightly inconvenient winning technologies are driven by "green" moralizing and ideology. As no alternative technologies are ready to go, and their trade-offs and inconveniences (e.g. where do you build all the wind farms to produce the electricity to get your hydrogen) are not apparent in the immediate future, you get to not inconvenience your electorate, seem pragmatic/rational (vs the "green ideologues"), while still talking pro-climate. It's not exactly been a winning strategy electorally for those who employ it the loudest, but it's been an effective strategy to prevent political wins of the parties and politicians that actually want to make the sustainability transition happen. So far, it seems to have empowered the anti-establishment populist right instead...
- tim333 3y ago
  A reason I think carbon pricing makes sense. Then you can calculate the most economical solution rather than going with the slickest politicians.
  - Certhas 3y ago
    Carbon pricing is great theory, but also is a massive cop-out politically. It moves the pain point into the future. If todays governments can't implement measures that are somewhat uncomfortable, why do you believe that a government in five or ten years will actually be able to implement or sustain a carbon price that is effective? I will not believe a policy based around future increases in carbon price unless it is implemented at a constitutional level (i.e. hard to reverse), comes with a detailed plan to redistribute the taxes raised in a manner that makes it socially just, and includes detailed information campaigns what the future price means for investments done now. Having a huge carbon price in 10 years, for example, implies that internal combustion engine cars are worthless then. Just trying to implement a policy to stop selling them in ten years already causes a huge backlash, the idea that there will be the political capital to turn all existing ICE cars into expensive paper weights that only the richest few can afford to drive is wishful thinking. Carbon prices do have an important role to play, but for those situations where we need to transform large systems in our societies (heat sector, mobility) that are incredibly ingrained in the status quo, relying on market mechanisms that depend on a politically backed price does not seem feasible.
_fizz_buzz_ 3y ago
Absolutely agree.

toss1 3y ago

Yup. Even Toyota, a big H2 promoter is bailing and announcing high-range. solid-state, fast charging batteries [0, 1, 2]. Makes me wonder if the H2 promotion was just a ruse to misdirect the rest of the industry while it caught up, and possibly even leapfrogged (we'll see if their announcements play out), on battery tech? [0] Toyota Teases Solid-State Batteries in 2027 https://spectrum.ieee.org/toyota-solid-state-battery https://spectrum.ieee.org/toyota-solid-state-battery [1] Toyota reveals its plan to catch up on EV battery technology Three liquid chemistries, solid state cells, and flatter battery packs. https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/09/toyota-reveals-its-plan-to-catch-up-on-ev-battery-technology/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/09/toyota-reveals-its-plan... [2] LGES to supply Toyota with batteries, invest $3 billion in US plant https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/toyota-lg-energy-sign-battery-supply-agreement-power-evs-2023-10-04/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/toyota...

mulmen 3y ago
I think Toyota also had their hands tied a bit because the entire country of Japan has heavily invested in hydrogen. I can understand why it makes sense strategically for a country like Japan without their own oil (or lithium?) reserves. Toyota is a Japanese industrial powerhouse so I wouldn’t be surprised if they were receiving subsidies and maybe even direction on hydrogen research. Only now that they have invested enough to prove hydrogen is a fantasy can they move on to batteries. I’m not sure it’s such a loss though. Nissan was early with the Leaf but nobody talks about them as cornering the EV market. Toyota can benefit from the battery advancements everyone else made over the last 15 years and catch up quickly. At the time it made sense to invest in hydrogen. And in hindsight it wasn’t as much of a mistake as it might seem. It was a moonshot but they didn’t risk their existence on it and if it had worked they’d look like geniuses. If hydrogen was feasible Toyota and Japan would be world leaders in energy tech or at least have secure domestic energy independence.
- pauldenton 3y ago
  Maybe it just needs to work in their borders Japan had a unique response to the 1973 oil crisis. Given recent instability in Russia/Ukraine, Afghanistan after the Withdrawal, and now Israel, having a hedge against petroleum primarily sourced in the Middle East and Russia it's a smart hedge to have. Besides, Americans have switched from wanting big extravagant American Made cars to small fuel efficient ones from Japan before

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

xoa 3y ago

>very difficult to find a carbon free alternative that isn’t hydrogen. The basic mistake you're making here is thinking that "carbon free" is key. It is not, what matters is that a given energy source is carbon NEUTRAL. Anthropogenic global warming is driven primarily by net increase in atmospheric CO2 on our timescale. When CO2 in consumed from the atmosphere, and then shortly released again (textbook example being a plant fixing CO2/H2O into sugar and the getting eaten by an animal and the animal the metabolizing sugar back to CO2/H2O) the short term net change is zero. The problem has come from releasing stored carbon that was fixed in geologically long term ways, ie, fossil fuels. We're used to thinking of "hydrocarbons" as equivalent to "fossil fuels" but that's not true. It's perfectly possible to directly synthesize any hydrocarbon from atmospheric CO2, water, and zero carbon energy like solar. Burning those hydrocarbons later will result in net zero change to atmospheric CO2, and thus are perfectly acceptable from an AGW POV (at ground level in particular burning fuels have other pollution issues that may be worth getting away from, but not global warming). The issue is "just" cost, it's much more inefficient and thus costlier to go solar -> fuel synthesis -> combustion -> useful work vs solar -> transmission -> battery -> work. But for applications where battery energy density is insufficient or other properties are required (like high performance aircraft that use fuel as coolant as well as energy) that could be worth it. So green hydrogen directly faces not just batteries, but green methane, gasoline and other hydrocarbons. Which are far, far easier to work with and have many better properties than hydrogen itself. And on top of course feed seamlessly into existing infrastructure and system.

_fizz_buzz_ 3y ago
Synthetic fuels are also made from hydrogen. That's actually what i had in mind.
actionfromafar 3y ago
Steel production really needs hydrogen though. Hopefully the first test-production facilities will come online soon in Sweden. But I agree on for instance air travel. Don't faff around with hydrogen in planes. Convert the hydrogen to something liquid, like the Porsche e-fuel, then use it in regular jet turbofans.

jillesvangurp 3y ago

For long haul flight, hydrogen's main use is going to be producing fuels that can actually go that distance. Hydrogen has a volumetric problem and it just isn't a great fuel for that reason. Even over short distances this is problematic. It just takes up too much space. It's about 2.5 x that of lng in both liquid and gas form. In liquid form, you need to cool it to a few degrees above 0 degrees kelvin, which makes it very impractical in a plane. And of course lng even in liquid form does not compare that favorably to things like kerosene. Green steel you can do without hydrogen. Basically you need lots of heat and some carbon to produce steel. Generating heat with electricity is not that hard. You can use induction, plasma heating, resistive heating, etc. And doing that is a lot more efficient than using that same electricity to first create hydrogen and then burn it. Hydrogen has its place, mostly as a chemical half product that is used to create other stuff. It doesn't store very well; it doesn't travel very well. It's mostly used close to where it is generated. Which as of yet is done almost exclusively by expending large amounts of fossil methane or coal. Green hydrogen production is minuscule and relatively inefficient and costly. Most uses of hydrogen today are neither green nor sustainable. Or carbon free. And that's going to stay like this for a while. Even just shifting current hydrogen production to being green is going to take a massive investment and take decades.

nwiswell 3y ago
> Hydrogen has a volumetric problem and it just isn't a great fuel for that reason. Even over short distances this is problematic. It just takes up too much space. Blended wing body designs may solve the volume problem. It's only intractable if you try to fit the same energy content into a modern airliner that was designed for Jet A. Weight is the usual suspect in aerospace, and fuel weight significantly favors hydrogen over Jet A (factor of ~2), so a blended wing body design with a much larger internal volume wouldn't even have to have equal aerodynamic efficiency in order to be a suitable replacement. To be clear, this is not a simple shift and will probably take decades, but it is merely an engineering challenge rather than a fundamental constraint.
ben_w 3y ago
> Green hydrogen production is minuscule and relatively inefficient and costly. Most uses of hydrogen today are neither green nor sustainable. Or carbon free. And that's going to stay like this for a while. Your other points hold, but I don't think this one is necessarily so (depending what you mean by "a while"): electrolysis is so incredibly trivial that I suspect it'll become green as fast as the grid in general, and if current exponential trend continues, that's going to be almost everything within a decade. If the current exponential continues. It might, but such is never assured.