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USA drop in coal was almost completely replaced by burning natural gas. > Storage is a completely separate axis to generation It’s not when you can generate o

USA drop in coal was almost completely replaced by burning natural gas. > Storage is a completely separate axis to generation It’s not when you can generate on demand from a fuel source that doubles as energy storage.

ben_w 3y ago
> USA drop in coal was almost completely replaced by burning natural gas. The overall faction from all fossil fuels has also declined, in the proportion I would expect from the current deployment of the various alternatives: https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/united-states#what-sources-does-the-country-get-its-energy-from https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/united-states#what... > It’s not when you can generate on demand from a fuel source that doubles as energy storage. It is when your fuel tanks are finite in size. Also we can't generate fuel yet at sufficient scale, and that's just as relevant regarding hydrogen as it is about batteries for electricity storage. I'm optimistic about batteries, but that optimism is realistically that we'll get there over the coming decade, and in the meantime have to deal with naysayers who can't imagine a future different to the past. With hydrogen, I'm pessimistic. Given that hydrogen electrolysis is so easy that I did this before I turned 10, you need to wonder why the USA (and all the other targets of the fuel embargo) failed to do this in any significant level even at the height of the 1970s fuel crisis back when nuclear power was still fashionable. This isn't an unanswerable question, nor is intended to be anti-hydrogen rhetoric — if you can solve the problems that made it unviable back then, that's fantastic and we can use it now. But we do actually have to solve those problems.
- pfdietz 3y ago
  It makes no sense to make green hydrogen when (1) natural gas is still allowed to be burned directly, and (2) gray hydrogen from SMR of natural gas has no CO2 tax. This doesn't mean green hydrogen can't work, any more than the large amount of local air pollution before the passage of the Clean Air Act meant air pollution was impossible to control. It's just a matter of making fossil fuel users fully pay for the externalities they impose on others.

ben_w 3y ago

> USA drop in coal was almost completely replaced by burning natural gas. The overall faction from all fossil fuels has also declined, in the proportion I would expect from the current deployment of the various alternatives: https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/united-states#what-sources-does-the-country-get-its-energy-from https://ourworldindata.org/energy/country/united-states#what... > It’s not when you can generate on demand from a fuel source that doubles as energy storage. It is when your fuel tanks are finite in size. Also we can't generate fuel yet at sufficient scale, and that's just as relevant regarding hydrogen as it is about batteries for electricity storage. I'm optimistic about batteries, but that optimism is realistically that we'll get there over the coming decade, and in the meantime have to deal with naysayers who can't imagine a future different to the past. With hydrogen, I'm pessimistic. Given that hydrogen electrolysis is so easy that I did this before I turned 10, you need to wonder why the USA (and all the other targets of the fuel embargo) failed to do this in any significant level even at the height of the 1970s fuel crisis back when nuclear power was still fashionable. This isn't an unanswerable question, nor is intended to be anti-hydrogen rhetoric — if you can solve the problems that made it unviable back then, that's fantastic and we can use it now. But we do actually have to solve those problems.

pfdietz 3y ago
It makes no sense to make green hydrogen when (1) natural gas is still allowed to be burned directly, and (2) gray hydrogen from SMR of natural gas has no CO2 tax. This doesn't mean green hydrogen can't work, any more than the large amount of local air pollution before the passage of the Clean Air Act meant air pollution was impossible to control. It's just a matter of making fossil fuel users fully pay for the externalities they impose on others.