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Governments offer incentives for green tech. The oil industry likes green tech which still uses oil and gas. Hydrogen fills both niches. Hydrogen is perfec
by londons_explore 2y ago
Governments offer incentives for green tech. The oil industry likes green tech which still uses oil and gas. Hydrogen fills both niches.
Hydrogen is perfect, because it can theoretically be made fully green, but practically it never will be due to the terrible economics of electrolysis. But the fact it theoretically could be means it can qualify for all those tax breaks and grants.
Some tax breaks are contingent on investing in 'green' stuff - so for the oil industry it makes perfect sense to invest in the only green tech which will never not use oil and gas.
- matthewdgreen 2y agoIt's particularly bad because the steam reforming process starts with one unit of methane, then throws away 25-35% of the energy it contains to make hydrogen. You're literally starting with a usable fuel, then throwing away a bunch of energy to make a much nastier fuel.
- londons_explore 2y agoThat steam reforming process also produces a lot of CO2 which is great for injecting into old oil wells to increase production levels. Win Win (except the environment of course).
- londons_explore 2y agoOh, and as a bonus, injecting CO2 into oil wells can count as "carbon capture and storage", which is another thing that gets big government grants!
- foobazgt 2y agoThere are other problems besides just being inefficient. In a world where energy is cheap and abundant, you still have to deal with leaks (hydrogen is small, so tends to escape everything over relatively small periods of time) and embrittlement (again, hydrogen is small, so it tends to fuse into other materials and destroy them). I don't know if these limitations are fundamental, or if we'll eventually come across some breakthroughs that make them economical to deal with, but it's something we've struggled with for a very long time so far.