Hydrogen based energy policy appears to be a bad idea

[gmb42]

An article analysing how a hydrogen based energy policy promoted by fossil-fuel companies looks like an economic bubble in waiting:

https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/analysis/liebreich-hydrogen-is-starting-to-look-like-an-economic-bubble-and-here-s-why/2-1-1334006

Another negative report about possible use of hydrogen for transport vehicles, this time for trains:

https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/transport/will-no-longer-be-considered-hydrogen-trains-up-to-80-more-expensive-than-electric-options-german-state-finds/2-1-1338438

[bidrohini]

Thanks for sharing.

[Kleinstein]

This looks like a rather industry funded study.  To me this looks it may actually get attractive - otherwise there would be little need to spend money on biases studies to stop it.

[Faringdon]

Battery vs Hydrogen fuel cell EVs
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/battery-ev-vs-hydrogen-fuel-cell-ev/175/

Good way to find more such articles on a website....
site:eevblog.com hydrogen EV

[nctnico]

This looks like a rather industry funded study.  To me this looks it may actually get attractive - otherwise there would be little need to spend money on biases studies to stop it.

Indeed. Suddenly countries with no natural resources to speak of but with large, sunny deserts find that they do have a great natural resource: space to put solar panels. Hydrogen makes it easy to sell energy to whoever wants to pay the most. Just recently the Dutch government has reached provisional agreements with several countries to suppy hydrogen. Ofcourse the countries with large fossil fuel reserves don't like that at all.

[coppice]

This looks like a rather industry funded study.  To me this looks it may actually get attractive - otherwise there would be little need to spend money on biases studies to stop it.

Indeed. Suddenly countries with no natural resources to speak of but with large, sunny deserts find that they do have a great natural resource: space to put solar panels. Hydrogen makes it easy to sell energy to whoever wants to pay the most. Just recently the Dutch government has reached provisional agreements with several countries to suppy hydrogen. Ofcourse the countries with large fossil fuel reserves don't like that at all.

If you have plenty of solar power to create fuel molecules, why create ones that are such a PITA as hydrogen? You could use atmospheric CO2 and water to synthesise something like ethanol using your solar power. These 'hydrogen will never work" articles are basically right, but they are straw man arguments. They try to keep people's eyes off related concepts with more potential. Solar power to liquid fuels has real potential.

[Kleinstein]

The first step with green hydrogen is however not using it in cars or trains, but to use it in chemistry. There is currently quite a lot of natural gas used to produce hydrogen for the use in chemisty, e.g. producing more gasoline (in stead of more heavy oils) and producing amonia for fertilizers and other chemistry.  Chances are it would be quite some time before there would be excess green hydrogen, just to replace the current uses of hydrogen.

With some uses, like the production of amonia it would also make more sense to move that to the energy sources. Amonia is easier to transport than hydrogen.
Chances are some of the chemical industry will follow the energy soures.

Trains and cars are different in that a train can use more weight and volume for storage. So I am more sceptical with cars and trucks than trains. To a large part hydrogen via fuel cell and just battery powered is not that different. So chances are they can switch in both directions later if needed. Hydrogen can very much makes sense when used for long term storrage anyway. The efficiency is not great, but hydrogen is still one of the few options we have for long term energy-storage.

Solar power to liquid fuel is way worse in efficiency - you start with hydrogen and a combustion motor is more like less than half the efficiency of a fuel cell. So synthetic fuels mainly make sense for the few cases, like planes that have trouble with a heay tank.

[nctnico]

And yet Toyota is working on hybrids that use hydrogen in an ICE instead of fuel cells. According to the latest plans these cars will hit the market somewhere in 2025.

[coppice]

And yet Toyota is working on hybrids that use hydrogen in an ICE instead of fuel cells. According to the latest plans these cars will hit the market somewhere in 2025.

People have been making hydrogen powered ICE cars in small numbers since the 1980s. The filling systems at hydrogen stations for fuel cell cars look just like ones I saw being demonstrated in the 1980s in a hydrogen powered BMW 7. If that market hasn't grown to something self sustaining in 40 years, I can't see it doing well now.

[Marco]

https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/analysis/liebreich-hydrogen-is-starting-to-look-like-an-economic-bubble-and-here-s-why/2-1-1334006

Attacks consumer cars and home heating. These are not representative for the huge problems hydrogen is supposed to solve in the net zero scenario.

Oh wait he mentions the steel industry too, well that's nice because there hydrogen has no alternative. Does he really think carbon capture to offset burning coke will be able to compete with using hydrogen for reducing in steel production?

Another negative report about possible use of hydrogen for transport vehicles, this time for trains:

https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/transport/will-no-longer-be-considered-hydrogen-trains-up-to-80-more-expensive-than-electric-options-german-state-finds/2-1-1338438

Again not a representative example.

Seasonal storage -> hydrogen competes against nuclear and 10x over-provisioning of renewables.
Long haul trucking and to a lesser extent long range consumer cars -> hydrogen competes against ultra-fast charging and synthetic fuels and non arable land biofuels.
Airplanes and marine transport -> hydrogen competes only against synthetic fuels and non arable land biofuels.

These are the major problems hydrogen is supposed to tackle. Any attack which doesn't address them in a net zero scenario is disingenuous, stupid or naive.

PS. ultra fast charging is ongoing research and would likely require battery storage at fuel stations due to the huge peak power. Synthetic fuels and non arable land biofuels are ongoing research with very low technological readiness, synthetic fuel will likely always be eye watering expensive even compared to dealing with hydrogen and for non arable land biofuels there are no easy solutions. Open sea has bugger all nutrient density up top, pond growing with seawater is expensive, closed bioreactors are expensive.

PPS. "The numbers are staggering" is the most accurate statement in those links, Net Zero is like a couple dozen space races rolled into one. Nothing in history approaches the scale of resource redirection necessary to accomplish it except the World Wars, luckily we're rich beyond equal in history too.

[nctnico]

And yet Toyota is working on hybrids that use hydrogen in an ICE instead of fuel cells. According to the latest plans these cars will hit the market somewhere in 2025.

People have been making hydrogen powered ICE cars in small numbers since the 1980s. The filling systems at hydrogen stations for fuel cell cars look just like ones I saw being demonstrated in the 1980s in a hydrogen powered BMW 7. If that market hasn't grown to something self sustaining in 40 years, I can't see it doing well now.

Well, write a letter to the CEO of Toyota then. Tell him he is doing it all wrong despite having made Toyota the biggest car manufacturer in the world with the best hybrid technology. If you really look more close you'll see that Toyota is among the very few car manufacturers that actually is taking CO2 and harmfull emissions seriously instead of cheating / clinging on to obsolete technology / window dressing.

[coppice]

And yet Toyota is working on hybrids that use hydrogen in an ICE instead of fuel cells. According to the latest plans these cars will hit the market somewhere in 2025.

People have been making hydrogen powered ICE cars in small numbers since the 1980s. The filling systems at hydrogen stations for fuel cell cars look just like ones I saw being demonstrated in the 1980s in a hydrogen powered BMW 7. If that market hasn't grown to something self sustaining in 40 years, I can't see it doing well now.

Well, write a letter to the CEO of Toyota then. Tell him he is doing it all wrong despite having made Toyota the biggest car manufacturer in the world with the best hybrid technology. If you really look more close you'll see that Toyota is among the very few car manufacturers that actually is taking CO2 and harmfull emissions seriously instead of cheating / clinging on to obsolete technology / window dressing.

Toyota has put a lot of resources into hydrogen fuel cell cars, with little to show for it. They have done great work in many areas, but they do seem to be having trouble letting go of hydrogen. I don't know how much hydrogen embrittlement would affect an ICE engine, but they clearly have most of the pieces (hydrogen tanks, safety systems, etc.) already in place to get a hydrogen powered ICE car to market.

[Kleinstein]

For CO2 free steel production there are alternatives:  there are 2 forms of electrolysis that can be used: one is from the melt, a bit like making aluminum. The other is a from of aqueous electrolysis followed by melting in an arc furnace of similar. Chances are these methods would be more energy efficient.

Carbon capture and maybe using char coal would be also possible.

AFAIK the facilities to produce hydrogen are relatively cheap, so there is no big problem to have sufficient capacity to use all excess. So over-provisioning of renewables kind of goes together with hydrogen. Already the option to make good use for excess ernergy helps with the storrage problem. Converting hydrogen back to electricity would only be a small part to come later.
To me the idea of a hybrid with a hydrogen powered combustion engine sounds a bit strange. A fuel cell should be better efficiency and thus possible to save on the tank. Looks more like a last straw to keep the ICE alive at all costs, may be for historic reasons.

[nctnico]

To me the idea of a hybrid with a hydrogen powered combustion engine sounds a bit strange. A fuel cell should be better efficiency and thus possible to save on the tank. Looks more like a last straw to keep the ICE alive at all costs, may be for historic reasons.

Yes and no. In the end it is all about costs. A couple of days ago I read an article with the CEO of PSA (brands: French car company with brands like Citroen, Peugot, Opel, etc) complaining cars are becoming too expensive and stricter emission limits are not helping. Toyota also showed a prototype car using solid state batteries that are supposed to be mass produced somewhere around 2027. If you add things up you can see where a hydrogen ICE fits in: a car like that simply costs less to buy.

[Marco]

char coal

Same problem as arable land biofuel and pellet burning electricity plants, takes way too much land (in the case of pellet burning electricity plants more land than we have on earth).

[Marco]

If you add things up you can see where a hydrogen ICE fits in: a car like that simply costs less to buy.

Maybe better to just give a government loan for the batteries and roll it into their tax bill so they don't see battery cost as a line item and make a slightly more sane decision.

[Zero999]

This looks like a rather industry funded study.  To me this looks it may actually get attractive - otherwise there would be little need to spend money on biases studies to stop it.

Indeed. Suddenly countries with no natural resources to speak of but with large, sunny deserts find that they do have a great natural resource: space to put solar panels. Hydrogen makes it easy to sell energy to whoever wants to pay the most. Just recently the Dutch government has reached provisional agreements with several countries to suppy hydrogen. Ofcourse the countries with large fossil fuel reserves don't like that at all.

If you have plenty of solar power to create fuel molecules, why create ones that are such a PITA as hydrogen? You could use atmospheric CO2 and water to synthesise something like ethanol using your solar power.

The problem is CO₂ in the atmosphere is so diluted, it's impossible to extract it and convert it to methanol with any efficiency. Biofuels is really the only way to do that, but it's better to use the space to grow crops for food. Waste biomass is a more sensible alternative, but there's only so much of that available.

[tszaboo]

This looks like a rather industry funded study.  To me this looks it may actually get attractive - otherwise there would be little need to spend money on biases studies to stop it.

Indeed. Suddenly countries with no natural resources to speak of but with large, sunny deserts find that they do have a great natural resource: space to put solar panels. Hydrogen makes it easy to sell energy to whoever wants to pay the most. Just recently the Dutch government has reached provisional agreements with several countries to suppy hydrogen. Ofcourse the countries with large fossil fuel reserves don't like that at all.

If you have plenty of solar power to create fuel molecules, why create ones that are such a PITA as hydrogen? You could use atmospheric CO2 and water to synthesise something like ethanol using your solar power.

The problem is CO₂ in the atmosphere is so diluted, it's impossible to extract it and convert it to methanol with any efficiency. Biofuels is really the only way to do that, but it's better to use the space to grow crops for food. Waste biomass is a more sensible alternative, but there's only so much of that available.

Liquid CO2 on an industrial scale costs somewhere around 40-80 EUR/T so on today's market you can just buy it.
The chemical plan can directly work from intermodal tanks, to intermodal tanks (or the city gas grid), processing CO2 with tap water water to CH4. Coal fired power plants are doing (and will do) CO2 capture to reduce their carbon emissions, because they are charged for carbon credits, and if they capture it, they don't have to.
Honestly carbon capture makes no sense, when there are still industries that just release it in the air.
And while hydrogen is simple to create, it is not as simple to store and use as LNG or CNG.
Honestly, the smallest plant like this that I can envision is just two 20 foot container in size, that is scattered in the back parking lots of industrial districts. Using energy when it is super cheap/free/negative price.

[Kleinstein]

char coal

Same problem as arable land biofuel and pellet burning electricity plants, takes way too much land (in the case of pellet burning electricity plants more land than we have on earth).

For some chemical processes using char coal can be a good alternative. One can make char coal not only from wood, but also other biomass and if done in a controlled / closed system this process also provides other chemmicals (e.g. acetic acid, CO), that can be a good alternative to oil / coal for the chemical industry e.g. for producing plastics. So chances are we will need quite some use of biomass for this. A process that should be reduced is the old style of making char coal, that burn or discharge all the byproducts.

Just burning biomass to produce electricity or heat is much more questionalble, as there are better alternatives of directly producing electricty from the sun. The biomass is good for more than energy. The plants are also quite good in capturing the CO2 from the air, but not that efficient in collecting solar power.

To me the idea of a hybrid with a hydrogen powered combustion engine sounds a bit strange. A fuel cell should be better efficiency and thus possible to save on the tank. Looks more like a last straw to keep the ICE alive at all costs, may be for historic reasons.

Yes and no. In the end it is all about costs.

I totally agree with the importance of costs, as ideally the price reflects the effort and resources needed. The problem is that current prices are still based on cheap oil and coal, so prices will change.
Cost wise a combustion engine is not very effective, if the fuel price gets higher. The capacities to produce synthetic or bio-fuels are limited and they will likely stay expensive. It can still compete in some areas (e.g. air trafic, low usage parts like emergency equipment). Poor efficiency is kind of indicating that there is little chance for them to become cheap. AFAIK synthetic and bio fuels are currently about 3 and 2 times more expensive than conventional when taking out the taxes and subsedies. Plants are already grown in large volume - so little chance to hope for help from larger quantity, more like the problem of limited resources and rising prices.

[mfro]

I'm pretty convinced that hydrogen *will* play a significant role in future energy mix.

Once societies are really going serious with alternative energy ("if" is probably not the question, it's rather a "when"), they will need to build up enough capacity for when the wind isn't blowing and the sun is not shining. Consequently, these capacities will become significant overcapacities when they are.

As idling windmills and cut solar panel feeds would be a huge waste, they will need to do something with that fair weather power. As there is only so much water you can pump uphill into reservoir power stations, the only other technology that's at least half way there is hydrogen production.

At a certain point, this will make - despite the weak efficiency factor - hydrogen a cheap energy source

[voltsandjolts]

Grid scale energy is delivered either by electricity or gas.

The electricity grid has huge challenges in the near future, with the simultaneous transition to renewable generation and electrified transport (i.e. massive increase in consumption). It's hard to imagine that the electric grid could also cope with the shutdown of the natural gas grid and subsequent additional electric consumption. I can't see that being feasible.

We have to make use of the gas grid infrastructure to deliver energy that the electric grid simply can't hope to deliver alone (my thoughts anyway). If we move away from natural gas, then we need to fill the gas network with something else, green gas. Hydrogen, ammonia,... whatever. But how we produce a green gas on such a vast scale as we currently consume natural gas seems like an impossible problem. We are stuck on natural gas for the foreseeable future.

I predict energy efficient houses with a bit of land, enough for wind turbine(s) and solar, will become very much sought after in the next decade or so. Off-grid may be the future. For business too.

[Siwastaja]

And yet Toyota is working on hybrids that use hydrogen in an ICE instead of fuel cells. According to the latest plans these cars will hit the market somewhere in 2025.

Are you freaking serious  .

Toyota has played the hydrogen bait-and-switch game for what, two decades for now, non-stop. It's always just a few years ahead. They have no real intention whatsoever to produce hydrogen vehicles, never had, for reasons obvious to every engineer-minded person apparently except you. It was just smoke screen for EV development, and now it's becoming a deprecated strategy as Toyota has revealed that actually they did have serious BEV program all the time (despite publicly stating they don't believe in BEVs), and now you can finally buy a Toyota EV.

[Marco]

For some chemical processes using char coal can be a good alternative.

It's a matter of scale, feeding old coal plants, flying planes, steel industry .... there ain't enough waste biomass for even one of them and even one of them would need many times what is now dedicated to bioethanol, which already takes up a ton of arable land as it is.

You can't solve these problems by throwing all this kinds of small scale stuff at it, the big solutions are needed regardless. Government shouldn't be distracted by the small stuff, leave that to the market.

[nctnico]

And yet Toyota is working on hybrids that use hydrogen in an ICE instead of fuel cells. According to the latest plans these cars will hit the market somewhere in 2025.

Are you freaking serious  .

Toyota has played the hydrogen bait-and-switch game for what, two decades for now, non-stop. It's always just a few years ahead. They have no real intention whatsoever to produce hydrogen vehicles, never had, for reasons obvious to every engineer-minded person apparently except you. It was just smoke screen for EV development, and now it's becoming a deprecated strategy as Toyota has revealed that actually they did have serious BEV program all the time (despite publicly stating they don't believe in BEVs), and now you can finally buy a Toyota EV.

You may think that but remember your reaction is similar to those of many when Toyota introduced their hybrid technology. Technology that has not made it necessary for Toyota to sell BEVs in the EU in order to meet average CO2 limits for cars sold. Appearantly they foresaw and planned this decades ahead of time. To me it is crystal clear that Toyota is executing a carefully planned long term strategy which includes several escapes (like selling BEVs in markets where there is demand). But they also seem to understand very well that BEVs aren't a universal answer. To me it is very reasonable to assume their hydrogen strategy is playing the long game (even though it seemingly makes no sense to some).

[Siwastaja]

Toyota introduced hybrid technology by starting to sell hybrid cars. Toyota "introduced" hydrogen by never really having any plans to actually sell hydrogen cars, and did this every year for 20+ years straight. A big difference.

Political opinions of non-technical people are of no interest to me. Hybrids were a significant technological improvement in city traffic in 1990's, and that was clear as day at the time to technical people. Hydrogen vehicles were bullshit and still are, as evidenced by Toyota not actually doing them, and instead finally doing exactly what they told us hundreds of times they will not do: BEV. And this was clear as day to technical people, too.