Cheap, green hydrogen would be a breakthrough in clean energy
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Re: Cheap, green hydrogen would be a breakthrough in clean energy
#2It would. Yet there is no promising tech in this field. Hydrogen is supported only to draw support away from EVs.
If hydrogen becomes inexpensive to produce, it will by by way of solar power used to generate it.
It will never be easy to store. Hydrogen is the smallest element, and can move through solid objects over time. It is violently explosive. You think these EV fires you see all the time are bad? They're nothing compared to gasoline fires. And gasoline fires are nothing compared to a hydrogen explosion.
Re: Cheap, green hydrogen would be a breakthrough in clean energy
#3Thermodynamics, blah, blah. Such fun at parties.
Re: Cheap, green hydrogen would be a breakthrough in clean energy
#4It would. Yet there is no promising tech in this field. Hydrogen is supported only to draw support away from EVs. If hydrogen becomes inexpensive to produce, it will by by way of solar power used to generate it. It will never be easy to store. Hydrogen is the smallest element, and can move through solid objects over time. It is violently explosive. You think these EV fires you see all the time are bad? They're nothin…
downvoted because the author makes it explicitly clear he's not talking about cars in the very first paragraph.
Re: Cheap, green hydrogen would be a breakthrough in clean energy
#5It would. Yet there is no promising tech in this field. Hydrogen is supported only to draw support away from EVs. If hydrogen becomes inexpensive to produce, it will by by way of solar power used to generate it. It will never be easy to store. Hydrogen is the smallest element, and can move through solid objects over time. It is violently explosive. You think these EV fires you see all the time are bad? They're nothin…
I know ammonia has safety challenges as well, but transport and storage of ammonia is routine. I believe there are new developments in using ammonia for hydrogen storage and transport, so ammonia has potential to enable hydrogen to be the fuel of the future.
Re: Cheap, green hydrogen would be a breakthrough in clean energy
#6It would. Yet there is no promising tech in this field. Hydrogen is supported only to draw support away from EVs. If hydrogen becomes inexpensive to produce, it will by by way of solar power used to generate it. It will never be easy to store. Hydrogen is the smallest element, and can move through solid objects over time. It is violently explosive. You think these EV fires you see all the time are bad? They're nothin…
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Re: Cheap, green hydrogen would be a breakthrough in clean energy
#7> the world will have to get better at balancing energy supply and demand so we don’t go dark when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing.
Thanks Bill, that's really helpful, was there really no other way you could have phrased that?
> Another option is to produce hydrogen using the current methods that burn fossil fuels and then capture the CO2 produced in the process before it’s released in the atmosphere. It may never be economical to capture 100 percent of the carbon released using incumbent technologies, but while we’re waiting for thousands of industrial facilities to retrofit their infrastructure, carbon capture can help drive emissions way down.
Oh dear.
Was expecting him to shill for expensive nuclear generated (aka pink) hydrogen but he went one better and started pushing the dead end that is blue hydrogen.
Make green hydrogen, make lots of it. The more we make the cheaper it'll get. This is not complicated.
Re: Cheap, green hydrogen would be a breakthrough in clean energy
#8This is such generic analysis all it serves as is just a big-name-person blog post that can be linked to as an example of status-quo conventional wisdom.
The question is all in the numbers. What are the estimated prices of the four methods he mentions? What are their near term prospects for price reduction and/or efficiency gains? What are the crossover points between the economics of exiting methane steam reformation and the alternatives? What would drive those crossover points (a certain cost for solar? a certain scope of carbon pricing?).
I realize gatesnotes aren't meant to be deep dives, but it is genuinely infuriating how childishly oversimplified this discourse always is.
Re: Cheap, green hydrogen would be a breakthrough in clean energy
#9Why are we all wrapped up with hydrogen when we already have a perfectly adequate hydrocarbon infrastructure?
Sure, digging up old buried hydrocarbons and burning them isn't good, but couldn't we start synthesizing light hydrocarbons using green technology, so at least those usages are carbon neutral?
Re: Cheap, green hydrogen would be a breakthrough in clean energy
#10Yeah, so would cheap nuclear power or cheap batteries. I find cheap batteries way more likely then either of those.