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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
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
I fully agree with your perception of CCS but i think it's only a small historical detour of about the same scale/level of harm as cellulosic ethanol or concentrated solar thermal used to be. Tried, failed, moved on. No one bets the farm on it, Fit for 55 plan for example, makes no mention of CCS.
Not here in Australia. Have a look at: https://www.kwm.com/au/en/insights/latest-thinking/ccs-in-au... (Burrup is the one I mentioned) Thats $250 million of committed funding to a range of high scale projects by the gas industry, coal-seam gas included.
That's right, but by comparison, Australia has 25GW of solar installed, so this funding represents only $0.01 per watt of installed solar, probably less than 1% of subsidy that went to solar. It's an OK amount to try and fail once.
Re: Cheap, green hydrogen would be a breakthrough in clean energy
#163Why 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?
All of the synthetic light hydrocarbons (e-fuels) involve extra energy on top of the hydrogen production. Its pretty much right there in the name (hydro carbon). So for instance, we could make a ton of hydrogen and then burn it for energy, or we could make a ton of hydrogen, add in a few hundred kilos of carbon and more energy to produce e-fuels that we then burn for energy. For logistics reasons it will almost certa…
Energy is plentiful, but it is not in the right places.
So surely the economics of transporting energy are going to count transmission/transport costs/efficiency not production efficiency?
Some form of synthetic fuel made from Hydrogen plus CO2 has a very good chance of being a winner here, given the extensive infrastructure we have for liquid (and gaseous) fuels.
I am no expert but this seems very clear to me. What do I have wrong?
Re: Cheap, green hydrogen would be a breakthrough in clean energy
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless of course you have a source of carbon you can't yet replace effectively or at scale, or you extract the carbon from the environment[1]. the second option (and efuel in general) definitely isn't ready for primetime but it could be a viable option in the future to keep some classes of old tech running rather than expending effort building out new tech at massive scales when it could be used more effectively else…
> Unless of course you have a source of carbon you can't yet replace effectively or at scale. Wouldn't it be better to capture the carbon and sequester it? How is capturing the carbon and then burning it again (via e-fuel) good?
It’s better than digging up new carbon and releasing that into the air.
Re: Cheap, green hydrogen would be a breakthrough in clean energy
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
Grey hydrogen is hydrogen derived from hydrocarbons which throws the carbons into the atmosphere. Blue hydrogen is grey hydrogen but the carbons are captured and stored. So nominally it's carbon-neutral but in practice the capture is never perfect.
Blue hydrogen is also unicorns. Probably even mentioning it can only distract.
I'd agree, the concept of cracking hydrocarbons and then capturing the GHG byproduct effectively is just fantasy. At best a blue hydrogen fuel cell would be on par with a super clean natural gas combustion engine. You'd get CO~2~, water vapor, and electricity. Better than rolling coal but not better than "green" hydrogen or just a chemical battery.
The math for blue hydrogen might work out in commercial and residential installations in regions with existing natural gas and siting that makes solar impractical. A fuel cell with a catalytic cracker could feed a building with hot water and electricity vs a combusting water heater that only provided hot water. For similar GHG output it might be an efficiency win. But I see that as a weak maybe all things considered.
Re: Cheap, green hydrogen would be a breakthrough in clean energy
#166Using hydrogen made from electrolysis of water (using solar/wind inputs) as a fuel for electricity generation is basically a futile cycle, and the only advantage would be temporal storage. For short term storage (hours/days) batteries are far more efficient. For long term storage, hydrogen is a bad idea other than as feedstock for production of longer-chain hydrocarbons (Fischer-Tropsch synthesis) or methane (Sabatie…
> the only advantage would be temporal storage.
This is not an insignificant advantage, to be fair. However, I agree that using electrolytic hydrogen as a Fischer-Tropsch or Sabatier feedstock is the way to go.
Re: Cheap, green hydrogen would be a breakthrough in clean energy
#167Using hydrogen made from electrolysis of water (using solar/wind inputs) as a fuel for electricity generation is basically a futile cycle, and the only advantage would be temporal storage. For short term storage (hours/days) batteries are far more efficient. For long term storage, hydrogen is a bad idea other than as feedstock for production of longer-chain hydrocarbons (Fischer-Tropsch synthesis) or methane (Sabatie…
DRI is great! I am [CEO at a hydrogen startup, and] very bullish on hydrogen in the power sector, at least in North America. I should also say, I agree that batteries and "electrify everything" will play a much larger role in the electricity sector vs hydrogen.
You've noted that temporal storage is a value prop of hydrogen. I'd like to add on that this is a real value prop driving real $B-scale spend at utilities in eg Los Angeles [1]. Depending on the researcher, hydrogen usually looks like the cheapest form of seasonal energy storage (vs eg iron oxide or flow batteries, excluding pumped hydro in ideal sites).
Hydrogen can move electricity around cheaply in space, and is arguably cheaper than HVDC for long distances [2].
If hydrogen can move electricity in time and space, that is kind of the holy grail for wind and solar. As you may know, there are endless square miles of CA/AZ desert and OK panhandle we we can produce power at insanely cheap prices, but we do not, because there is no cheap way to move power around in time and space. (And, because America can't permit those HVDC lines. We're much better at permitting pipelines.) If you believe in consensus cost curves for solar/electrolysis, you probably think that hydrogen will get cost-competitive with natgas @ $8/mmBTU in the next decade or so, then keep dropping. That's basically yesterday in utility years!
I'd also list "reliability" as a unique value prop, which is a key goal for grid operators with mandated zero-carbon timelines. This is a one of the things driving Los Angeles utility's acquisitions and cost/risk modeling. (There are other major factors: Utilities own lots of turbines and are building more, and can mostly start using hydrogen today alongside natural gas, and turbines fit their business model and operational expertise.) For these reasons and others, models of zero-carbon power systems are usually more expensive without hydrogen. That is, wind/solar/geothermal/hydro/nuclear/etc, plus 4-12h storage/batteries, tends to be more expensive than the same mix plus hydrogen. Example study at [3].
"24/7 clean energy" is another related concept, and is the holy grail for corporate energy buyers like Google. I haven't even brought up wind/solar interconnection yet, which is another problem which I see driving momentum for hydrogen, but that'll have to wait for another rant.
Thanks for reading!
[1] https://ww2.arb.ca.gov/sites/default/files/2020-07/ladwp_cn_... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X2... [3] https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy21osti/79444-ES.pdf
Re: Cheap, green hydrogen would be a breakthrough in clean energy
#168I'm interested if you could have a hydrogen stove, or hydrogen space heater- just as diesel, kerosene, propane, methane, electricity, alcohol, wood, and coal are all viable. What practical problems would arise? For example, gasoline camping stoves exist, but are too dangerous for indoor use.
If hydrogen is widely available, surely someone will want to do this..
This is what the flame looks like:
Re: Cheap, green hydrogen would be a breakthrough in clean energy
#169Using hydrogen made from electrolysis of water (using solar/wind inputs) as a fuel for electricity generation is basically a futile cycle, and the only advantage would be temporal storage. For short term storage (hours/days) batteries are far more efficient. For long term storage, hydrogen is a bad idea other than as feedstock for production of longer-chain hydrocarbons (Fischer-Tropsch synthesis) or methane (Sabatie…
> For short term storage (hours/days) batteries are far more efficient.
Is that expected/known to be true even as the tech gets cheaper in 5-10 years? What's the level of confidence of this statement?
Re: Cheap, green hydrogen would be a breakthrough in clean energy
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having some cheap long-term energy storage option is one way to solve that problem, but another is better power grid interconnection. For instance, Chicago could get solar power from Chile in the winter time to buffer out the seasonal variability. Or if they didn't even want to have to maintain a smaller buffer to deal with day/night cycles, they could get solar power from, say, Algeria and Australia depending on tim…
The US already struggles to build transmission lines across state lines. Building across nations is basically impossible.
It's happening, though, so it's not impossible.
https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/israel-cyprus...