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Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

hydrogeninsight.com

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Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#91

Post by gruez »

cameldrv wrote: post #83
shagie wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They're a car company committed to keeping the internal combustion engine. A vehicle running on hydrogen isn't an ICE. These are fuel cells. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_Mirai This is an electric vehicle which generates power through hydrogen fuel cells rather than storing it as electrical energy in a battery (though it has a battery too). > Toyota's latest generation hybrid components were used extensively…

You can make a Hydrogen ICE. BMW even leased 100 of them about 15 years ago. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_Hydrogen_7

Right, but if they're essentially incompatible with fossil fuel ICEs, what relevance is there to this conversation? The only thing that binds them is that they combust, but there's no clear reason why fossil fuel companies would favor one technology just because it involves combustion.

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#92

Post by nazgul17 »

MBCook wrote: post #11

Green hydrogen, blue hydrogen, grey hydrogen, clean hydrogen. I’m glad everyone agreed English words are meaningless now. It makes trying to understand articles so much more fun.

Sabine Hossenfelder recently made a video about hydrogen. Her point is that it is not a good choice for decarbonization, but as part of the video she goes though the various "hydrogen colors" and their meaning.

https://youtu.be/Zklo4Z1SqkE

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#93

Post by ryao »

tshaddox wrote: post #74
jojobas wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with internal combustion per se, if electrolysis+ICE works out cheaper than battery in terms of lithium/rare earths/whatever there is no fundamental objection to it.

Wouldn’t ICEs be worse for local pollution?

There is a hypothetical internal combustion engine that burns hydrogen directly. I think that the other poster was talking about that. Unfortunately, it is not just inefficient, but also has a major rust problem. It also would still generate NOx.

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#94

Post by gruez »

tshaddox wrote: post #74
jojobas wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing wrong with internal combustion per se, if electrolysis+ICE works out cheaper than battery in terms of lithium/rare earths/whatever there is no fundamental objection to it.

Wouldn’t ICEs be worse for local pollution?

What pollution would hydrogen/oxygen combustion produce?

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#95

Post by Retric »

pfdietz wrote: post #43
cbkeller wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seasonal storage is an interesting idea. Rare grid outages seems pretty easy with batteries if the South Australia example is anything to go by though, and for medium-term storage there's also pumped hydro -- not sure where that compares in cost?

Rare prolonged outages are bad for batteries, since the capital cost is too high. You want something that has very low capital cost, even if it burns a fuel. Simple cycle gas turbines power plants might cost $0.50/W.

Existing battery technology works best when you don’t charge to 100% or discharge to 0%. On top of this you want oversized batteries to deal with battery degradation over time. This means any large scale battery system includes a buffer beyond normal use which you would only use if wholesale prices spiked.

On top of this grid operators want generation redundancy in case an individual power plant goes offline for whatever reason. Combining both you get quite a lot of excess capacity compared to the current grid.

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#96

Post by mc32 »

jfengel wrote: post #41
TheRealPomax wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't know Toyota was a fossil fuel company, or was owned by one? Japan is uniquely trying to make this thing work. They have no domestic oil production, and so few coal mines as to basically be irrelevant: all their fossil fuel is imported. Anywhere else on the planet: sure, this might be another way for big fossil to push for relevancy, but in Japan's case, hydrogen would be something that they can produce thems…

They're a car company committed to keeping the internal combustion engine. They are market leaders in hybrid cars, but have been surpassed in all electric. So they're not a fossil fuel company but their interests are aligned.

Unless they had insight into the future, Toyota has been exploring this technology a long time[1]. They started a developing fuel cell propulsion in 1992 --way before there was mainstream antipathy for fossil fuels.

The more likely explanation is they sought alternative fuels and settled on Hydrogen and so, now, despite evidence and viability of battery electrics, they keep on pushing "their" solution probably with lots of influence from the sunk cost fallacy.

[1] Recall "peak oil", before Fracking became viable, was a serious concern since the '70s and people thought fossil fuels would eventually become unaffordable to everyday consumers.

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#97

Post by macintux »

rgmerk wrote: post #17
MBCook wrote: post #11

Green hydrogen, blue hydrogen, grey hydrogen, clean hydrogen. I’m glad everyone agreed English words are meaningless now. It makes trying to understand articles so much more fun.

It’s industry jargon. The IT industry has plenty of its own.

My then-wife and I had this conversation 20 years ago about IT jargon. I pointed out how many different words we have for “chair”.

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#98

Post by gruez »

gumby wrote: post #62
hammock wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you hate fossil fuels or do you want to save the planet? I feel your words seem prejudiced against allowing fossil fuel companies to help us fight climate change

We need to stop using fossil fuels. Both their extraction and they use are ecologically disastrous. They power they provide is all op ex, rather than cap ex as with solar or wind (or nukes for that matter).

How does this have anything to do with the question posed by the parent? You want the whole world to stop using fossil fuels, but clearly the world isn't ready for that. In the meantime, what's wrong with fossil fuel companies using some of their profits to fuel (heh) renewable energy projects?

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#99

Post by ClumsyPilot »

kube-system wrote: post #34
xt00 wrote: post #16

I would imagine somebody has floated this idea before, but I wonder if the distraction of hydrogen rather than electric cars was a ploy by Japanese automakers to give them time to build up the cars / supply chain etc to switch to electric. Typically cars (at least in the US) take around 4-5 years of development to get to market, so rather than assuming the Japanese policy makers just made a dumb decision, it could be…

Toyota started dumping money into hydrogen vehicle R&D more than 25 years ago. They just picked the wrong technology, and they’ve been advocating for their horse in the race ever since.

hydrogen has no use for personal cars, mayhe heavy industry or similar makes sence

Re: Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

#100

Post by freetime2 »

grahar64 wrote: post #25

For example, Toyota makes good reliable cars, and saw massive success with the Prius because it was the only good alternative to a full internal combustion engine. Now, years after that success, Toyota has only a very limited selection of fully electric plug in vehicles, and all their competitors are a decade in front of them because they continue to chase some pipe dream of hydrogen, is just disappointing.

> and all their competitors are a decade in front of them

This feels overly pessimistic to me. I feel like just a couple of years ago people were saying that Tesla was a decade ahead of "legacy" automakers. Fast forward a couple of years and there are lots of great EVs available from a number of legacy automakers, and Tesla's stock is down almost 70% from its peak in Nov 2021. Ford even beat Tesla to market with a compelling pickup. A lot can change in a few short years.

Toyota still hasn't released a compelling EV, and their Mirai looks dubious at best. But they are putting hybrid engines into more and more models, and I think there will continue to be a strong demand for HEVs and PHEVs for years to come, until prices come down on EVs. And of course demand for ICE vehicles is still strong, too.

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