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Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

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

#111

Post by hajile »

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 will you make a battery-powered semi? Tesla claimed to have one then got super-quiet about it.

Do the calculation for joules of power to move a fully-loaded tractor-trailer. Do a joule/kg calculation for modern batteries and calculate the series you get due to the rocket fuel problem (it takes a lot of battery to haul your battery).

You find that the towing capacity of that semi is miniscule vs an ICE engine. Same problem applies to heavy equipment (even if you completely dodge the issue that heavy equipment works out where stable power usually isn't readily available).

Hydrogen offers a solution to this that batteries can't offer.

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

#112

Post by themitigating »

roneythomas6 wrote: post #80
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…

The key here is Toyota is biggest employer in Japan and when you add its suppliers it's even bigger. Toyota very much wants an Hydrogen future so that they can retain those jobs.

I read this analysis last year about why Japan is so behind with EVs. The number of parts required is less then combustion and Japan's government is concerned about maintaining employment levels

This article talks about the filler jobs and how the economy is stuck in the past.

https://news.yahoo.com/japan-future-stuck-past-220130554.htm...

Annoyingly I can't find the source that went into why they are pushing EVs.

Edit: To be clear that was the hypothesis of the source and they presented evidence that the government that backed it, like stressing job creation and the importance of the automotive industry, but there wasn't a smoking gun.

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

#113

Post by shagie »

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

There are a few issues with that car. https://youtu.be/AouW9_jyZck

On the backdrop of the first thing - the part that caught my eye was "Liquid H2 Tank" which... well... yea.

That's a different approach than a hydrogen fuel cell.

I'll also note that is a German car company and not Toyota (or other Japanese car company).

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

#114

Post by ryao »

naravara wrote: post #70
cbkeller wrote: post #12

I'll go one further: Hydrogen does nothing. It's a bad battery. After following this for more than a decade (starting with a bit of undergrad research on possible alternative fuel cell electrode materials -- albeit not a field that I'm in any way involved with any more), it just feels like there's been very little progress on fuel cells, or on storage and transport. Meanwhile, progress on Li-based batteries has been…

It is a bad battery (along certain dimensions). But there is serious doubt as to whether the world actually has enough Lithium and other rare earths to actually meet battery demand indefinitely, even assuming we get the supply chains and infrastructure to where the materials are infinitely recyclable.

Dr. Goodenough’s new battery design allows people to use either sodium or lithium. Given that the entire world has adopted his previous battery designs, I would not be surprised if sodium based batteries are next. Sodium is so incredibly prevalent in the earth’s crust that scarcity should not be a problem.

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

#115

Post by barbazoo »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #87

We can't give up on hydrogen. A transfer to EV will not be practical for all current fossil fuel vehicles so we need an alternative for them. Hydrogen is not practical now but it has potential. I think electric and hydrogen are the only alternatives to fossil fuels. Are there others?

> A transfer to EV will not be practical for all current fossil fuel vehicles so we need an alternative for them

That's my impression too. It seems to be hard for some people to accept this as one solution for a narrow aspect of a complex problem. This is a problem I see a lot with "green energy" sceptics. The wind doesn't always blow, the sun doesn't always shine. If there isn't a one size fits all solution, it's not a solution at all.

Almost as good as the old adage of electricity not being clean today, therefore electrifying cars doesn't make sense. Nevermind that switching to renewable energy can be achieved asynchronously and is not something we need to wait for.

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

#116

Post by cactusplant7374 »

toast0 wrote: post #24

Hydrogen powered vehicles are like natural gas vehicles, but worse. Pressurized fuel tanks expire, and your vehicle becomes a pumpkin, because parts+labor to replace the tank on 15-20 year old vehicle doesn't make sense. But hydrogen is even harder to work with than natural gas. And it's yet another fueling network to build.

Isn't 15-20 years of full capacity better than a battery that slowly degrades over time?

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

#117

Post by danans »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #87

We can't give up on hydrogen. A transfer to EV will not be practical for all current fossil fuel vehicles so we need an alternative for them. Hydrogen is not practical now but it has potential. I think electric and hydrogen are the only alternatives to fossil fuels. Are there others?

> A transfer to EV will not be practical for all current fossil fuel vehicles

But we can transfer most of them to EVs, including nearly the entire light duty vehicle fleet and short haul trucking, which is probably good enough. There will always be niche cases for ICE vehicles, like driving across Siberia, or military vehicles. But the vast majority can be electrified.

Flight is a different story, perhaps hydrogen will be a viable path there.

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

#118

Post by shagie »

XorNot wrote: post #63
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.

That seems completely implausible though based on the losses. An ICE tops out at 25% efficient or so. A hydrogen fuel cell is 40-60% and efficient and that's likely to rise. If you're bothering with fueling cars with hydrogen gas, you might as well make them electric and get a huge range boost for free (and way more torque, less maintenance etc.) There's just no logical reason to try and burn hydrogen in ICE engines.

> There's just no logical reason to try and burn hydrogen in ICE engines.

In commenting in another spot - https://youtu.be/AouW9_jyZck goes through many of the engineering and practicality reasons behind that.

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

#119

Post by Xixi »

jiggawatts wrote: post #31

Hydrogen is 100% an attempt by fossil fuel companies to remain relevant in a "green energy" world. The primary source for hydrogen would be from methane in natural gas, and they could then sell this as a "zero pollution fuel" while continuing their non-renewable energy business as normal. If you read between the lines and look at the companies involved, they're always linked to fossil fuel companies directly or indir…

These few legitimate use cases should not be dismissed though, from the perspective of sizing an energy grid: for example reducing iron ore with hydrogen rather than coal works out to about one nuclear reactor for one furnace. No idea for chemical feedstock, but it's likely to also be huge.

I don't think anyone pushing for hydrogen in cars in Japan has done even a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how many nuclear reactors/wind turbines/solar panels Japan would need to migrate their fleet... So the plan is likely to make it from natural gas, import it, or -more likely- there is no serious plan at all, only subsidies being collected.

Note that in I have a very similar feeling with regard to wind turbines in Europe (at least in Germany and France): behind each wind turbine field there is a very real gas turbine or lignite power plant, and a lot of hand-waving regarding storage... Heard jokes (pre invasion of Ukraine) about Gazprom being behind every wind turbine sale. The situation is different in Northern Europe though, with lots of wind turbines in Denmark, and pumped storage in Norway.

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

#120

Post by fy20 »

rtpg wrote: post #88
pfdietz wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydrogen is a battery with very particular uses cases. In particular: hydrogen is bad for use cases with large numbers of charge/discharge cycles, because the "cost of inefficiency" is proportional to the number of such cycles. However, for use cases with small numbers of charge cycles, like seasonal storage or backup against rare grid outages, hydrogen's big advantage -- the low cost of storing it, vs. typical short…

What’s the pricing compared to stored energy like pumping water up a hill? I get that it’s not exactly a universal strategy but not like underground caverns don’t have the same issue

The main issue with pumped storage is you need a lot of water. Imagine a elevated water tank like that used on farms. 20,000 gallons (75,000 litres) of water elevated at 18 feet (5.4m) has 1.1kWh of potential energy.
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