Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study • Hacker News Board

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

#121

Post by acdha » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 3:31 AM UTC

gruez wrote: post #98

gumby wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Those companies have a half century history of lying about the science. We have no reason to believe they aren’t lying now about this technology’s feasibility or the carbon emissions in their production process — or that any profits wouldn’t be used in part to fund their political lobbying to prevent action or dodge the consequences of their actions.

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

#122

Post by danaris » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 3:33 AM UTC

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.

It's less that they're committed to keeping the ICE, and more that they've seen that the market has passed them by with the push toward full-electric (I suspect they thought we'd be doing hybrid ICE-electric for much longer, which they're very good at). Hydrogen is their bet on being in on the ground floor of the Next Big Thing.

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

#123

Post by defrost » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 3:35 AM UTC

eru wrote: post #105

XorNot wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You absolutely could lay a cable that long, and IMO we should . There is no reason not to export abundant renewable energy today while we can, and figure out the long term storage issues as we go. Hydrogen can be manufactured anywhere you have seawater and electricity, so it would be a much better use of resources to lay a subsea superconducting cable once and let Japan store power by generating hydrogen locally.

They are building a cable from Australia to Singapore. Going to Japan is in a similar order of magnitude.

Nope.

The length was fine .. the single breakable deeply submersed part where it crosses multiple faultlines in an earthquake rich volcanic region was bonkers.

See:

Atlassian CEO's bonkers scheme to pipe electricity from Australia to Singapore collapses

   4,000km extension cords are hard to build

https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/22/suncable_collapses/

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

#124

Post by liketochill » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 3:35 AM UTC

cbkeller wrote: post #36

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…

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?

How long can south Australia power their load from batteries? I thought they had the one 100MWH battery so basically could power 100k house for an hour? And that battery was over 100 million dollars.

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

#125

Post by cjbgkagh » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 3:37 AM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #59

cjbgkagh wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I figure the heat cracking is more efficient then electrolytic. It’s called Red Hydrogen. I don’t know if the actual match checks out.

No one has ever been able to make it work economically and for prolonged periods. Engineering around high temperatures is difficult, especially when corrosive chemicals are involved. For example, the cycle the Japanese have been trying to make work involves sulfuric acid heated to 850-900 C. This high temperature step is the one that evolves the oxygen, so you've got very hot surfaces exposed to oxidizing conditions.

I don't doubt that it's difficult. I would hope that the people investing large sums into it know what they're doing. I guess we'll find out.

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

#126

Post by credit_guy » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 3:37 AM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #65

credit_guy wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydrogen is the way to send energy from sunny places, like Australia to not-so-sunny places, like Japan. You can't send batteries, and you can't lay a cable that long. You can try to pack that energy in a different form of chemical energy like ammonia, or methylcyclohexane, or methanol, or synthetic methane or gasoline. The jury is still out. Europe is investing big time in hydrogen too, so chances are that hydrogen…

You absolutely could lay a cable that long, and IMO we should . There is no reason not to export abundant renewable energy today while we can, and figure out the long term storage issues as we go. Hydrogen can be manufactured anywhere you have seawater and electricity, so it would be a much better use of resources to lay a subsea superconducting cable once and let Japan store power by generating hydrogen locally.

One large LNG carrier of class Q-Max carries 260000 m3 of liquefied gas. If we stitch to hydrogen, that contains 2.2 million gigajoules of energy, which is 614 GWh, or a bit more than 25 GWd. If we assume a conversion efficiency of 60%, then that's about 15 GWd of electricity after taking into account all the losses. If one carrier arrives every 15 days, then this can produce a sustained 1 GW of electricity, which is about the same as a full size nuclear reactor. The transit from Australia to Japan takes about 30 days, so it would take 4 carriers to arrange for 1 to reach Japan once every 15 days. Such a carrier costs about $200 MM, so you get to invest about $1 BN to get a sustained 1GW of electricity in Japan.

How does this compare to submarine power cables? [1] is an example of a 1200 km power cable that will cost about $1 BN for a capacity of 2 GW. This power cable will be across the Mediterranean Sea, much shallower than the Pacific, but let's ignore that. The distance between Australia and Japan is about 6800 km, so you'd need a cable 5 times longer than the one above. This would translate in about $2.5 BN of capital investment per 1 GW of electricity.

[1] https://www.submarinenetworks.com/en/power-cable/a-1-208km-e...

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

#127

Post by danaris » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 3:37 AM UTC

hammock wrote: post #60

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…

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

At this point, the idea that fossil fuel companies are actually interested in trying to help save the planet in any way more than is mandated by law and public opinion is not supported by evidence. They have shown, time and again, that they will lie about science, falsify documents, and try to get laws changed to allow them to pollute without limits. They have lost all benefit of the doubt.

Anyone trying to argue that they have any genuine interest in helping to save the planet is making an extraordinary claim, and needs to back it up with extraordinary evidence.

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

#128

Post by starfallg » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 3:38 AM UTC

fomine3 wrote: post #67

kodachrome64 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A hydrogen fuel cell engine relies on completely different principles than an ICE and would still require complete retooling of their powertrain manufacturing. If anything, their hybrid powertrains are closer in design to BEVs than FCEVs There are good reasons for hydrogen over batteries, like better range and short refuelling times. I'm not sure why there's a need for some nefarious motive.

Fuel cell (and tank) is a different tech but car industry believe that it can be still manufactured at competitive cost and quality in Japan. It's hard to compete with Chinese massive amount of cheap batteries in Japan.

Japan together with South Korea was a leader in NiMH and Lithium based battery chemistry during this period. So that wasn't the reason.

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

#129

Post by acdha » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 3:41 AM UTC

freetime2 wrote: post #100

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 co…

> I feel like just a couple of years ago people were saying that Tesla was a decade ahead of "legacy" automakers.

I saw a fair amount of that but it seemed to be more a reflection of Musk’s success at building an online fan club than sober analysis. The car people I know were bearish, noting that electric cars are relatively easy to build. The outlier was FSD, which would have been much harder to match if it hadn’t been at least a decade premature.

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

#130

Post by danaris » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 3:41 AM UTC

hajile wrote: post #111

gumby wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Sam…

"Tesla has failed to produce a battery EV semi truck" is not strong evidence that it is impossible to produce one. Tesla has been having quite a bit of trouble in recent years, as its not-a-founder-but-wants-you-to-think-he-is makes promises reality can't deliver.

Now, it may be that you're right—that battery-powered semi trucks are unfeasible to build.

But a) this doesn't mean we should go all-in on hydrogen, either, and b) maybe what this really means is that we need to eliminate the semi truck as a common feature of our roads, and do most of our cross-country shipping by rail, which is massively more efficient no matter what means you use to power it. (Yes, that requires more investment in our rail infrastructure, but that would also be a very good thing on several levels.)