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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

#141

Post by linguae »

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?

I agree. I bet on hydrogen by purchasing a new Toyota Mirai two months ago. The reason I purchased a Mirai instead of a BEV is because I am an apartment dweller with no convenient charging options available to me; my landlord has no plans to install any charging units anytime soon and relocating is very expensive (I live in Santa Cruz County). My employer also lacks chargers. Hydrogen-powered cars are good in situations where BEVs would be impractical or inconvenient, such as those who lack charging options at home or at work. In addition, I'm concerned about the effects of proverbially "putting all of our eggs in one basket." We should have a mixture of energy sources to accommodate the wide range of use cases that drivers have.

Unfortunately at this time hydrogen is extremely expensive. A kilogram of hydrogen, roughly equivalent to a gallon of gas in energy, costs $26.75 at True Zero hydrogen stations, which is extremely expensive and is a massive price hike from $19.70/kg back when I purchased my Mirai two months ago. I'm still thinking whether purchasing a Mirai was a good financial decision for me, but I hope things will turn around in 2024.

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

#142

Post by amluto »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #37
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…

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…

This doesn’t make sense to me. Hydrogen is not an energy source — it’s a way to store energy and make it portable. So Japan could import hydrogen (which is not obviously any better than importing LNG or oil), or Japan could make it from domestic or imported energy sources (nuclear, solar, wind, imported oil, imported LNG, etc).

Turning electricity into hydrogen and then into motive power for a car is dramatically less efficient than using a battery, and car commutes in Japan are on the short side, so huge batteries wouldn’t be as necessary. I don’t think petroleum-derived hydrogen is much more efficient, if at all, than just burning the petroleum in an ICE.

So the only way this seems like a win for Japan is if electricity were cheap, battery EVs were not economical, and the loss associated with electrically synthesized hydrogen didn’t matter.

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

#143

Post by amluto »

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…

Toyota may or may not be reluctant to do a massive retooling, but have you looked at a Mirai? It’s an EV that happens to be powered by a fuel cell.

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

#144

Post by readonthegoapp »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #37
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…

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…

> I didn't know Toyota was a fossil fuel company, or was owned by one?

huh? what did i miss?

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

#145

Post by fy20 »

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?

What about methane?

There are already commercial processes in place to capture it from landfills, and there are industrial processes that can produce it from hydrogen with an 8% energy loss. So if the green hydrogen problem is solved that could be used here.

A lot of Asian countries already have cars that run directly on CNG - from the factory -, as it produces less smog than petrol or diesel. I visited India recently, and I'd say 80% of vehicles I saw ran on CNG (they have a hazard label).

Maybe the most important thing is the infrastructure to distribute it is already there in most countries.

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

#146

Post by acdha »

ryao wrote: post #72
kube-system wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was not just Toyota. GM made headlines with their Hy-Wire concept car. At some point after that, I learned to stop listening to whatever these companies said about the future of automobiles.

The difference is that GM wasn’t all-in on one technology. The Hy-Wire was over a decade after GM’s first EV concept and half a decade after their first production EV. Those were held back by battery technology but they got plenty of experience to prepare for their successful current generation.

Toyota seems to be missing that second step: where’s the follow up to the Prius which forgoes the cost of the gas engine for people who don’t need extreme range?

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

#147

Post by makeitdouble »

lovemenot wrote: post #66
makeitdouble wrote: post #20

On the context of the report which this whole piece is about, skybrian linked to it, here's the english partial translation: https://www.renewable-ei.org/pdfdownload/activities/REI_Japa... I was wondering what this "renewable energy institute" was, and it's founded and chaired by Masayoshi Son, who's latest notable investments includes huge solar projects here and there. Perhaps there's a lot of valid ideas in it...a…

Renewables like solar and wind could be used to charge a battery or to electrolyse H2. This report argues against the latter. Or rather, against the Japanese government's current implementation of an H2 policy. I don't think we need to be cynical here. The report can be read on its own merits.

From the report:

> The government’s strategy neglects green hydrogen and prioritizes fossil fuel-derived gray and blue hydrogen. It neglects the development of renewable energy sources, reflecting the government’s skewed energy strategy that has set low targets for the deployment of renewables for both 2030 and 2050.

Basically, they’re saying: stop allocating resources to alternative H2 production methods, focus all the money you have on the renewables, the field we are massively investing into.

On the face of it sounds like a decent argument, but I doubt the reality is as simple as they put it. In particular how much renewables will be able to cover Japan’s energy consumption is largely up for debate (the reports pans the slow pace of H2 technology research, but we’re not there yet with the renewables either).

“stop diversifying your efforts and put all your eggs in one(our) basket” is always a dubious message IMHO.

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

#148

Post by danans »

narrator wrote: post #133
danans wrote: post #108

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 You have conflated Toyota with Japan there. Even in a society dominated by it's megacorps, they are not necessarily the same thing. After all, Nissan brought us the first mass market EV (and yes, they promptly punted on their first mover advantage). > Anywhere else on the planet: sure, this might…

Hydrogen will be the only thing that will work for long-haul aviation and large scale container shipping, in the form of ammonia (see https://www.forbes.com/sites/nilsrokke/2021/10/05/ammonia-a-... ). that isn't synthetic fuel which is ridiculously inefficient to produce from electricity, even more so than hydrogen. Japan being an island, this might be important to them. Zero Avia ( http://www.zeroavia.com ) is the l…

What does any of that have to do with passenger EVs?

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

#149

Post by mlindner »

Telemakhos wrote: post #29
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…

I think most of the enthusiasm lies in the toxicity or safety of the energy store. Lithium batteries are toxic waste that doesn't get recycled well yet and requires minerals currently produced by child laborers in appalling conditions. Hydrogen fuel cells produce pure water as their byproduct and could theoretically be loaded with hydrogen fuel produced through green-powered electrolysis. They both explode on a bad d…

> Lithium batteries are toxic waste that doesn't get recycled well yet

Actually it does get recycled well, especially with larger batteries. There's just been very little that actually needed recycling that was sufficient to run a business. There's many smaller size businesses making healthy profit off lithium battery recycling already.

Here's two examples:

https://www.redwoodmaterials.com/

https://li-cycle.com/

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

#150

Post by mlindner »

gary_0 wrote: post #27
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 also makes a lot more sense to scale up the grid and battery manufacturing than to try and invent entirely new infrastructure for hydrogen production, storage, and transport. I had an open mind about hydrogen in decades past, but it increasingly just seems like a scam to get money to develop something that doesn't work and isn't economically viable in most cases.

I think it's actually significantly worse than just a scam. It's a way for oil companies to create a value added product that can be sold by moving the carbon emissions out of one country and into another. They can then sell the hydrogen as "green" by washing the hydrogen with other sources even though it came from oil.
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