Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Japan's hydrogen strategy does nothing for decarbonisation: study

hydrogeninsight.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 454 posts

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

#161

Post by lovemenot »

makeitdouble wrote: post #147
lovemenot wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Diversifying is worthwhile only amongst good options. It's more like "stop buying broken eggs, they are useless."

The report is really all about the failure of H2 policy, and is persuasive. There may perhaps be some political story about budget allocation between alternatives, but there is little indication of that.

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

#162

Post by newyankee »

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…

For Japan, it reeks of highest scale sunk cost fallacy in action

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

#163

Post by outside1234 »

Hydrogen is a storage technology. When I looked at it last, it was largely planned to be produced by electrolysis, so the greenness of that depends on the power source for that operation. So it could be green if powered by solar? Or brown, if powered by coal.

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

#164

Post by rippercushions »

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…

> The very idea of "my car needs to go 300 miles on one charge/tank" just isn't a thing there.

Citation needed. No, you don't need to go 300 miles on one charge/tank if you live in a big Japanese city, in fact you don't even need a car in that case. However, if you live in rural areas or need to travel long distances, 300 mi is not a lot to ask for: the main island of Honshu is >800 mi long and 300 won't even get you from Tokyo to Osaka.

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

#165

Post by noogle »

mlindner wrote: post #138
noogle wrote: post #132

One thing opposition to any chemical electricity storage (hydrogen and other fuels) doesn't answer is: _how to transfer electricity across distances?_ HVDC are typically presented as the solution, but even if technically possible, they do not seem to actually materialize. Constant cooperation and reliance between countries for their energy seems like a bad idea in 2023. There are numerous solar project plans stuck be…

> One thing opposition to any chemical electricity storage (hydrogen and other fuels) doesn't answer is: _how to transfer electricity across distances?_ For some countries this isn't even a problem so it doesn't need to be talked about. For example the amount of reusable energy available in the US covers all the needs in most areas. Also you need to compare the reduced efficiency of building the renewable energy loca…

And the rest of the world? And when extra energy is needed because of a cold/heat-wave, new project, or just an event in a forest?

These scenarios, both large and small, are covered currently by fossil fuels, and are not answered by permanent grid solutions like HVDC.

The generation price of solar energy is ~$0.02/kwh. Even with 33% overall efficiency hydrogen could be very competitive at $0.06/kwh electricity. , But overall efficiency is a red-herring. The important thing is COST. With solar, the cost of energy itself is the smallest part - providing it at the desired time and place are the more expensive parts.

Fossil fuels are very inefficient, yet for hundreds of years they have been a cheap option (and thus widespread). The same argument applies to hydrogen - if it's cheaper, in terms of money, time and pollution, efficiency doesn't matter a bit.

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

#166

Post by WheelsAtLarge »

fy20 wrote: post #145
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 recentl…

Methane is a greenhouse gas. It's more polluting than c02. Removing it from the environment is a good thing but creating more is not a good thing for global warming. I suspect for it to be an alternative to oil, an such, we would need to create it not just remove it from landfills.

Compressed natural gas is mostly methane but we are trying to move away from fossil fuels so it's not a long term solution.

Here's a link that gives some info on it:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-gas-climatebox-explai...

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

#167

Post by viraptor »

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's a bad battery.

I think there are use cases where it's a very good battery if small enough devices are created. Specifically, an empty cell on its own is going to be much cheaper than a lithium battery. I could swap and store many cells in my garage, but I can't do that with a typical mounted battery. This means the capacity of cells would be limited by physical storage space. And if my solar system produces a lot more electricity that I could use on a normal day, it could make sense for a rainy day.

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

#168

Post by Dr_Birdbrain »

totetsu wrote: post #47

Is Japan’s political power just completely captured by industry at this point? I live here and I can often not distinguish between pr and matketing of private interests and pr and policy directions of government.. I'm not even really trying to be rhetorical here.. I want to understand this beter.

I wonder if it’s the other way in this case? It seems to me that Japan’s advocacy of hydrogen is geopolitical, and the corporations like Toyota are getting dragged along to make poor business decisions, favoring hydrogen over electric.

Japan has no significant sources of fossil fuels or lithium (for a potentially lithium-based future), so they would prefer that the energy of the future were hydrogen, which they could produce themselves. Of course they would prefer to live in a future where they could make their own energy, rather than be at the mercy of imports. Corporations are getting dragged along to support this dream, even if it does not look like a great business decision.

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

#169

Post by mordymoop »

amluto wrote: post #142
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…

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 les…

> Turning electricity into hydrogen and then into motive power for a car is dramatically less efficient than using a battery

This is true —- but the total quantity of battery storage potential is utterly dwarfed by the storage potential for gas, in subsurface storage reservoirs and salt caverns. You can store days worth of energy in batteries; you can store a winter’s worth of energy in gas.

It’s not a matter of efficiency, it’s a matter of quantity. We do not, and will not, for decades, have the kind of battery storage required to support the grid.

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

#170

Post by ravel-bar-foo »

liketochill wrote: post #137
fy20 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Or a lot of difference in elevation. With 900m head you can get 8 MW from only 1.5 m^3/s in a pipe less than 2 feet in diameter.

900m is a huge elevation difference. The highest pumped power dam currently in Japan (by hydraulic height, after looking at almost all the Japanese hydro pages on English Wikipedia) is about 780 m; the median is just under 400 m. Presumably most of the other hydroelectric dams have already been investigated for pumped power, but lack a sufficiently large lower reservoir.
Post reply on HN