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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

#221

Post by qikInNdOutReply »

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…

More lies and more deception:

Japan has huge deposits of methan hydrate on sea floors it wants to mine.https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanhydrat

And this is why hydrogen is on the shit list, all the roads lead to ever more mined carbs, blown into the atmosphere in one way or another. The roads to green hydrogen are riddled with conversions that make it economically unviable.

Its the equivalent of a addict switching from heroin injection to a fetanyl patch. Yes, the process is cleaner, less dangerous, but the longterm bad effects are still there.

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

#222

Post by ruchir »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #174
ruchir wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why not just use the electricity directly and not pay the 40-50% penalty of electrolysis? because EV battery disposal can be a huge environmental problem. electrolysis is zero waste.

EV batteries are recycled quite easily. The lithium alone makes recycling worth it, but pretty much everything about it can be recycled.

that's like saying plastics can be recycled quite easily. only in theory - the real effects on the environment are staggering.

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

#223

Post by usrusr »

Gare wrote: post #213
defrost wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is why the current proposals to significantly expand the global per annum hydrogen production via green solar hydrogen production are looking to transport Ammonia (Three Hydrogens and a Nitrogen) across the planet for use in large baseload generators. Less storage problems, more options (higly compressable gas, or pure liquid, or "liquor" (dissolved)), and no mucking about with fuel cells. Just straight up move…

What's the benefit of ammonia vs. turning hydrogen into methane via carbon capture?

Carbon capture is hard, nitrogen is truly abundant. That is unless you happen to have a source of highly concentrated CO2 at hand. Which is certainly true now, but won't be in the endgame. Methane (or something with an even lower H-per-C) will surely be part of the picture, but it can't be the mainstay. I'd expect hydrolizer capacity to cluster around storage opportunities (like salt caverns) within convenient grid range from energy sources, large ammonia plants to continually work from that hydrogen buffer and higher-value H2 consumers to opportunistically tap into the same buffer whenever their "other ingredient" is available. That "other" could be metal ores, iron oxide returning from an oxidization energy cycle or CO2 from biomass burning or waste incineration. But there's always hydrogen as a first step, and the (centralized within grid range) hydrogen storage as the buffer that solves the dispatchability problem.

Fun observation: If some of the hydrocarbons created this way make it into plastics that isn't passed back into incineration (or a better form of recycling) you'll have true carbon-capture for the fraction of the carbon that came from biomass. Without we trying.

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

#224

Post by Mikeb85 »

eptcyka wrote: post #217
rich_sasha wrote: post #210

I find it weird how hostile to hydrogen the "renewable energy gang" is. The story of how renewables take over the world and displace fossil fuels and nuclear totally relies on storage, in some cases seasonal storage, IE overproducing in summer and holding on to the energy til the end of winter. Does hydrogen work for it? Well, maybe, it could, there are unresolved issues but hey we are trying to do science here. It's…

Hydrogen is a less efficient energy store than a battery, requires high pressure systems, leaks are dangerously explosive, distributing it is more difficult than petrol or electricity. It has applications, but in general, its often significantly worse than any other greener alternative.

Yes but batteries contain toxic materials and rare earth minerals, require lots of energy to make, lots of energy to recycle, etc...

So energy to mine the materials, energy to assemble the battery, energy to recycle the battery after it's useful lifespan (5-10 years)... None of these are ever counted in people's calculations. I tried to find data on energy required to produce the batteries and they still didn't count the mining cost.

I'd wager that hydrogen is more energy efficient over the entire lifespan of a vehicle.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/14/electr...

Lithium mining is expensive and you need to move a lot of dirt to get a little lithium...

100 billion tons of waste and never mind the waste aspect, it takes a lot of energy to move a ton of dirt.

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

#225

Post by hbarka »

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…

Not uniquely Japan. China, Japan, South Korea, Germany, in that order, lead the world in hydrogen fueling stations.

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

#226

Post by hatmatrix »

eptcyka wrote: post #217
rich_sasha wrote: post #210

I find it weird how hostile to hydrogen the "renewable energy gang" is. The story of how renewables take over the world and displace fossil fuels and nuclear totally relies on storage, in some cases seasonal storage, IE overproducing in summer and holding on to the energy til the end of winter. Does hydrogen work for it? Well, maybe, it could, there are unresolved issues but hey we are trying to do science here. It's…

Hydrogen is a less efficient energy store than a battery, requires high pressure systems, leaks are dangerously explosive, distributing it is more difficult than petrol or electricity. It has applications, but in general, its often significantly worse than any other greener alternative.

My impression was that it's possibly acceptable for on-site storage but less for transport or transportation applications.

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

#227

Post by archerx »

rich_sasha wrote: post #210

I find it weird how hostile to hydrogen the "renewable energy gang" is. The story of how renewables take over the world and displace fossil fuels and nuclear totally relies on storage, in some cases seasonal storage, IE overproducing in summer and holding on to the energy til the end of winter. Does hydrogen work for it? Well, maybe, it could, there are unresolved issues but hey we are trying to do science here. It's…

I wonder if these people have investments in battery tech. If you want answers follow the money.

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

#228

Post by jnsaff2 »

rich_sasha wrote: post #210

I find it weird how hostile to hydrogen the "renewable energy gang" is. The story of how renewables take over the world and displace fossil fuels and nuclear totally relies on storage, in some cases seasonal storage, IE overproducing in summer and holding on to the energy til the end of winter. Does hydrogen work for it? Well, maybe, it could, there are unresolved issues but hey we are trying to do science here. It's…

I hope to give a little context on this. I have been fairly active in trying to immerse myself in the CO2 problem of the planet and what I have seen is that there are companies-interest groups that are lobbying for some technology solutions that require outsized investment. Hydrogen and Nuclear come to mind.

They are solutions which will soak up massive amounts of capital for years-decades before they will start paying off. They also know that if they don't market themselves as "the one true solution that solves all" they might not get the capital required to build out their vision. So they HAVE TO oversell it to cover all use cases where they could possibly be applicable and try to get money flowing into alternatives for themselves, otherwise they would not be feasible.

So this is at least one of the reasons for hydrogen problems. They try to create FUD about BEV so they can say hydrogen is better. Meanwhile fossil companies are like really happy about this:

- slows BEV adoption

- while alternatives are not there sell their own stuff

- hydrogen is also massive molecule shipping infra so they will bid for those projects

People who actually look into hydrogen will find lots of issues with the marketing:

- "green" hydrogen is nowhere to be seen in quantities

- real world round-trip efficiency comparable to ICE engines

- which leads to massive need to overbuild green electricity generation (== 2-4x bigger NIMBY/capital problems for nuclear/wind)

So the immediately deploy-able solutions of batteries and PV-solar that have no scale threshold are making their projects riskier.

In essence both nuclear and hydro require governmental funding to get started. So the same sales pitch is now also on political level. Lobbyists etc doing their dark FUD spewing things.

Bottom line of building out hydrogen from governmental monies means that the projects which absolutely have to use hydrogen to be green (steel and some other industrial processes, maybe flying too) will be cheaper because it has been subsidized by nations by having bought into other stuff which will not be used in scale because other market technologies are so much better for those use cases.

For example: I have a BEV and the range is good for me, home charging is 10-100x cheaper than hydrogen, I don't need to go to a hydrogen station etc.

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

#229

Post by _hypx »

rich_sasha wrote: post #210

I find it weird how hostile to hydrogen the "renewable energy gang" is. The story of how renewables take over the world and displace fossil fuels and nuclear totally relies on storage, in some cases seasonal storage, IE overproducing in summer and holding on to the energy til the end of winter. Does hydrogen work for it? Well, maybe, it could, there are unresolved issues but hey we are trying to do science here. It's…

It’s pretty obvious that many environmentalists don’t want solutions. They just want to feel superior to others because they have solar panels on their roof and others don’t. Anything that could potentially render those solar panels unnecessary is very aggressively opposed.

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

#230

Post by jnsaff2 »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #224
eptcyka wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hydrogen is a less efficient energy store than a battery, requires high pressure systems, leaks are dangerously explosive, distributing it is more difficult than petrol or electricity. It has applications, but in general, its often significantly worse than any other greener alternative.

Yes but batteries contain toxic materials and rare earth minerals, require lots of energy to make, lots of energy to recycle, etc... So energy to mine the materials, energy to assemble the battery, energy to recycle the battery after it's useful lifespan (5-10 years)... None of these are ever counted in people's calculations. I tried to find data on energy required to produce the batteries and they still didn't count…

Most of the mining waste you refer to is related to COAL. They produce roughly 5 billion tons a year of coal for which many times of that is waste rocks.

5 billion tons of coal gets mostly burned up.

Meanwhile 50 THOUSAND tons of lithium is produced per year. For which maybe millions tons of waste gets created.

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