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

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

#371

Post by ladyattis » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 4:07 PM UTC

schwoll wrote: post #370

The EV push is marketing. It's someone trying to sell something. If countries were interested in solving anything they'd just install more electric trains. Even less of a commitment would be just use diesel commuter trains until the electric comes online. Until this happens everything else is just someone trying to sell stuff.

Yeah, I think the long term solution to decarbonization is to focus on making it possible to get around without a car which includes a heavy focus on legalizing mixed-use and transit oriented development which for the United States and Canada are basically illegal last time I checked.

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

#372

Post by moloch-hai » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 4:07 PM UTC

rich_sasha wrote: post #253

rgbrenner wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who like hydrogen should show us all that we're wrong. - First hydrogen fuel cell: 1842 - Earliest li-ion battery: 1965~ You've had a 100 year head start, and yet hydrogen fuel cell cars are terrible. Hydrogen planes? Some prototypes are being worked on. I can go buy an entire car with a massive li-ion battery in it right now. I can get batteries to power my house during an outage. Hydrogen? "There are som…

So, the context is: various organisations are researching how hydrogen storage might work. And a gaggle of, hmm, commentators goes "omg did they not get the memo? Hydrogen is stoopid. Batteries much better soon". I'm glad research is funded, because you literally never know where the breakthrough will come. Solar was painfully expensive for most of its history, now it's super-cheap. As far as I'm concerned, a battery…

Gravity storage in weights held far above the sea floor is probably more viable than in mineshafts, because you cannot share the motor/generator and winch between multiple mineshafts, and most mineshafts do not go not very deep.

There is a lot of seabed.

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

#373

Post by nradov » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

diordiderot wrote: post #353

incrudible wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much nothing in the renewable sector is a "viable business case" without some sort of government interference. You're speculating that batteries will be better buffers than hydrogen, but in truth nobody can predict the technological trajectories and neither presents a solution in the foreseeable future. If there really is an upcoming climate catastrophe , it would be stupid not to hedge your bets, which includ…

> Pretty much nothing in the renewable sector is a "viable business case" without some sort of government interference. While not 100% a flat faced lie, this is intentionally misleading. All energy production is heavily subsidised by the state, but of all methods of producing electricity as of Jan 23 2022, renewables are the cheapest. Issues with storage, human rights, environmental impact, are a mixture of lies and…

You're arguing against a strawman. No one is seriously against battery storage. But if you take a serious look at the raw materials and supply chain issues it seems unlikely that we will be able to build enough grid-scale storage in the next couple decades to maintain reliable power for heavy industry. Some other solutions will be needed. That probably means building other storage systems plus continuing to operate many fossil-fuel power plants (at least on an intermittent basis).

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

#374

Post by flavius29663 » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 4:08 PM UTC

ADent wrote: post #358

flavius29663 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are ways to work around those limitations, basically removing the "very small and very reactive" part of hydrogen. You can bind it with Nitrogen to gen ammonia - which is till very dangerous, but much easier to contain or work with. The problem with H2, ammonia, biofuels and other synthetic fuels is not that they have some limitations, it's that they are not accepted by the green energy dogma. Some green energy…

How about binding with Carbon and getting methane (CH4)?

that's exactly what I meant by "other synthetic fuels", but I was refraining from using the explicit words, because of the stigma, and I didn't want to derail the discussion.

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

#375

Post by moloch-hai » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 4:09 PM UTC

AlexandrB wrote: post #308

sofixa wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> weigh too much This is still a problem we'll have to face. Road tear and wear grows exponentially with weight, and tire pollution (both noise and particles) is also nothing to be disregarded. Also batteries require all sorts of raw materials with problematic provenance (e.g. lithium mines destroy the nearby environment, cobalt comes from child labour in terrible conditions, etc.). Cars with batteries are better tha…

> Road tear and wear grows exponentially with weight I thought something like 90%+ of road wear and tear was due to tractor trailers, dump trucks, and other massive vehicles. Meanwhile cars were a rounding error. Do EVs change that?

99%+. So, no.

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

#376

Post by jackmott42 » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 4:13 PM UTC

schwoll wrote: post #370

The EV push is marketing. It's someone trying to sell something. If countries were interested in solving anything they'd just install more electric trains. Even less of a commitment would be just use diesel commuter trains until the electric comes online. Until this happens everything else is just someone trying to sell stuff.

This is a pretty lazy take. I could also characterize a push for trains as someone trying to sell something.

Someone is going to be selling something. Does the thing reduce carbon and pollution or not, is the question.

Building trains is simple, getting/forcing people to use them is the hard part. Making them viable in a lot of american cities requires a complete refactor of how the cities are laid out. Easy to say very hard and expensive to do. Americans also turn to violence at the suggestion of a paper mask, so forcing won't be simple.

But if you build a badass EV, they will buy it, and pollution is reduced somewhat.

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

#377

Post by dev_daftly » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 4:17 PM UTC

runarberg wrote: post #220

sundvor wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. They've been fighting the EV transition tooth and nails, it really needs to be called out. I mean, how nice an EV would that new Insight of theirs just released have been? The design is gorgeous. Instead we get yet another hybrid, which makes sense in a good few use cases I guess - primarily related to charger availability - but just puts them further behind on the EV development experience curve. Edit: And the…

I’m curious how the calculations work here. I know that any individual battery electric car is better in terms of GHG emissions than any individual hybrid car. However, given the limited number of battery electric cars, and the limited production, battery electric cars will remain the minority of all cars at least until the end of this decade (probably even longer). Now my question is, en masse, since the production…

I can't find it right now, but a toyota engineer has actually discussed this. Toyota looks at it this way, especially since you are wasting significant battery capacity on BEV's that don't get utilized daily if the battery supports significantly longer range than daily commute.

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

#378

Post by Maursault » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 4:21 PM UTC

rob74 wrote: post #318

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the article was fairly to the point: > There is a “common understanding worldwide that hydrogen should be limited to applications where it would be difficult to achieve decarbonisation with other methods”, says the report by the Tokyo-based non-profit think-tank Renewable Energy Institute (REI), but Japan has instead laid out a vision of a “hydrogen society where hydrogen is used in every sector”, while pro…

The "vision of a hydrogen society where hydrogen is used in every sector" is probably motivated by a desire to become technological leaders in this field. Japan has fallen behind in battery technology, and Toyota was an early leader with its hybrid vehicles, but when it comes to fully electric cars, Japanese car makers are also falling behind. So I suspect they are trying to find a niche where they can develop techno…

> Japan has fallen behind in battery technology

If you could say a little more about this, I'd appreciate it. Sanyo (Panasonic) and Murata Manufacturing (Sony) still produce top quality Li-ion cells, among the best there are, and the best NiMH cells in the world are still made only by FDK Corporation.

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

#379

Post by jackmott42 » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 4:21 PM UTC

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 is pretty simple:

1. To make hydrogen you need energy 2. If you just put the energy in a battery you lose less energy than you do if you make hydrogen

So hydrogen only makes sense if #2 should change, and that is fundamentally impossible, or if for whatever other reason no battery exists that is suitable for the application.

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

#380

Post by robotnikman » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 4:22 PM UTC

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…

Imo, it's a good idea we are not putting all our eggs in one basket when it comes to renewable energy. To determine what works best requires testing, and testing all the possible options out there is probably a good thing. Who knows, maybe with enough development hydrogen will be a good alternative. We won't know until we see it in practice on a large scale though.