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

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

#401

Post by entropicgravity » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 6:55 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…

The attraction to hydrogen by the automotive companies of Japan is that it would preserve their balance sheets. An ICE car produces various revenue streams for auto makers. First, the sale price, then the oil changes, and plenty of ongoing maintenance. While a straight up EV would shrink an automaker's balance sheet tremendously. The motor has one moving part that is very resilient. The motor doesn't require a transmission. Regenerative brakes means a long time between needing new brakes. And then of course, other industries that support ICE transportation. Oil refineries, gas stations and all of that.

Conveniently, a hydrogen fuel cell in a car replicates almost of that. The fuel cell is a hot, complex finicky source of power that needs maintenance and sophisticated manufacturing to create. Storing the hydrogen itself is very tricky as it tends to eat metals. It still needs normal brakes.

You can see why the CEO's of Japanese car makers could allow themselves to be deluded about how much better fuel cell technology is than EV tech. EV tech is just a battery, an electric motor and regenerating braking. This is technology from a hundred years ago and needs very little regular maintenance other than tires, a wall socket and wiper fluid.

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

#402

Post by dgroshev » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 7:05 PM UTC

moloch-hai wrote: post #400

dgroshev wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a nice demonstration of an impact of a fairly mild unexpected drop in generation. Renewables, as things stand, are that, all the time, on steroids. You don't need as much storage if you have nuclear and you can't compare the two without accounting for (potentially weeks or months of) storage. "Building out storage" is not an unavoidable expense that just happens automatically, it's a requirement to have a relia…

Seeing how you are promoting instead a thoroughly dead alternative that no one will ever again spend another cent of their own money on... Good day, sir.

You yet again ignored the point and instead appealed to authority.

It's also factually false.

* UK approving Sizewell C for £20bn https://www.ft.com/content/11ca7193-f7d8-496f-bb90-d3270b2cf...

* about 60 reactors are being constructed as we speak https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu...

* the US just allocated $2.5b to support the demonstration of two advanced U.S. reactors by 2028 (X-energy and TerraPower) https://www.powermag.com/updates-on-five-big-nuclear-energy-...

* just a few days ago NuScale's SMR got approved https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nrc-certifies-first-us-sm...

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

#403

Post by incrudible » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 7:08 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…

> 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.

That's not an honest assessment, because the major renewables are either geographically limited, or their production fluctuates heavily. To compare them against fossil or nuclear, we'd need to factor in the cost of the buffers, which completely changes the equation. If buffers + renewables were still cheaper, everybody would already be doing that and nothing else. People whose beliefs are challenged in this way tend to resort to conspiracy theories surrounding the fossil fuel lobby (disregarding the fact that renewables have a big lobby too).

> How many human / environmental tragedies resulted from fossil fuel extraction?

My point is purely economical.

> People against battery storage don't actually care about that but they know that you do.

I'm not against battery storage, but simple back of the envelope calculations show that production capacity is orders of magnitude away from solving just part of the problem (stabilizing the grid). Moreover, batteries do not last forever. It may well be the case that a combination of natural gas and renewables is the most effective option even from an CO2 perspective, especially if we have a way to turn surplus energy into negative CO2. Hydrogen happens to fit into that scheme, because natural gas plants can easily be converted to hydrogen plants. Then again, maybe there's a breakthrough in battery technology instead. You can't predict these things, it's therefore unwise to dismiss alternatives that don't check all the boxes of solarpunk fiction.

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

#404

Post by 7speter » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 7:08 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)?

At that point, why not just separate the hydrogen from all the methane we seemingly produce?

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

#405

Post by moloch-hai » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 7:30 PM UTC

dgroshev wrote: post #402

moloch-hai wrote: post #400

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing how you are promoting instead a thoroughly dead alternative that no one will ever again spend another cent of their own money on... Good day, sir.

You yet again ignored the point and instead appealed to authority. It's also factually false. * UK approving Sizewell C for £20bn https://www.ft.com/content/11ca7193-f7d8-496f-bb90-d3270b2cf... * about 60 reactors are being constructed as we speak https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu... * the US just allocated $2.5b to support the demonstration of two advanced U.S. reactors by 2028 (X-energy a…

All public money. NuScale is a particularly egregious example.

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

#406

Post by barrysteve » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 7:40 PM UTC

entropicgravity wrote: post #401

rob74 wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The attraction to hydrogen by the automotive companies of Japan is that it would preserve their balance sheets. An ICE car produces various revenue streams for auto makers. First, the sale price, then the oil changes, and plenty of ongoing maintenance. While a straight up EV would shrink an automaker's balance sheet tremendously. The motor has one moving part that is very resilient. The motor doesn't require a transm…

BMW is considering charging for heated seats in a subscription model.

"No maintainence" EV cars are just platforms for subscriptions.

Hydrogen vs battery isn't about farming dollars and cents, that can be done other ways.

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

#407

Post by WorldMaker » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 7:45 PM UTC

schiffern wrote: post #332

flavius29663 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because hydrogen, for all its marketing, doesn't actually solve the problems people have with BEVs. Better BEVs do. I guess it depends on the definition of "people". If you mean private automobile owners, then I agree that batteries will eat hydrogen's lunch. For everything else(70% of oil use), it's an open question. In the future, you might even see a migration of H2 technology from large applications to small au…

> I guess it depends on the definition of "people". If you mean private automobile owners I'm just following your lead. You were the one who brought up "gas stations." >For everything else(70% of oil use), it's an open question Not really. Road use is ~50% .[1] It's all going BEV, like it or not. Agriculture is another 10%. Ditto. The technology improvement curves speak for themselves. ICE and H2 have both plateaued…

Even for non-ground vehicles my understanding is that the future of H2 is very murky: small aircraft have proven some efficiencies with battery electric that H2 cannot match, other than possibly as a generator to top up a large battery and if the large batteries themselves hit certain densities (which seems increasingly likely as BEV car production picks up and economies of scale start to take effect) it won't be worth the weight for an H2 generator and liquid H2 tanks. I've heard at least one scientist flat out state that carrying liquid H2 is about the dumbest efficiency possibility for air travel because if you are going to carry all that H2 anyway at least carry it as a gas and get free ballast from it. The only efficient H2 air travel is exactly the one we've known about for centuries: dirigibles. But we know that's a PR minefield in current popular culture to even suggest. (Which yes, we probably should have more dirigibles for other efficient air travel options.)

If battery densities end up meeting the needs of airplanes they meet the needs of ships easily enough. Plus, there's interesting new research on wind power for ships, which I find is a lovely irony to see ships return to wind power after all these years (though it may look quite different than the classic age of sail with primary propulsion still being electric turboprops).

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

#408

Post by schiffern » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 7:52 PM UTC

SigmundA wrote: post #390

flavius29663 wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ICE vehicles conquered the world with abysmal efficiencies, they were around 10-15% when they already ruled the roads and the world. That is after we drill for oil, ship it, refine it, distribute it. Even today, manufacturers boast about engines with 40% efficiency in ideal conditions, which still translates to a meager 20-30% in real world driving. Looking at efficiency alone is not enough. > They're simply so much…

>ICE vehicles conquered the world with abysmal efficiencies, they were around 10-15% when they already ruled the roads and the world. Fossil fuel comes out of the ground with the energy already in it, hydrogen doesn't exist in a free form and the energy must be put into it coming from somewhere else. Most hydrogen now comes from natural gas at maybe 75-80% efficiency through reforming, then it must be compressed, the…

Ulf Bossel got it right ~16 years ago. No significant change since then, other than steady improvement in BEVs.

https://phys.org/news/2006-12-hydrogen-economy-doesnt.amp

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

#409

Post by WorldMaker » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 7:58 PM UTC

tuatoru wrote: post #355

schiffern wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't "dogma," it's inefficiency. Throwing energy away is counterproductive, and Energy-to-Hydrogen-to-Energy throws away lots of it. If there were no alternative long-term storage plans this might be acceptable, but that's simply not the case. If you're using hydrogen to smelt steel or make ammonia fertilizer, then there's no energy loss (beyond what's needed to decarbonize petrochemicals anyway). The ar…

> Throwing energy away is counterproductive, and Energy-to-Hydrogen-to-Energy throws away lots of it. Energy to plants to biofuels throws away nearly all the energy. More than all of it, by some accountings. What are the alternatives for those use cases in which batteries are infeasible?

Pumped hydro (water) is about 81% efficient and easy enough to build with centuries of experience at this point.

There's also battery systems outside of Lithium Ion formulations which have other use cases. Thermal batteries are an interesting alternative in some use cases, particularly where fast access to heat in addition to electricy is handy (such as in collaboration with building HVAC and water heaters).

But also in general as we keep finding new density scales in the Lithium Ion formulations (and as we have hope to potentially discover even more formulations beside that) the number of use cases where batteries are infeasible keeps shrinking.

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

#410

Post by WorldMaker » Mon, Jan 23, 2023, 8:10 PM UTC

flavius29663 wrote: post #324

theshrike79 wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Throwing energy away is counterproductive, and Energy-to-Hydrogen-to-Energy throws away lots of it. The current process needs 55kWh of electricity to produce 15kWh of electricity on the other end. Not very efficient at all.

Look at how much energy is on the other end of the oil flow: 20% efficiency and still the ICE car is king, without subsidies, EVs would go nowhere. The hydrogen back and forth is still better than that. Talking about efficiency is a losing battle, people don't care about that, they care about total cost, safety and convenience.

> Talking about efficiency is a losing battle, people don't care about that, they care about total cost, safety and convenience.

Without subsidies it is ICE that would go away overnight on two of those three factors and then the third shortly after the market catches up to the overnight shift. EVs already have lower total cost and higher safety (than carrying around a tank of explosives and actively igniting those explosives during travel). ICE looks more convenient with current refueling infrastructure, but if ICE subsidies disappeared and demand plummeted we'd see how fast ICE range anxiety returns when companies quickly en masse decide to not sell such a low margin loss leader. (I do mean "returns", we know from history that ICE vehicles were the original range anxiety and EVs were the reliably ranged household cars until enough gas stations existed. AAA was in part founded because of ICE range anxiety.)

(H2 cannot compete with EVs on any of these three. Total cost is higher. H2 tanks can dangerously explode, even if fuel cells are not themselves at least using a burning process like ICE. H2 refuelling seems convenient if you discount the fact that there's no general, ubiquitous H2 refuelling infrastructure and likely never will be, especially with how badly H2 leaks in all attempts at long distance shipping and long term storage.)