Water is a greenhouse gas as is the methane infrastructure that will be used to create the hydrogen. I don't say this disparagingly, but an ignorant populace will fall for it, and that includes Congress.
Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification
221–230 of 387 posts
Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
We (in the US) have very little hydrogen infrastructure but there's high voltage power lines basically everywhere - so it seems like hydrogen has the infrastructure and scaling issues. Batteries are indeed heavy - but so are portable hydrogen storage cell that don't easily explode or require liquid cooling. I agree with you that hydrogen isn't the answer but methane doesn't really seem to be either. Batteries and ele…
There isn't enough infrastructure to power all the eventual electric cars.
Yet.
Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification
#223Anyone who has followed hydrogen as a fuel for a while sees pretty easily that its a solution in search of a problem. It really doesn't make sense to use renewables to make hydrogen fuel to then burn: batteries are better for storage of energy in most cases (I will grant that there are edge cases where a liquid/gas fuel is a better technical solution than batteries, but I think that options like ethanol are probably…
If the case for the battery was objectively better, oil companies would pull a phillip morris and buy out their antithesis to profit on both ends. The fact that they are doubling down on hydrogen itself I think its really interesting. To me, this shows that perhaps there is a true advantage, and also a high enough barrier to entry where only these oil companies at the scale they already exist can reap the most benefi…
"If the case for digital cameras was objectively better Kodak would have bought up chip companies and profited on both sides".....
Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't blame you for being skeptical, but it isn't just the oil and gas industry. The Japanese government went all-in on hydrogen. https://thediplomat.com/2023/07/a-look-at-japans-latest-hydr...
I think that may be due to pressure from their automotive industry, who for whatever reason are very resistant to making battery electric cars.
It's because batteries are expensive to produce, maintain, and are not as environmentally friendly as going from solar directly to hydrogen via electrolysis. There's more parity for existing fossil fuel engine use cases with hydrogen as well.
Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know what does make it make sense? If you can take natural gas out of the ground, split it into hydrogen and CO2 (releasing heat, which can be used to generate electricity), and inject the CO2 back underground to help release more oil and gas. At this point, you have hydrogen gas. Sure, you could burn that hydrogen to make more electricity, but it works out financially better if you can directly use it. The benef…
Isn’t that effectively what they call “blue hydrogen”[0]? All oil companies seem very slow in deploying that; there is no question that it is much more expensive than just releasing the CO₂ in the air. [0]: https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/what-we-do/delivering-indus...
I think oil+gas companies are currently just waiting for the right moment to deploy it.
Blue hydrogen only makes sense with global carbon caps, taxes or quotas. And it only makes sense if CO2 injected underground doesn't count towards that cap/tax/quota.
So far, there is no political appetite for global taxes/caps/quotas, so blue hydrogen is only at pilot-plant scale.
Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Japanese electric grid is even worse than the one in the US. Their grid is a mix of 60Hz and 50Hz networks because of weird historical reasons. It's also single-phase, which isn't the best for mass EV charging. Compare that to, say, Finland where every single apartment and house has three-phase power. 3x16A or 3x32A usually. It's completely trivial to install a 11kW home charger for example, it's just running som…
Most Japanese houses do not have parking garages or private parking spaces, so the ability to charge from home is irrelevant. But in any case, single phase is fine for home charging and it's the default in many parts of the world. Three phase charging is a nice luxury, but far from a necessity.
In many Japanese cities you won't get a permit to buy a car unless you can prove you have a place to park it. Curbside parking isn't a thing.
So in those cases it really is irrelevant whether you can charge or not =)
Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
All it takes is a new pump at existing gas stations and what becomes more compelling to the consumer flips overnight. Same cultural process of fueling up at the same place you've always fueled up in about the same amount of time as its always taken. It seems like there's a lot lot less inertia to get consumers over that hurdle than the EV hurdle, where charge times are long and convenient chargers not a guarantee in…
I have a diesel car. Every 3 weeks I have to fill my tank. This wastes me around 5/10 minutes, depending if the gas station is full of person that want to fill their tank. And this only thanks to the fact that I've one of the gas station with the cheapest price of my city 50 meters from where I work. Otherwise I would need to spend time (and gas) to get to the station with the cheapest price, because paying 2 euros f…
>This means that the government cannot add taxes on electricity used in vehicles, as it does with gas.
You don't think you'll be paying a significant electricity tax once ICE cars are fully phased out?
Also, I don't know what you drive but my diesel has quite a bit more range than 350 km. Yours must be quite the guzzler.
Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification
#228My view on hydrogen is that we will look at it like pressurized air in the 1900’s.
Some industrial applications exists but its not the silver bullet many articles are talking about. It is inefficient and we shouldn’t spend many ressources on it.
However, I am happy some people experiment with it, we may discover an innovative application that may be a true breakthrough. But I won’t bet on it.
Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
Japan is clinging to hydrogen like a drowning man to driftwood. About 80% of Japan's energy is imported coal and natural gas. Their electric grid is a bonkers mix of 50Hz and 60Hz single-phase. Hydrogen is the only viable solution for them and even that's not going too well despite lofty goals. They can't build the tech and infrastructure alone and the rest of the world just isn't as enthusiastic on H2.
The 50Hz and 60Hz is an accident of history and neatly splits the country in half. It's not a problem.
It is a problem, because there's limited capacity to move electricity between the systems. You can just plug them together, they have essentially two separate grids.
Re: Oil sector is lobbying for inefficient hydrogen cars to delay electrification
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
You know what does make it make sense? If you can take natural gas out of the ground, split it into hydrogen and CO2 (releasing heat, which can be used to generate electricity), and inject the CO2 back underground to help release more oil and gas. At this point, you have hydrogen gas. Sure, you could burn that hydrogen to make more electricity, but it works out financially better if you can directly use it. The benef…
This is similar to fracking, no? Doesn't it have the same seismic/water table problems?
Yep. And it won’t be 100% efficient. The energy to capture and store the co2 is likely greater then the energy you get in hydrogen