Israeli Researchers Produce Green Hydrogen with 90% Efficiency(autoevolution.com)
autoevolution.com
Israeli Researchers Produce Green Hydrogen with 90% Efficiency
https://www.autoevolution.com/news/israeli-researchers-produce-green-hydrogen-with-90-efficiency-without-electrolysis-218644.html
143 comments
The obsession with efficiency is disingenuous too. The two limiting factors are generation capacity and cost/economics. Efficiency by itself says nothing.
In the early 1900s, gas was less efficient than electricity too, but for a whole century gasoline powered transportation was more feasible. Aviation is still only feasible with kerosene despite it being less efficient than electric propulsion.
Not really, increasing energy efficiency is at the heart of many climate solutions. Clean energy is still scarce, and in the places where it isn't, for instance Germany, there is backlash against it. Not to mention that they aren't even close to being 100% renewable-powered (wind+solar 30%), not even close to have 100% EV market penetration (about 2%), not even close to have the theoretical capacity for a grid to power 100% EVs, and you would like to adopt a less efficient technology that would require to double the clean power needs compared to EVs...
Manufacturing a whole new vehicle with a huge ass battery that is more cost intensive to manufacturing than a comparable ICE, a vehicle that due to contemporary trends has to be a 5-ton lifted SUV, a vehicle that is going to be used by ONE person to commute to work along a fixed predetermined route, a vehicle that is going to be replaced after 3 years because this person have to have the newest four wheels on the lot to project status to attract a status obsessed mate, all that is ALSO EXTREMELY energy inefficient.
If you truly cared about energy efficiency you'd proposition the ban or severe limitation of private car usage in sufficiency dense localities. Public trams and busses, cycling, walking, and maybe even very small private vehicles would be extremely more energy efficient.
There is nothing about a 5-ton EV SUV that says energy efficiency.
If you truly cared about energy efficiency you'd proposition the ban or severe limitation of private car usage in sufficiency dense localities. Public trams and busses, cycling, walking, and maybe even very small private vehicles would be extremely more energy efficient.
There is nothing about a 5-ton EV SUV that says energy efficiency.
Obviously reducing private car usage is a priority. I don't have a car, never owned one, and I'm absolutely in favour of severe restrictions.
Now, you have to acknowledge the world we live in, a total ban won't be feasible in the time-frame that we have to combat climate change. (And neither will an electric grid sufficiently powerful to power millions of green hydrogen-powered vehicles or 5-ton SUVs for that matter).
Not all EVs weigh 5 tons. Promoting (smaller) EVs for people who need them is a good thing.
Now, you have to acknowledge the world we live in, a total ban won't be feasible in the time-frame that we have to combat climate change. (And neither will an electric grid sufficiently powerful to power millions of green hydrogen-powered vehicles or 5-ton SUVs for that matter).
Not all EVs weigh 5 tons. Promoting (smaller) EVs for people who need them is a good thing.
That's a criticism of trends in automobiles (which I agree with) not something inherent to BEVs.
Guess what, if you get a BEV with 1/3-1/4 the battery size, the range is smaller, but for most people it will be fine. And now your vehicle is not lugging around all that excess weight.
And do you really need a massive electric pickup truck? It's absolutely possible, but I bet for most people it's a preference.
Guess what, if you get a BEV with 1/3-1/4 the battery size, the range is smaller, but for most people it will be fine. And now your vehicle is not lugging around all that excess weight.
And do you really need a massive electric pickup truck? It's absolutely possible, but I bet for most people it's a preference.
Efficiency matters little given a natural surplus, as will be the case when most of power comes from massively over-provisioned solar, similarly as is seen with hydro power in certain very wet places.
Utility-scale users of solar will naturally install electrolysers for the additional revenue stream, using generation in excess of immediate need after local storage is charged up. They will favor the cheapest equipment, disregarding efficiency, because of their intermittent utilization. Nobody will be able to compete with them, because the power they use will be wholly free (i.e. "zero marginal cost"). The market for electrolysed H2, and NH3 produced from it, will be unlimited.
Solar farms not producing H2 will find themselves undercut by those that are.
Long-term energy storage will not be a thing, because any need beyond a few days will be satisfied by shipments of LNH3 from tropical producers.
It will take time for all this to settle out. Expect to see a lot of short-term adaptations.
Utility-scale users of solar will naturally install electrolysers for the additional revenue stream, using generation in excess of immediate need after local storage is charged up. They will favor the cheapest equipment, disregarding efficiency, because of their intermittent utilization. Nobody will be able to compete with them, because the power they use will be wholly free (i.e. "zero marginal cost"). The market for electrolysed H2, and NH3 produced from it, will be unlimited.
Solar farms not producing H2 will find themselves undercut by those that are.
Long-term energy storage will not be a thing, because any need beyond a few days will be satisfied by shipments of LNH3 from tropical producers.
It will take time for all this to settle out. Expect to see a lot of short-term adaptations.
Yes, gasoline won because it was more convenient.
Hydrogen (and explosive gas which is notorious difficult to transport and work with safely) is neither efficient nor convenient.
Hydrogen (and explosive gas which is notorious difficult to transport and work with safely) is neither efficient nor convenient.
Efficiency gains can even very well be detrimental to resource consumption.
Efficiency gains generally lead to lower cost, which in turn lead to higher demand. And this increased demand can very well be in excess of the efficiency gain.
This was observed as early as the 1860ies and theorized in concepts like the Jevons Paradox/Rebound Effect.
This doesn't mean efficiency gains are not desirable, but they must be implemented in conjunction with other factors like environmental policies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebound_effect_(conservation)
Efficiency gains generally lead to lower cost, which in turn lead to higher demand. And this increased demand can very well be in excess of the efficiency gain.
This was observed as early as the 1860ies and theorized in concepts like the Jevons Paradox/Rebound Effect.
This doesn't mean efficiency gains are not desirable, but they must be implemented in conjunction with other factors like environmental policies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebound_effect_(conservation)
It's true, but that isn't a given. For example, it won't matter how cheap and efficient LEDs are, people aren't going to keep adding them to their house.
Indeed, this effect is not a given, specially if the resource is scarce to begin with.
But regarding your example, personally, I'm actually kind of "keep adding light bulbs" thanks to LEDs. I'm no longer using one central 75W incandescent bulb per room, but rather 4 or 5 Philips Hue lights (bulbs & led strips) in an indirect fashion. Hue bulbs & these new usages would not have existed without the LED efficiency gains.
This counter example, of course, has many flaws, firstly, it's only my specific situation, not an average case. The efficiency gains (energy and longevity) is only part of what enabled these new types of lights. And lastly, I think my energy consumption is still lower non-the-less. But it demonstrate how things might not be so clear cut.
But regarding your example, personally, I'm actually kind of "keep adding light bulbs" thanks to LEDs. I'm no longer using one central 75W incandescent bulb per room, but rather 4 or 5 Philips Hue lights (bulbs & led strips) in an indirect fashion. Hue bulbs & these new usages would not have existed without the LED efficiency gains.
This counter example, of course, has many flaws, firstly, it's only my specific situation, not an average case. The efficiency gains (energy and longevity) is only part of what enabled these new types of lights. And lastly, I think my energy consumption is still lower non-the-less. But it demonstrate how things might not be so clear cut.
Efficiency has a huge impact on the cost/economics, something that you've highlighted. If significant more energy is needed, it'll likely be more expensive. Hydrogen is sometimes only a third as efficient as other solutions. It's pretty logical to assume it'll be
> In the early 1900s, gas was less efficient than electricity too
I think you mean gasoline instead of just gas. Hydrogen requires huge amounts of energy before it's easy to transport, which is what you responded to. In any case, in the early 1900s, gasoline had a huge amount of stored energy. It was a matter of using it efficiently, you're comparing apples to oranges. With Green Hydrogren too often people say that some technological improvement will solve the drawbacks. While ignoring that for e.g. hydrogen it's not so easy, for other options it is/was.
Same for the often suggested "solution" of using surplus energy. A factory that doesn't work 24/7 is more costly. Aside from that I understood that hydrogen is best produced continuously for it to be efficient.
> In the early 1900s, gas was less efficient than electricity too
I think you mean gasoline instead of just gas. Hydrogen requires huge amounts of energy before it's easy to transport, which is what you responded to. In any case, in the early 1900s, gasoline had a huge amount of stored energy. It was a matter of using it efficiently, you're comparing apples to oranges. With Green Hydrogren too often people say that some technological improvement will solve the drawbacks. While ignoring that for e.g. hydrogen it's not so easy, for other options it is/was.
Same for the often suggested "solution" of using surplus energy. A factory that doesn't work 24/7 is more costly. Aside from that I understood that hydrogen is best produced continuously for it to be efficient.
> Efficiency has a huge impact on the cost/economics
It doesn't have nearly as much impact as other factors, such as abundance of the material, how easy/practical it is to work with it (which influences both demand and supply), whether mass infrastructure for it already exists (although this is more relevant in the short-term rather than long-term), etc.
These factors impact the economics of an energy source much more than efficiency, and economics is by far the most important factor in deciding whether an energy source will be used or not (and how much of it), not efficiency.
e.g. if hydrogen is only 10% efficient but there's 10 times more of it on Earth compared to a similar energy source that is 90% efficient, then hydrogen wins (all other factors being equal).
As another example, if hydrogen tanks in cars explode 100 times as often as gas tanks, then it would probably be a complete non-starter for powering vehicles, regardless of efficiency.
It doesn't have nearly as much impact as other factors, such as abundance of the material, how easy/practical it is to work with it (which influences both demand and supply), whether mass infrastructure for it already exists (although this is more relevant in the short-term rather than long-term), etc.
These factors impact the economics of an energy source much more than efficiency, and economics is by far the most important factor in deciding whether an energy source will be used or not (and how much of it), not efficiency.
e.g. if hydrogen is only 10% efficient but there's 10 times more of it on Earth compared to a similar energy source that is 90% efficient, then hydrogen wins (all other factors being equal).
As another example, if hydrogen tanks in cars explode 100 times as often as gas tanks, then it would probably be a complete non-starter for powering vehicles, regardless of efficiency.
But the efficiency of something goes directly into the economics.
If you need need to build out a grid to power your cars, you'll 3x as much energy at the source to get the same amount of energy into the tyres.
If you need need to build out a grid to power your cars, you'll 3x as much energy at the source to get the same amount of energy into the tyres.
Which might mean very little compared to the other factors.
3 x 10 cents, which could represent a fixed amount of an abundant and easy-to-work-with energy source (therefore cheap) which has 33% efficiency (hence the 3x cost factor), still costs much less than say, 1 x 5 dollars, which might represent the same amount of energy provided by a scarce and/or hard-to-work-with energy source (therefore expensive), even if this energy source is 99.999% efficient (hence the 1x factor).
As an analogy, let's say you live in a community on an isolated island and you need to eat.
You can satisfy your hunger / nutrient / energy requirements with 1 coconut or with 5 apples (which means we're assuming one apple is only 1/5th as nutritious/efficient as one coconut in this example).
Which fruit serving will be cheaper? You can argue "if you eat apples you will need 5x more of them, therefore they will be more expensive!".
But of course, that might not matter one bit.
The problem is that maybe on the island there might only be 10 (reachable) coconuts but there might be 10,000 reachable apples, so the 5 apples would be much, much cheaper than 1 coconut.
Or perhaps there are also 10,000 coconuts but there are no knives on this island so they would be very hard to open and eat. Therefore you wouldn't be able to find coconuts at the market because nobody would want to pick them and sell them, since nobody would want to buy them despite everybody wanting to eat fruit every day.
3 x 10 cents, which could represent a fixed amount of an abundant and easy-to-work-with energy source (therefore cheap) which has 33% efficiency (hence the 3x cost factor), still costs much less than say, 1 x 5 dollars, which might represent the same amount of energy provided by a scarce and/or hard-to-work-with energy source (therefore expensive), even if this energy source is 99.999% efficient (hence the 1x factor).
As an analogy, let's say you live in a community on an isolated island and you need to eat.
You can satisfy your hunger / nutrient / energy requirements with 1 coconut or with 5 apples (which means we're assuming one apple is only 1/5th as nutritious/efficient as one coconut in this example).
Which fruit serving will be cheaper? You can argue "if you eat apples you will need 5x more of them, therefore they will be more expensive!".
But of course, that might not matter one bit.
The problem is that maybe on the island there might only be 10 (reachable) coconuts but there might be 10,000 reachable apples, so the 5 apples would be much, much cheaper than 1 coconut.
Or perhaps there are also 10,000 coconuts but there are no knives on this island so they would be very hard to open and eat. Therefore you wouldn't be able to find coconuts at the market because nobody would want to pick them and sell them, since nobody would want to buy them despite everybody wanting to eat fruit every day.
>Efficiency has a huge impact on the cost/economics
Not in the way that you think, no. For all intents and purposes, we have limitless energy. The problem was never that we don't have enough capacity, because we can scale capacity as much as we want. The only thing that is required is that energy generation (i.e. $/kWh) is cheap enough, and this seems feasible with solar and wind and maybe fission and later one fusion or other sources.
>you're comparing apples to oranges
You are the one saying, "just attach a transmission line to it" or "just put a battery in it", without thinking of all the cases where this is just not possible.
Nobody is arguing that you should start powering your toaster with hydrogen. You all are attacking a strawman, it seems.
Not in the way that you think, no. For all intents and purposes, we have limitless energy. The problem was never that we don't have enough capacity, because we can scale capacity as much as we want. The only thing that is required is that energy generation (i.e. $/kWh) is cheap enough, and this seems feasible with solar and wind and maybe fission and later one fusion or other sources.
>you're comparing apples to oranges
You are the one saying, "just attach a transmission line to it" or "just put a battery in it", without thinking of all the cases where this is just not possible.
Nobody is arguing that you should start powering your toaster with hydrogen. You all are attacking a strawman, it seems.
You would have to solve the problem of getting soggy toast from the exhaust steam.
Unscheduled detonations would put an, er, damper on adoption.
I believe that would be toast toast.
Efficiency is important for cost/economics but so is the abundance/scarcity. Fossil fuels are a non-renewable resource and are in theory supposed to get more scarce in the future driving up costs/economics while hydrogen is the most abundant element. Granted it is more cumbersome to capture, transport, store, and distribute it now, I don't think it's a outlandish theory that at some point in the future, technological improvement in hydrogen industry combined with more scarcity of oil could change the calculus on the cost/economics of oil vs hydrogen.
When solar-powered hydrogen production cost gets cheaper than new petroleum extraction, exploration and field development will wholly collapse. The cheapest, seemingly inexhaustible existing fields in Arabia will satisfy remaining demand.
I concur: Hydrogen is a "bad" fuel in terms of practicality: it's extremely reactive and it leaks easily.
To make a parallel with rocket science: there are extremely efficient liquid chemical propellants, much better than what is in use today, like Chlorine Trifluoride, that nobody uses anymore because they are just too dangerous to work with.
Or the fact that hydrogen airships will never come back: nobody will ever, ever switch from helium despite the cost and lift difference.
Hydrogen has its uses (e.g. steel plants). Transportation is not one of them.
To make a parallel with rocket science: there are extremely efficient liquid chemical propellants, much better than what is in use today, like Chlorine Trifluoride, that nobody uses anymore because they are just too dangerous to work with.
Or the fact that hydrogen airships will never come back: nobody will ever, ever switch from helium despite the cost and lift difference.
Hydrogen has its uses (e.g. steel plants). Transportation is not one of them.
I was curious about Chlorine Trifluoride as a propellant, and I found this quote of John D Clark on the Wiki page (hypergolic means it will ignite spontaneously):
> It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that's the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water—with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals—steel, copper, aluminum, etc.—because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride that protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminum keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes
> It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that's the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water—with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals—steel, copper, aluminum, etc.—because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride that protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminum keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes
Ignition! - a history of rocket fuels - from which this quote originates - is freely available online and an excellent read: https://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pd...
>Hydrogen has its uses (e.g. steel plants). Transportation is not one of them.
Small caveat, hydrogen is still pretty useful for upper stage rocket propulsion because of its low mass and high specific impulse.
Small caveat, hydrogen is still pretty useful for upper stage rocket propulsion because of its low mass and high specific impulse.
It actually doesn’t have to do with transmission at all. Rather, when you pay for electrolysis, you’re paying for all the energy inputs. When you burn fossil fuels, you’re not paying for any of the energy inputs (hundreds of millions of years of solar radiation). So it’s not surprising that fossil fuels are cheaper even if they’re less efficient.
Firstly I don't see how that follows. You still need to pay to transport both the oil and the hydrogen from where you make it to where you use it.
Most importantly, you're not (in most places) paying for the pollution of the atmosphere. E.g. Prices on carbon are nowhere near the level of societal harm that putting it into the atmosphere causes.
Most importantly, you're not (in most places) paying for the pollution of the atmosphere. E.g. Prices on carbon are nowhere near the level of societal harm that putting it into the atmosphere causes.
My point is that to produce hydrogen via electrolysis, you need to input energy. Due to thermodynamics, you can only ever hope to get 0.9 units for each unit of input energy.
With fossil fuels, you don’t need to input energy to get them. At least not in the same way. You can run a pump to pump them out of the ground. For each unit of energy that goes into the pump, you likely get 1000x units of energy out.
With fossil fuels, you don’t need to input energy to get them. At least not in the same way. You can run a pump to pump them out of the ground. For each unit of energy that goes into the pump, you likely get 1000x units of energy out.
I get what you mean. That will really depend on where you get the oil from. Some places need a lot more downstream processing (looking at alberta oil sands) to get something useable than others (the middle east).
Whether you want to consider that analogous to the electrolysis step or to another one is not clear since the processes don't map one to one.
Whether you want to consider that analogous to the electrolysis step or to another one is not clear since the processes don't map one to one.
100% this. Few people have been able to answer the question of "how does it compare to a heat pump that has a SCOP of 4?" without me having to fight the urge to roll my eyes.
By the time (highly explosive) hydrogen gets into people's homes I'd be surprised if it was even 20% as efficient as a heat pump.
By the time (highly explosive) hydrogen gets into people's homes I'd be surprised if it was even 20% as efficient as a heat pump.
You would use hydrogen to produce methane to then burn in people's existing as furnaces using the existing natural gas distribution infrastructure. That seems to be Terraform's plan.
Still seems better to me to convert as much housing as possible to heat pumps, which seem much better fit for purpose than on-site combustion.
I think green hydrogen has a lot more potential as a precursor to liquid fuels for e.g. aviation and shipping, which otherwise will be extremely difficult to electrify.
Still seems better to me to convert as much housing as possible to heat pumps, which seem much better fit for purpose than on-site combustion.
I think green hydrogen has a lot more potential as a precursor to liquid fuels for e.g. aviation and shipping, which otherwise will be extremely difficult to electrify.
If you're going to convert it into methane and burn it you'll make a fuel cell's ~37% round trip efficiency look massive.
turning it into methane to burn it is trying to solve last century's problem. People need way to stay warm not things to burn.
turning it into methane to burn it is trying to solve last century's problem. People need way to stay warm not things to burn.
Obviously hydrogen has it's uses, but a large part of me feels the energy industry is stalling for time. Oil and gas is basically a subscription model, whereas electric cars and heat pumps are buy once, upgrade in x years or when broken model. With enough renewable energy and a few nuclear power plants, electricity should be ridiculously cheap and if they've got the space, the consumer can even generate their own. That's more money and self-enpowerment for the consumer, and far less for the energy companies. They obviously don't like that, which is why they keep pushing for hydrogen to keep people dependent.
> few nuclear power plants, electricity should be ridiculously cheap
Nuclear has never managed to be cheap. The really big nuclear buildouts always had a national security subsidy: either for energy security (France), or for nuclear weapons (US, UK, USSR, China, and also France). This is partly why non-weaponizable reactor designs never became popular either.
> They obviously don't like that, which is why they keep pushing for hydrogen to keep people dependent.
This isn't quite it. Energy production is always going to be dominated by capital owners because it's a capital-intensive business. Doubly so for renewables. No, the real reason fossil fuel companies keep pushing for hydrogen is so they can sell hydrogen produced from natural gas as "green", after they've dumped the inconvenient carbon atoms into the atmosphere.
The medium term real, important uses for renewable hydrogen are (1) Haber process (3H2 + N2 -> 2HN3) and (2) steel production by reducing (removing oxygen from) raw iron ores.
Edit: btw, I think the underlying paper is https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cey2.411
Nuclear has never managed to be cheap. The really big nuclear buildouts always had a national security subsidy: either for energy security (France), or for nuclear weapons (US, UK, USSR, China, and also France). This is partly why non-weaponizable reactor designs never became popular either.
> They obviously don't like that, which is why they keep pushing for hydrogen to keep people dependent.
This isn't quite it. Energy production is always going to be dominated by capital owners because it's a capital-intensive business. Doubly so for renewables. No, the real reason fossil fuel companies keep pushing for hydrogen is so they can sell hydrogen produced from natural gas as "green", after they've dumped the inconvenient carbon atoms into the atmosphere.
The medium term real, important uses for renewable hydrogen are (1) Haber process (3H2 + N2 -> 2HN3) and (2) steel production by reducing (removing oxygen from) raw iron ores.
Edit: btw, I think the underlying paper is https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cey2.411
As much as I’ve been rooting for nuclear, I think the ship has sailed. If newer advances can’t make it cost competitive with renewables plus some storage (I’ll get to that in a minute) then why would you ever deploy it.
Renewables are really cheap and getting cheaper, so some combination of overbuild with storage is probably the winning formula.
Storage is a little too expensive as lithium ion batteries, but there’s literally a hundred alternative there. I’m fond of pumped hydro, which we can do anywhere with a height difference, we don’t need to restrict that to existing dams. But there’s lots of options there and many are very viable.
So nuclear (including hypothetical nuclear fusion) will probably not acquire significant market share. Unless you can somehow make it cost competitive.
If you look at planned energy projects, the market has very clearly spoken. That doesn’t mean it can’t change, but I don’t think it’s likely.
Renewables are really cheap and getting cheaper, so some combination of overbuild with storage is probably the winning formula.
Storage is a little too expensive as lithium ion batteries, but there’s literally a hundred alternative there. I’m fond of pumped hydro, which we can do anywhere with a height difference, we don’t need to restrict that to existing dams. But there’s lots of options there and many are very viable.
So nuclear (including hypothetical nuclear fusion) will probably not acquire significant market share. Unless you can somehow make it cost competitive.
If you look at planned energy projects, the market has very clearly spoken. That doesn’t mean it can’t change, but I don’t think it’s likely.
> So nuclear (including hypothetical nuclear fusion) will probably not acquire significant market share. Unless you can somehow make it cost competitive.
Ontario is a great counter example.
We have something like 60-70% of our power from nuclear, representing most of the base load. We're building more plants soon too.
Electricity is cheap, and used to be even cheaper before it was privatized.
And we have no nuclear weapons program supporting these plants.
Ontario is a great counter example.
We have something like 60-70% of our power from nuclear, representing most of the base load. We're building more plants soon too.
Electricity is cheap, and used to be even cheaper before it was privatized.
And we have no nuclear weapons program supporting these plants.
Ontario has cheap nuclear because it's nuclear fleet was build in the best possible time, the past.
Even china [0] renowned for pushing projects through and "getting stuff done" hasn't been able to push the price and construction time of nuclear down enough to make them cheap and easy to build.
[0]: https://cleantechnica.com/2023/02/06/renewables-in-china-tre...
Even china [0] renowned for pushing projects through and "getting stuff done" hasn't been able to push the price and construction time of nuclear down enough to make them cheap and easy to build.
[0]: https://cleantechnica.com/2023/02/06/renewables-in-china-tre...
Ontario is a great example where no no nuclear projects have been built or proposed at a competitive price. I stand by my assertion that nuclear is dead in the West until shown contemporary numbers to the contrary.
>If newer advances can’t make it cost competitive with renewables plus some storage (I’ll get to that in a minute) then why would you ever deploy it.
Because it can work rain or shine. Wind or no wind.
What happens if we have no wind and have a lot of clouds for a few weeks in an area? The storage is limited and nuclear can still produce. Yes, I understand other areas can likely pick up the slack, but nuclear doesn't have that issue. At a minimum nuclear is a good thing to have as a back up even if we have sufficient renewables.
Also, don't forget climate change is supposed to cause more extreme weather events. We don't know what impact that will have on wind and solar.
Because it can work rain or shine. Wind or no wind.
What happens if we have no wind and have a lot of clouds for a few weeks in an area? The storage is limited and nuclear can still produce. Yes, I understand other areas can likely pick up the slack, but nuclear doesn't have that issue. At a minimum nuclear is a good thing to have as a back up even if we have sufficient renewables.
Also, don't forget climate change is supposed to cause more extreme weather events. We don't know what impact that will have on wind and solar.
Solar still produces on cloudy days.
The answer is a combination of storage, overbuild, long distance interconnections, and diversification ( which mostly means we keep some natural gas plants around, not new nuclear.)
The answer is a combination of storage, overbuild, long distance interconnections, and diversification ( which mostly means we keep some natural gas plants around, not new nuclear.)
Solar can produce on cloudy days, but can be greatly reduced. I've seen estimates at 10-25% of the normal rate on a very cloudy day. If there is no wind being generated at the same time it could cause issues.
Sure overbuilding might work, but only getting 10% of the solar and 0% of the wind would require such massive overbuilding it would probably not be practical.
I did mention interconnection. While it can help, there can be extreme weather over large parts of the country at one time. We have fires in Canada blocking out some parts of the North East. Imagine if there was a large fire happening in California and a hurricane in the south. As climate change continues that is only going to get worse blocking out solar in large chunks of the country.
The problem is determining the correct amount of storage. If we get 10% of the normal solar along with no wind for a week or two would there be enough storage? I'm guessing not.
It is good you agree that we need some diversity. So many people are radicals and say we don't need an alternative. I agree with your sentiment, but think we should also have nuclear not just natural gas. Nuclear is reliable and clean. Why use natural gas if we don't need to?
Sure overbuilding might work, but only getting 10% of the solar and 0% of the wind would require such massive overbuilding it would probably not be practical.
I did mention interconnection. While it can help, there can be extreme weather over large parts of the country at one time. We have fires in Canada blocking out some parts of the North East. Imagine if there was a large fire happening in California and a hurricane in the south. As climate change continues that is only going to get worse blocking out solar in large chunks of the country.
The problem is determining the correct amount of storage. If we get 10% of the normal solar along with no wind for a week or two would there be enough storage? I'm guessing not.
It is good you agree that we need some diversity. So many people are radicals and say we don't need an alternative. I agree with your sentiment, but think we should also have nuclear not just natural gas. Nuclear is reliable and clean. Why use natural gas if we don't need to?
> I agree with your sentiment, but think we should also have nuclear not just natural gas. Nuclear is reliable and clean. Why use natural gas if we don't need to?
Because natural gas is cheap and nuclear is not. If you’re using tax payer dollars, you absolutely can be wasteful and choose the more expensive option. That may even make sense when you factor in the cost of the carbon dioxide pollution. We’re not there yet, but it could come back around, especially if you implement a high enough carbon tax, which I’ve always advocated for.
I think you can get potentially very long term energy storage via pumped hydro, so I expect that would help as well. But natural gas can also be fired up occasionally on those very cloudy days when the wind is also not blowing. The pollution might not matter if you offset it via other means or you use green hydrogen or ammonia or something to that effect.
Since we already have a lot of natural gas power plants, we might not need to build any more, just maintain the more efficient ones in working order.
Because natural gas is cheap and nuclear is not. If you’re using tax payer dollars, you absolutely can be wasteful and choose the more expensive option. That may even make sense when you factor in the cost of the carbon dioxide pollution. We’re not there yet, but it could come back around, especially if you implement a high enough carbon tax, which I’ve always advocated for.
I think you can get potentially very long term energy storage via pumped hydro, so I expect that would help as well. But natural gas can also be fired up occasionally on those very cloudy days when the wind is also not blowing. The pollution might not matter if you offset it via other means or you use green hydrogen or ammonia or something to that effect.
Since we already have a lot of natural gas power plants, we might not need to build any more, just maintain the more efficient ones in working order.
Not entirely free of operational problems. France has repeatedly had to dial down their reactors when the river cooling water was too warm.
Rooftop solar in Australia is now cheaper in some jurisdictions than transmission per kWh. Meaning, if I tried to build a nuke or any other centralized generator and I gave the electricity away for free, rooftop solar would still be cheaper per kWh because consumers don’t need to pay to maintain transmission infrastructure..
Of course, only when the sun is shining. But it’s an incredible Lego block we’ve got to play with in building this new energy system, zero marginal cost generation.
Of course, only when the sun is shining. But it’s an incredible Lego block we’ve got to play with in building this new energy system, zero marginal cost generation.
> Rooftop solar in Australia is now cheaper in some jurisdictions than transmission per kWh
That is mind blowing to me. There’s definitely an argument to be made for decentralizing the grid.
That is mind blowing to me. There’s definitely an argument to be made for decentralizing the grid.
> I’m fond of pumped hydro, which we can do anywhere with a height difference
Not really economical unless you've got some suitably-shaped geology to build most of the storage vessels out of.
The lithium issues may be addressed by sodium-ion, which is now mature enough that you can buy it on aliexpress.
Not really economical unless you've got some suitably-shaped geology to build most of the storage vessels out of.
The lithium issues may be addressed by sodium-ion, which is now mature enough that you can buy it on aliexpress.
"Suitably-shaped geology" means a hilltop, depression optional. Without, you can scrape off the hilltop itself, and use the material to build a levee.
There’s sodium ion, molten sodium, iron air, probably various options with iron or aluminum. There’s literally dozens of promising battery chemistries for grid storage where weight and density don’t matter.
> If newer advances can’t make it cost competitive
Did they ever get rid of the rule that prohibits nuclear from being cost competitive? Its opponents got it so if they ever found a way to make it cost less the money explicitly had to be spent on new safety measures. Which obviously not only makes it impossible to reduce the cost but also removes any incentive to try.
Did they ever get rid of the rule that prohibits nuclear from being cost competitive? Its opponents got it so if they ever found a way to make it cost less the money explicitly had to be spent on new safety measures. Which obviously not only makes it impossible to reduce the cost but also removes any incentive to try.
What legal jurisdiction are you saying this was a rule in? I’ve never heard of this
US.
https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/glossary/alara.html
Google doesn't want to find a more specific link right now, but you can see the implication from the definition: If you find a way to make nuclear cost less than something else, now it's economical to make it cost more in order to reduce radiation exposure, with no lower limit where you can stop.
https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/basic-ref/glossary/alara.html
Google doesn't want to find a more specific link right now, but you can see the implication from the definition: If you find a way to make nuclear cost less than something else, now it's economical to make it cost more in order to reduce radiation exposure, with no lower limit where you can stop.
When I say nuclear, I don’t mean as the primary fuel source, but as a few strategically placed plants to serve as back up until large scale battery storage gets sufficiently commonplace until it is no longer needed. Eventually every house will have its own large battery and solar panels on its roof. In combination with grid battery storage, increased panel efficiencies and huge amounts of solar and wind farms eventually the need for backup nuclear energy plants will be next to zero and would probably only exist as small, mobile units that could be moved to disaster zones. Obviously I’m talking on a massive timescale here, we probably won’t get to this point this century unless someone really does make a room temp superconductor and then we can just pipe energy from the equator to where it’s needed.
> and then we can just pipe energy from the equator to where it’s needed.
Superconductors aren't the limiting factor for that, on paper we can already make a 40,000 km long 0.5Ω power line for costs comparable to current annual fossil fuel mining (Chinese annual coal alone is expensive enough for the aluminium).
The problem is geopolitics and that it's a megaproject.
Superconductors aren't the limiting factor for that, on paper we can already make a 40,000 km long 0.5Ω power line for costs comparable to current annual fossil fuel mining (Chinese annual coal alone is expensive enough for the aluminium).
The problem is geopolitics and that it's a megaproject.
Interesting, I knew there was talks about piping energy from Morocco/Sahara to the UK but didn't know anything about projected costs or feasibility. Politics is the worst.
Sahara to UK (or equivalent) is a necessary, but not sufficient, early step to learning how to do a full-scale planetary grid.
It will highlight many of the engineering issues and some of the political ones, and ideally will seem like an overpriced mess when we reach the level where we even want to optimise design and process for a full-size grid.
For a true planet scale grid, think half a trillion dollars of aluminium, 3.75 years of current annual worldwide production: its doable, just not what you should jump into without smaller scale experiments.
It will highlight many of the engineering issues and some of the political ones, and ideally will seem like an overpriced mess when we reach the level where we even want to optimise design and process for a full-size grid.
For a true planet scale grid, think half a trillion dollars of aluminium, 3.75 years of current annual worldwide production: its doable, just not what you should jump into without smaller scale experiments.
> a few strategically placed plants to serve as back up until large scale battery storage gets sufficiently commonplace until it is no longer needed
I suspect battery storage will reach that point before any nuclear plant started in the West today generates its first watt: about 10-15 years.
I suspect battery storage will reach that point before any nuclear plant started in the West today generates its first watt: about 10-15 years.
I really hope so!
do not underestimate the agendas for centralization of power and control
do not underestimate the sticky pull of collecting ̶r̶e̶n̶t̶^C ̶t̶a̶x̶e̶s̶subscriptions from people
do not underestimate the sticky pull of collecting ̶r̶e̶n̶t̶^C ̶t̶a̶x̶e̶s̶subscriptions from people
I'm hopeful for hydrogen use in aviation. Either that or some ridiculous breakthrough in battery tech, and the latter seems less likely than former.
Existing aircraft will be wholly unable to compete on any route where LH2 aircraft operate, but it will take a long time to bring up the infrastructure for it. Expect it to appear first on select freight routes.
Oddly, H2 aircraft seem to be promoted with inboard tanks. The natural place for the tanks is in nacelles slung under the wings, for safety. (Hydrogen would not fit in the wings.) Hydrogen tanks in an enclosed cabin is a formula for disaster.
Oddly, H2 aircraft seem to be promoted with inboard tanks. The natural place for the tanks is in nacelles slung under the wings, for safety. (Hydrogen would not fit in the wings.) Hydrogen tanks in an enclosed cabin is a formula for disaster.
I am fairly sure this is due to the necessity of having pressurized cylindrical storage for the hydrogen. Fitting that kind of tank into the wings is going to be hard.
Tanks would be wholly impossible to fit into the wings. Thus, the under-wing nacelles. But pressure cylinders are a non-starter, because they are heavy. Expect to see, instead, insulated, unpressurized LH2 tanks.
The common criticism of LH2 economics is the energy required for liquification. Are you assuming that this is taken care of by overbuilding solar/wind and creating LH2 opportunistically?
Much the way aluminum producers guarantee load for hydro power producers, airports will consume overproduction by nearby solar farms.
Given the power requirements of flight — they're fuel efficient per passenger-kilometre, but they have a lot of passengers and go a long distance — planes are the only place[0] where I think "overproduction by nearby solar farms" just isn't going to be a thing.
OPEC paving their deserts with PV and synthesising fuel (whatever that is: hydrogen, Sabatier methane, aluminium for burning) or just exporting that electricity along a 2m^2 cross section solid aluminium rod to the other side of the planet? Sure, plausible.
[0] I was going to say "and rockets", but then I realised we don't launch anything like as many rockets as we fly planes, so even then rockets might still be running on green hydrogen or methane derived from it.
OPEC paving their deserts with PV and synthesising fuel (whatever that is: hydrogen, Sabatier methane, aluminium for burning) or just exporting that electricity along a 2m^2 cross section solid aluminium rod to the other side of the planet? Sure, plausible.
[0] I was going to say "and rockets", but then I realised we don't launch anything like as many rockets as we fly planes, so even then rockets might still be running on green hydrogen or methane derived from it.
Notably, SpaceX is making no visible effort to synthesize methane for their cans. The only gesture in that direction is an announced plan to buy a pre-fab methane refinery that could possibly be adapted to run Sabatier; but no hint at a solar farm to power it, or a place to put one. I guess they could build one across the border in Mexico? CH4 for Cape Canaveral is a separate problem. More likely the refinery will just purify mined LNG.
Solar and wind farms supplying international airports would probably need to send power via HVDC transmission lines. But, yes, the airports will need much more than just overage from the farms, and probably booster shipments of LH2 from farms in the tropics, besides. Imagine how big must be the project of refining, transporting, storing, and distributing kerosene to gates, today. Yet it is made almost invisible.
Solar and wind farms supplying international airports would probably need to send power via HVDC transmission lines. But, yes, the airports will need much more than just overage from the farms, and probably booster shipments of LH2 from farms in the tropics, besides. Imagine how big must be the project of refining, transporting, storing, and distributing kerosene to gates, today. Yet it is made almost invisible.
For SpaceX in particular: if they don't do it, they're not going to Mars.
(That doesn't mean they will do it, it's just the consequence of failure).
(That doesn't mean they will do it, it's just the consequence of failure).
Not coming back, anyway.
> Existing aircraft will be wholly unable to compete on any route where LH2 aircraft operate
? Are you suggesting this will be a result of regulatory action? Since it would most likely be more expensive for the first decade, even if I gave you a tap on the airfield labelled "free H2"
? Are you suggesting this will be a result of regulatory action? Since it would most likely be more expensive for the first decade, even if I gave you a tap on the airfield labelled "free H2"
It is because the very large difference in fuel weight for a flight leaves radically increased capacity for carrying paying freight. As LH2 produced on-site at airports gets cheaper than Jet-A fuel, the gap widens.
I'd need to see the numbers on this on joule/kg, and then allowing for the increased tankage size.
Volume is cheap, on aircraft. If a normal freighter today takes off with 25t of kerosene, the similar-sized LH2 craft needs only 10t of LH2. That means it can take an additional 15t of paying cargo.
Why do you believe it will be freight first? Historically, the new aircraft go to pax service, then get converted after 20 or 30 years.
That tendency will delay the transition. But the big economic benefit arises from being able to carry 40% more cargo because the fuel is lighter. Passenger aircraft capacity is maxed out when the seats are full, now that carrying freight in the same aircraft is not allowed. Also, it will take a long time for safety worries to be satisfied.
I think hydrogen for aviation is probably a dead end. I suspect the long term solution for aviation, at least long haul, is biofuels. Battery tech is edging into the realm where it could be used for short haul flights, but we have quite a ways to go before you'll be able to fly across the Pacific, or even Atlantic, on a single charge with reasonable passenger comfort.
Biofuels are fundamentally not green. You might as well suggest we use fossil fuels forever.
Biofuels today have issues, but there's no fundamental problem preventing them from being green. It's just a side effect of shoehorning them into our existing agriculture systems.
In the future when we have more solar power than we know what to do with during the day it may become economical to run the Sabatier reaction with hydrolyzed seawater and atmospheric CO2 to make methane, which can be burned in a lightly modified aircraft turbine.
In the future when we have more solar power than we know what to do with during the day it may become economical to run the Sabatier reaction with hydrolyzed seawater and atmospheric CO2 to make methane, which can be burned in a lightly modified aircraft turbine.
That isn't biofuel. That's synthetic fuel.
What do you mean? The fuel itself should be carbon neutral, even if it requires extra energy to create. I don't see any reason you couldn't make carbon neutral bio fuel, although I'd net on syngas instead.
Growing food and converting it to fuel is not carbon neutral. Farming is very resource intensive at the scales needed. In fact, it is literally the same idea as carbon capture, but via biology instead of synthetic. As a result, it is entirely a bad idea.
flying machines and hydrogen has an spotless history without any tragedies whatsoever
A catch is that hydrogen does become much safer in high-pressure tanks, because, when such tanks are breached, hydrogen escapes so fast that it can't react with oxygen fast enough to burst into flame. To prove this, Toyota literally shot their hydrogen tank with .50 cal[1].
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVeagFmmwA0
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVeagFmmwA0
Practically no one died in the Hindenberg disaster. There were more people injured than died. Most people involved just walked away from it. It was televised spectacle much more than a factual tragedy.
(It's a bit like saying we shouldn't use AC power because look what Edison did with those poor elephants. It's interesting anti-technological propaganda that made sense socio-politically at the time but isn't that useful to today's discussions.)
(It's a bit like saying we shouldn't use AC power because look what Edison did with those poor elephants. It's interesting anti-technological propaganda that made sense socio-politically at the time but isn't that useful to today's discussions.)
Hydrogen can be generated on-site (and in quite a few cases, that's preferable over filling up elsewhere).
So if the efficiency of generating hydrogen is increased, that's a win for endusers no matter if they do it themselves or pump it somewhere from 3rd party.
You are correct about the subscription model though.
So if the efficiency of generating hydrogen is increased, that's a win for endusers no matter if they do it themselves or pump it somewhere from 3rd party.
You are correct about the subscription model though.
Altria bought Juul. Nothing stops a company from leveraging itself with the beast that will one day eat it.
Won't AI change the energy market?
Once GPU production is fully ramped up, I would expect AI to become energy bound. Can we install enough renewable energy and nuclear power plants to fulfill the demand to the point that energy will be ridiculously cheap?
Once GPU production is fully ramped up, I would expect AI to become energy bound. Can we install enough renewable energy and nuclear power plants to fulfill the demand to the point that energy will be ridiculously cheap?
What’s all that AI going to be doing all day to become energy-bound?
Write spam on everything with a text field?
AI as currently modeled can pretty much never get enough data, so mostly data processing, and model generation.
when a query is asked of an AI it has to generate a response from all of that data and the query and response themselves become data
running an LLM on local consumer hardware can take upwards of 20 minutes for a single query, so an AI service that may be responding to up millions of requests a day would need a massive hyper-parallelized server infrastructure
when a query is asked of an AI it has to generate a response from all of that data and the query and response themselves become data
running an LLM on local consumer hardware can take upwards of 20 minutes for a single query, so an AI service that may be responding to up millions of requests a day would need a massive hyper-parallelized server infrastructure
It’s energy bound in the sense that Datacenters only have so much energy supply, and heat dissipation capabilities. And the grid these DCs are hooked to only have so much excess generation that can be tapped.
But there’s ways to solve that through energy generation and DC investments.
But there’s ways to solve that through energy generation and DC investments.
It will, but that's also an x/y problem. We're seeing ridiculous energy costs and supply chain issues for crypto and AI because they're using the wrong architecture: GPU/SIMD.
I got my computer engineering degree back in the 90s because superscalar VLSI was popular and I wanted to design highly-concurrent multicore CPUs with 256 cores or more. Had GPUs not totally dominated the market, Apple's multicore M1 line approach with local memories would have happened in the early 2000s, instead of the smartphone revolution which prioritized low cost and low energy use above all. We would have had 1000 core machines in 2010 and 100,000-1 million core machines for 2020, for under $1000 at current transistor count costs. Programmed with languages like Erlang/Go, MATLAB/Octave, and Julia/Clojure in an auto-parallelized scatter-gather immutable functional programming approach where a single thread of execution distributes all loops and conditional logic across the cores and joins it under a synchronous blocking programming model. Basically the opposite of where the tech industry has gone with async (today's goto).
That put us all on the wrong path and left us where we are today with relatively ok LLMs and training data drawn from surveillance capitalism. Whereas we could have had a democratized AI model with multiple fabs producing big dumb multicore CPUs and people training them at home on distributed learning systems similar to SETI@home.
Now it's too late, and thankfully nobody cares what people like me think anyway. So the GPU status quo is cemented for the foreseeable future, and competitors won't be able to compete with established players like Nvidia. The only downside is having to live in the wrong reality.
Multiply this change of perception by all tech everywhere. I like to think of living in a bizarro reality like this one as the misanthropic principle.
I got my computer engineering degree back in the 90s because superscalar VLSI was popular and I wanted to design highly-concurrent multicore CPUs with 256 cores or more. Had GPUs not totally dominated the market, Apple's multicore M1 line approach with local memories would have happened in the early 2000s, instead of the smartphone revolution which prioritized low cost and low energy use above all. We would have had 1000 core machines in 2010 and 100,000-1 million core machines for 2020, for under $1000 at current transistor count costs. Programmed with languages like Erlang/Go, MATLAB/Octave, and Julia/Clojure in an auto-parallelized scatter-gather immutable functional programming approach where a single thread of execution distributes all loops and conditional logic across the cores and joins it under a synchronous blocking programming model. Basically the opposite of where the tech industry has gone with async (today's goto).
That put us all on the wrong path and left us where we are today with relatively ok LLMs and training data drawn from surveillance capitalism. Whereas we could have had a democratized AI model with multiple fabs producing big dumb multicore CPUs and people training them at home on distributed learning systems similar to SETI@home.
Now it's too late, and thankfully nobody cares what people like me think anyway. So the GPU status quo is cemented for the foreseeable future, and competitors won't be able to compete with established players like Nvidia. The only downside is having to live in the wrong reality.
Multiply this change of perception by all tech everywhere. I like to think of living in a bizarro reality like this one as the misanthropic principle.
I favor nuclear. It is clean, reliable, and surprisingly safe, especially with all the regulations on the sector.
But it was never, and will never be "cheap".
Also not all places might be suitable for nuclear, for various reasons. Hydrogen might be a good option.
But it was never, and will never be "cheap".
Also not all places might be suitable for nuclear, for various reasons. Hydrogen might be a good option.
nuclear isn't cheap if you are thinking about the cost to build out a new plant under current design.
but the per kw cost is relatively low as i understand it since the fuel is so efficient and its getting cheaper as new reactor designs get cheaper and safer
but the per kw cost is relatively low as i understand it since the fuel is so efficient and its getting cheaper as new reactor designs get cheaper and safer
BEVs are the biggest example of greenwashing today. You will need a vast increase in raw material demand and it is arguably completely unsustainable. Especially once you realize that we are making battery powered SUVs.
In reality, people are spreading a conspiracy theory to mentally distract from this fact. They do not want to admit that they have been fooled by battery makers, so they create a narrative that the alternative is somehow an ever bigger scam.
In reality, people are spreading a conspiracy theory to mentally distract from this fact. They do not want to admit that they have been fooled by battery makers, so they create a narrative that the alternative is somehow an ever bigger scam.
I'm seeing a lot of people here assuming that the purpose of green hydrogen is for fuel cells / automotive transport, but I don't see many people in this space talking about that anymore (except Toyota).
Instead there is a lot more interest in using green hydrogen for industrial purposes or as a key building block for cleaner fuels like methanol. Currently green hydrogen is expensive to make and sucks to transport. But it will likely get a lot cheaper to produce in the next 10 years and you can convert it into fuels that are easier to transport.
There is recent episode of Volts that interviews a startup trying to do this: https://www.volts.wtf/p/making-shipping-fuel-with-off-grid#d...
Instead there is a lot more interest in using green hydrogen for industrial purposes or as a key building block for cleaner fuels like methanol. Currently green hydrogen is expensive to make and sucks to transport. But it will likely get a lot cheaper to produce in the next 10 years and you can convert it into fuels that are easier to transport.
There is recent episode of Volts that interviews a startup trying to do this: https://www.volts.wtf/p/making-shipping-fuel-with-off-grid#d...
I agree with this. I think there will still be niche products using liquid fuels. Like for example "explorer" or "offroader" type vehicles that require higher energy densities. And aviation of course. But commuter transportation will be using direct current or batteries.
But the two chief uses will be in industrial processes that use hydrogen directly, in chemical processes that use hydrocarbons directly, and in energy storage applications where you need to store large quantities of energy for weeks or months or years.
But the two chief uses will be in industrial processes that use hydrogen directly, in chemical processes that use hydrocarbons directly, and in energy storage applications where you need to store large quantities of energy for weeks or months or years.
> I think there will still be niche products using liquid fuels.
One of those niches: boats. Specifically: user-owned recreational ones.
Not because it's hard to build electric propulsion systems for boats. There already exist many types of motors, batteries & control systems to choose from. Not because battery weight / size is a problem (it isn't). Not because of safety issues (gas/diesel have their own).
But because it requires a big upfront investment. Converting to electrical propulsion is (for most boats) expensive. For someone who already owns a gas/diesel powered boat, but not the $$ to convert into all-electric, that's a big hurdle.
Of course new boats will replace old ones over time. But average boat lasts much longer (read: takes much longer to replace) than eg. cars. Average car is what, 6..8y old? Average boat more like 20y+. Electric conversion that's both easy and cheap, is not a thing (yet?).
Professional owners like ferries, commercial shipping or boat rental, will deal with this. Private owners of recreational boats, not so quick.
That means: there will be gas/diesel powered boats around for many years. Having 'green' fuel for those available everywhere, would be quite a boon.
One of those niches: boats. Specifically: user-owned recreational ones.
Not because it's hard to build electric propulsion systems for boats. There already exist many types of motors, batteries & control systems to choose from. Not because battery weight / size is a problem (it isn't). Not because of safety issues (gas/diesel have their own).
But because it requires a big upfront investment. Converting to electrical propulsion is (for most boats) expensive. For someone who already owns a gas/diesel powered boat, but not the $$ to convert into all-electric, that's a big hurdle.
Of course new boats will replace old ones over time. But average boat lasts much longer (read: takes much longer to replace) than eg. cars. Average car is what, 6..8y old? Average boat more like 20y+. Electric conversion that's both easy and cheap, is not a thing (yet?).
Professional owners like ferries, commercial shipping or boat rental, will deal with this. Private owners of recreational boats, not so quick.
That means: there will be gas/diesel powered boats around for many years. Having 'green' fuel for those available everywhere, would be quite a boon.
There's been talk of replacing the natural gas used directly for heating in the UK with hydrogen. I have absolutely no idea how viable that will actually prove to be but it seems difficult.
So technically it might be possible to do that. But I don't think the economics would work out for that. Mostly because your cost of hydrogen will then be linked to the cost of electricity coming in. Given the choice between hydrogen which will cost the base electricity prices + overhead of electrolysis plants and transportation or to just use a resistive heater, you would most likely pick the resistive heater since it would be cheaper.
Not saying people should switch to resistive heaters since they significantly less efficient than heat pumps but simply that resistive electric heating would be cheaper than hydrogen (If that hydrogen is produced using electrolysis).
Not saying people should switch to resistive heaters since they significantly less efficient than heat pumps but simply that resistive electric heating would be cheaper than hydrogen (If that hydrogen is produced using electrolysis).
> base electricity prices + overhead of electrolysis plants and transportation
IF the capital cost of electrolysis isn't too bad - and this paper suggests that it can be done more cheaply than the current use of platinum - then it's economical to run them with zero or negative cost electricity produced by renewables overbuild, then keep the hydrogen in tanks (another if) or convert it to actual natural gas via the sabatier reaction and keep that. That may be cheaper than building really huge battery farms for long-duration electric storage.
IF the capital cost of electrolysis isn't too bad - and this paper suggests that it can be done more cheaply than the current use of platinum - then it's economical to run them with zero or negative cost electricity produced by renewables overbuild, then keep the hydrogen in tanks (another if) or convert it to actual natural gas via the sabatier reaction and keep that. That may be cheaper than building really huge battery farms for long-duration electric storage.
So negative cost electricity tends to be a side effect of large thermal power plants that can't ramp down quickly due to a drop in demand. Renewables can typically be turned off relatively easily. Maybe there will be situations that might still happen with an over build of renewables but I haven't heard of any. But either way if prices of electricity become very cheap then using that electricity directly with a heat pump or resistive heater also becomes cheaper.
I am not saying making hydrogen can't be economical utilizing cheap off peak rates. I just don't see it as economical for home heating or typical consumer transportation since there are alternatives that utilize electricity directly.
I am not saying making hydrogen can't be economical utilizing cheap off peak rates. I just don't see it as economical for home heating or typical consumer transportation since there are alternatives that utilize electricity directly.
Interesting; I wonder if similar approaches will help make the fuel cells cheaper as well as hydrogen?
Even if not, even if vehicles remain fully electric (which is my assumption):
> The scientists said gray, black, and brown hydrogen release 9 to 12 tons of carbon dioxide for each ton of hydrogen produced. Yet, they correspond to 95% of all hydrogen currently produced worldwide for agricultural and industrial needs. Even if this green hydrogen does not help move a vehicle, it is a welcome way to curb the production of the gray and black kinds.
It's good to see them prompting all the other things this will also be useful for.
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On a separate topic: this is the second site in a row where the full-screen "we respect your privacy click here to agree" banner won't actually let me scroll down to any of the buttons.
I'm glad reader mode works, or I wouldn't be able to see any actual content.
Even if not, even if vehicles remain fully electric (which is my assumption):
> The scientists said gray, black, and brown hydrogen release 9 to 12 tons of carbon dioxide for each ton of hydrogen produced. Yet, they correspond to 95% of all hydrogen currently produced worldwide for agricultural and industrial needs. Even if this green hydrogen does not help move a vehicle, it is a welcome way to curb the production of the gray and black kinds.
It's good to see them prompting all the other things this will also be useful for.
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On a separate topic: this is the second site in a row where the full-screen "we respect your privacy click here to agree" banner won't actually let me scroll down to any of the buttons.
I'm glad reader mode works, or I wouldn't be able to see any actual content.
> The scientists said gray, black, and brown hydrogen release 9 to 12 tons of carbon dioxide for each ton of hydrogen produced. Yet, they correspond to 95% of all hydrogen currently produced worldwide for agricultural and industrial needs. Even if this green hydrogen does not help move a vehicle, it is a welcome way to curb the production of the gray and black kinds.
It will only do that if countries put laws in place to require green hydrogen. green hydrogen is not just expensive because it is new, but theoretically expensive because there are currently two routes to turn natural gas into hydrogen:
gas -> combined cycle gas turbine (40% loss) -> generator -> electricity
electricity -> electrolysis (10-50% loss) -> hydrogen
gas -> steam reforming (25% loss) -> hydrogen.
From this, you can make equations bounding the prices of gas, electricity, and hydrogen for any process to be profitable. It turns out that for the middle process to work out economically, the first must be non-economic. ie. the price of electricity must be very low while the price of gas is very high.
With gas just flowing out of the ground in the USA, russia, saudi arabia, and others, this will never happen. In fact, in many places the price of gas is so low we just burn it off because it isn't even valuable enough to collect or transport.
It will only do that if countries put laws in place to require green hydrogen. green hydrogen is not just expensive because it is new, but theoretically expensive because there are currently two routes to turn natural gas into hydrogen:
gas -> combined cycle gas turbine (40% loss) -> generator -> electricity
electricity -> electrolysis (10-50% loss) -> hydrogen
gas -> steam reforming (25% loss) -> hydrogen.
From this, you can make equations bounding the prices of gas, electricity, and hydrogen for any process to be profitable. It turns out that for the middle process to work out economically, the first must be non-economic. ie. the price of electricity must be very low while the price of gas is very high.
With gas just flowing out of the ground in the USA, russia, saudi arabia, and others, this will never happen. In fact, in many places the price of gas is so low we just burn it off because it isn't even valuable enough to collect or transport.
> In fact, in many places the price of gas is so low we just burn it off because it isn't even valuable enough to collect or transport.
Underrated comment. In fact, it's even worse than that: in places it must be burnt, because the CO2 is a less dangerous greenhouse gas than the methane itself.
This is a big problem in Turkmenistan where it's literally coming out of the ground on its own https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/02/us-deal-...
Underrated comment. In fact, it's even worse than that: in places it must be burnt, because the CO2 is a less dangerous greenhouse gas than the methane itself.
This is a big problem in Turkmenistan where it's literally coming out of the ground on its own https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/02/us-deal-...
Does this solve your problem ? : https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/overlay-remov...
Assuming you have uBlock Origin installed - and if you don't you should assuming you're using a real browser - you can you the 'element zapper mode' to remove anything which happens to be in your way. Map this function to a key combination - I'm LeftShift-Alt-Z - and zap away any such impediments.
I've started having the "impossible to navigate to the buttons" issue more and more. My best guess is that they just aren't made to work on my 5.4" phone screen. Which is absurd, since I still feel like it's "too big."
> On a separate topic: this is the second site in a row where the full-screen "we respect your privacy click here to agree" banner won't actually let me scroll down to any of the buttons.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/behind-the-overlay...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/behind-the-overlay...
> https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/behind-the-overlay...
Safari on iPhone.
Safari on iPhone.
This link has a better written overview of the work:
https://english.m.tau.ac.il/green_hydrogen_2023
https://english.m.tau.ac.il/green_hydrogen_2023
They miss another core argument the cost to transport and store it is quite high.
This is not true at all. The cost of storage scales very well for hydrogen, must better than any other alternative.
Transportation is context dependent. If you can build transmission lines, then do so. But hydrogen and synthetic fuels allow you to ship energy half way around the world. It is still the second best option even in that case.
You need to compress hydrogen and storage containers need to be specially built for H2. It requires more energy and specific tankers to be able to handle it under pressure.
It is a fuel which has that advantage in that is it does transport around the world and can utilized on the specific site intentioned.
That said it is expensive specifically for hydrogen relative to other fuels that don't need special handling/containers/pressurizing.
It is a fuel which has that advantage in that is it does transport around the world and can utilized on the specific site intentioned.
That said it is expensive specifically for hydrogen relative to other fuels that don't need special handling/containers/pressurizing.
And conversion back into mechanical energy to push the car forward :|
"Hydrogen storage would still be a problem unless the gas was transformed into synthetic fuel. Hopefully, another scientific breakthrough could address that as soon as possible. We also have another idea floating around that may help solve that."
This statement at the end of the article leads me to believe any widespread distribution of hydrogen is at least 10 years off. It'll be interesting to see if Toyota is vindicated after all! Realistically speaking, this seems like a good solution for long range trucks.
This statement at the end of the article leads me to believe any widespread distribution of hydrogen is at least 10 years off. It'll be interesting to see if Toyota is vindicated after all! Realistically speaking, this seems like a good solution for long range trucks.
Nope. It doesn't make sense for long range trucks either. Hydrogen trucks do not have more range than BEV trucks, and they are significantly more expensive to fuel. Battery energy density is increasing and cost is decreasing so fast that hydrogen is irrelevant for all ground transport. In 10 years we will laugh that anyone thought hydrogen was the future.
In ten years, expect nothing visible to happen. The time horizon for a heavy H2 infrastructure is at least 20 years, probably more.
The sweet spot for electrolysers will, instead, be cheapest possible inefficient units, because the power to drive them will have "marginal cost zero", i.e. be free, coming from production in massively over-provisioned solar farms in excess of immediate demand. Capital cost dominates because of intermittent utilization.
Even if hydrogen could be created with 100% efficiency it would still be very poor compared to just using electricity from batteries. The issue is the engines themselves are very inefficient, something like 20-30% and as such the same electricity will go a lot further directly compared to burning hydrogen. There are so many extra inefficiencies with transport and storage compared to existing and improved electrical infrastructure, its just not competitive.
It might have some benefits in certain vehicle types where energy density and being far from a grid might make it beneficial but it will be a lot more expensive than electrical vehicles. Portable charging infrastructure with and wind and solar will often be a better option.
I can't see hydrogen being anything but niche now unless substantial efficiency is found in the engine optimisation, generation and storage.
It might have some benefits in certain vehicle types where energy density and being far from a grid might make it beneficial but it will be a lot more expensive than electrical vehicles. Portable charging infrastructure with and wind and solar will often be a better option.
I can't see hydrogen being anything but niche now unless substantial efficiency is found in the engine optimisation, generation and storage.
Okay, what's the cost of the machine?
Because with cheap solar power, I care relatively more about the cost of the machine than about efficiency.
Because with cheap solar power, I care relatively more about the cost of the machine than about efficiency.
Is this the new Nikola [1] ?
[1] https://www.reuters.com/legal/nikola-founders-trial-us-fraud...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/legal/nikola-founders-trial-us-fraud...
Let's see if white hydrogen turns into something real. Could be bad for anyone invested in electrolytes, but great for fuel cells, etc.
Hydrogen is dead on arrival because steam methane reforming will always be cheaper than electrolysis, it's basically a fossil fuel.
It will be cheaper until it isn't. Then, it won't be.
Hydrogen electrolysed using zero-marginal-cost power from solar farms producing in excess of demand, on cheapest-conceivable electrolysers, will become cheaper than what depends on extracting, concentrating, and transporting NG.
Hydrogen electrolysed using zero-marginal-cost power from solar farms producing in excess of demand, on cheapest-conceivable electrolysers, will become cheaper than what depends on extracting, concentrating, and transporting NG.
What you describe still is uneconomical: building out solar farms to exceed demand.
It might one day be a thing, as a matter of load-shifting and providing energy-dense fuels for applications where that's convenient (like airplanes).
But today it's not, and a lot of talk about hydrogen comes from the fossil fuel industry trying to delay adoption of renewables like solar.
But today it's not, and a lot of talk about hydrogen comes from the fossil fuel industry trying to delay adoption of renewables like solar.
Solar farms are necessarily built to exceed instantaneous demand, because they must meet demand when sunshine is reduced.
This is highly disingenuous. The problem isn't just that electrolysis isn't 100% efficient. It's that the electrolysis and the compression and the transmission and the distribution and the fuel cell all have efficiency problems, and are all much more expensive that the alternative (straight electric).