Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Hydrogen, despite its severe shortcomings, is a dispatchable form of zero carbon energy, and is therefore a grave threat to useless renewables.
Lawmakers Stifle N.M. Governor’s Clean Hydrogen Economy Plan
State legislators from both sides of the aisle have voted to table the proposed bill that aims to make the state a hub of hydrogen energy. Gov. Lujan Grisham worries that, without the bill, the state may miss its climate goals.
Jan. 28, 2022 • Robert Nott, The Santa Fe New Mexican
(TNS) — New Mexico lawmakers from both parties have stymied Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s controversial plan to build what she calls a clean hydrogen economy.
After nearly six hours of debate Thursday, the House Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Committee voted 6-4 to table House Bill 4 — aimed to make the state a hub of hydrogen production by offering tax incentives to develop the infrastructure to separate the energy source from natural gas.
The hearing was the bill’s first hurdle during the legislative session. It’s unclear whether it will get a second chance. Legislation that has been tabled in a committee rarely is revived for discussion or another vote.
…
While the governor’s hydrogen plan has had support from the oil and gas industry, it has met fierce opposition by environmental groups and progressive Democrats who say the use of natural gas would increase fossil fuel production and lead to further emissions of greenhouse gases during a climate crisis.
Tom Solomon, a retired electrical engineer and co-coordinator of 350 New Mexico, a climate advocacy group, said he was pleased the bill was tabled.
“I would rather it had been voted down completely,” he said. “Having it not proceed is the best next thing.”
…
Read more: https://www.governing.com/now/lawmakers-stifle-n-m-governors-clean-hydrogen-economy-plan
Hydrogen is commercially produced through steam reforming of fossil fuel, typically either coal or natural gas. Fossil fuel can “burn” water, if you compress and heat it enough – the carbon in the fossil fuel strips the oxygen from the water, leaving carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, hydrogen and a bunch of other byproducts.
Fossil fuel companies love this technology, because the obvious place to “sequester” all that waste CO2 is depleted and otherwise worthless oil and gas mines.
Some green hydrogen proposals have further antagonised greens, by suggesting installing the carbon capture system should be deferred, so the allegedly clean hydrogen plant would vent all the waste CO2 into the atmosphere, just like a regular fossil fuel plant – though I don’t know if this is a feature of the New Mexico proposals.
Greens have also cited a study which suggest methane leaks would more than cancel any savings from sequestering the CO2.
How green is blue hydrogen?
Robert W. Howarth, Mark Z. Jacobson
First published: 12 August 2021Hydrogen is often viewed as an important energy carrier in a future decarbonized world. Currently, most hydrogen is produced by steam reforming of methane in natural gas (“gray hydrogen”), with high carbon dioxide emissions. Increasingly, many propose using carbon capture and storage to reduce these emissions, producing so-called “blue hydrogen,” frequently promoted as low emissions. We undertake the first effort in a peer-reviewed paper to examine the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of blue hydrogen accounting for emissions of both carbon dioxide and unburned fugitive methane. Far from being low carbon, greenhouse gas emissions from the production of blue hydrogen are quite high, particularly due to the release of fugitive methane. For our default assumptions (3.5% emission rate of methane from natural gas and a 20-year global warming potential), total carbon dioxide equivalent emissions for blue hydrogen are only 9%-12% less than for gray hydrogen. While carbon dioxide emissions are lower, fugitive methane emissions for blue hydrogen are higher than for gray hydrogen because of an increased use of natural gas to power the carbon capture. Perhaps surprisingly, the greenhouse gas footprint of blue hydrogen is more than 20% greater than burning natural gas or coal for heat and some 60% greater than burning diesel oil for heat, again with our default assumptions. In a sensitivity analysis in which the methane emission rate from natural gas is reduced to a low value of 1.54%, greenhouse gas emissions from blue hydrogen are still greater than from simply burning natural gas, and are only 18%-25% less than for gray hydrogen. Our analysis assumes that captured carbon dioxide can be stored indefinitely, an optimistic and unproven assumption. Even if true though, the use of blue hydrogen appears difficult to justify on climate grounds.
Read more: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ese3.956
In my opinion the entire situation is a joke – a battle between proponents of a completely useless form of energy and a likely useless form of energy.
Hydrogen is horribly dangerous compared to fossil fuel, when it leaks it ignites or even detonates over a very wide range of mixtures with air. The flame from leaks burns so hot it is all but invisible, so I expect to see lots of dead people if hydrogen is widely adopted. Compressed hydrogen is not something you would want in quantity near anything you care about.
I have personal experience with hydrogen. As a kid I couldn’t afford Helium, so I used a simple household chemical reaction to generate vast quantities of hydrogen to fill party balloons. The balloons went off with a terrific bang when ignited, or sometimes even if they were just popped. Strictly an outdoor decoration. Some of the balloons detonated while being filled, the slightest spark or leak or friction against the surface of the balloon was enough. Sometimes they detonated for no obvious reason.
But hydrogen has one important advantage over renewables – it is dispatchable.
As awareness grows just how useless intermittent and unreliable renewables are, slightly less useless “green” alternatives like natural gas to hydrogen are attracting attention – and this has renewable energy proponents very worried indeed.
The following is a bunch of university students detonating a large balloon filled with hydrogen. The quantity of hydrogen in the balloon is only a small fraction of the quantity stored in say the gas tank of a hydrogen powered automobile.
Correction (EW): h/t Crispin Pemberton-Pigott, fixed a typo.
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I could not think of a more wasteful form of energy storage than H2 created by reforming fossil fuels. Now if solar energy was almost free then the electrolysis of water could become a way to store the solar energy. The H2 could be turned into a liquid fuel.
Storing hydrogen in its atomic form isn’t as easy as one might think. Tank sizes for gaseous hydrogen are problematic and cryogenic liquification and storage is even worse.
It’s the green thought that counts and the green money for the lobbyists.
The climatistas think they’ll get into heaven easier if they have enough green thoughts. :-}
Greens are also keen to restore wetlands. Bogs and marshes are active emitters of … methane.
The hydrogen economy is way, way further along than this article suggests and doesn’t necessarily involve fossil fuels. The Japanese appear to be the leader in this. There’s some talk of ammonia being a good liquid carrier for hydrogen, but this company – Chiyoda has worked out a catalytic process for using toluene as the hydrogen carrier by hydrogenation to methylcyclohexane and, at the risk of having griff wet his panties, all the carbon atoms can be sustainable:
https://www.greencarcongress.com/2021/02/20210203-mch.html
$150 Billion may be small change in the $1.5 Trillion climate industry but $150 Billion here and a $150 Billion there and pretty soon you’re talking real money.
“$150 Billion may be small change”
don’t let Elon Musk hear you say that- that’s his net worth :-}
Ah, yes! Store hydrogen by compounding it with carbon! Why didn’t Gaia ever think of that?
Make it trinitrotoluene – what a lovely mixture – Hydrogen and TNT.
How crazy can our world become.
The only bloke with any sense leading a country at present is Vlad the lad.
Think of the honest advertisements, though. “0 to 100 in 0.01 seconds!”
(Hmm. Take the blueprints from the original Orion project, scale them down, turn them sideways… I’ll hold your beer for you.)
There isn’t, and never will be, a “hydrogen economy.”
Hydrogen is “The Elizabeth Taylor of Elements” – always married to something else. The “divorce” plus efficiency losses means the energy expended will always exceed the energy the oxymoronic “hydrogen fuel” will ever supply.
Just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean there isn’t one. I can’t say I particularly like it either, but it exists. Two of many examples I can give are that all the buses in Oakland where I live are powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Bosch in Germany are really big into this too. McKinsey and Co. project it to be $140 Billion by 2030 (I guess I exaggerated it by $10 Billion, oooops). H2 has a huge energy density by weight and you’re wrong on your energy expended comment. The chemistry is well worked out and published. For example:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1876610219308677
It does have a huge energy density by weight, its just that there is a huge amount of energy required to get hydrogen compressed enough to overcomes its horrific energy per unit of density….
We need our energy distribution networks to use relatively little of the energy we put into the system, so that there is significant percentages of that input energy available for the end consumer.
The real issue with renewables is that they have terrible EROI’s, requiring huge up front energy investment with a long tail of energy generation, they need energy consuming batteries to meet 24/7 supply, and need significant distribution systems because they collect low density energy sources. Too much of the collected energy is consumed in the collection and distribution processes. Hydrogen is just another energy hungry battery system connecting intermittent supply with constant need consumers.
Yes
Hydrogen capture is way, way better than batteries. Whatever the posters up there ^^ think, this is already happening and it’s way more real than the useless f-kin concept of ECS frying our grandchildren, if ECS is even a real thing which, of course, it isn’t despite the protestations of lukewarmers without a cause:
https://www.shokubai.org/tocat8/pdf/Plenary/PL9.pdf
Well yeah, you could look at it that way but, with energy storage being a cutting edge problem, it is a better battery system that is also a better solution for my adopted homeland than giving wealth to the Chinese phony-“communists” for raping the planet for lithium and so on and so forth.
PS Ask yourself why the Japanese are all over this.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d42473-020-00542-w
No one is going to be storing atomic. Hydrogen exists mostly in its molecular form, H2.
You are correct about liquid H2. I was thinking more along the lines of ammonia, methanol or methane.
Agreed about methanol. All non-mineral garbage can be turned into methanol and all needed organic chemicals can be produced from that. This is the fundamental of the proposed methanol economy, which is a competitor to the hydrogen economy.
Using methane and methanol as the main storage media dispenses with all manner of wasteful and unreliable technologies.
Plastics can be rendered into methanol as an intermediary raw material. Presto, a circular economy.
It would be helpful to host an article from the proponents of the methanol economy as they are not getting much oxygen these days.
Maybe there will be good H2 and bad H2 – just as there is good CO2 (from China) and bad CO2 (from USA).
You are correct about liquid H2. I was thinking more along the lines of ammonia, methanol or methane.
I totally agree. This is a white elephant project. Complete waste of time and money.
A basic honest engineering analysis that included energy efficiencies (to produce the hydrogen, to store the hydrogen, and then to burn the hydrogen to produce electricity), complete with ball park costs of each component, and the energy to create the components… should have killed the scheme.
Governments do not care that they are completely wasting money and are busy creating fake engineering/analysis to justify working on a white elephant.
As we all know China and India are busy burning coal.
The Left wing’s objective with the crazy hydrogen scheme is to create a magic battery that can store electricity which is produced by ineffective sun and wind gathering.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage
“The overarching challenge is the very low boiling point of H2: it boils around 20.268 K (−252.882 °C or −423.188 °F). Achieving such low temperatures requires significant energy.”
1) The energy required to liquify hydrogen and to transport gaseous hydrogen is so great, there is no rational/logical reasons to justify the risk to create and store the liquid hydrogen and to transport the hydrogen.
2) Liquid hydrogen stored in a tank becomes a bomb if the cryogenic cooling system fails.
3) Hydrogen the molecule is so small it leaks by all fittings, making very difficult and dangerous to pump.
But efficiency only matters to engineers. The Green Blob is saving the Earth, the hell with the cost.
Jim did you see the Dec 2021 story on “Fusion Reaction Has Generated More Energy Than Absorbed by The FuelFor the first time, a fusion reaction has achieved a record 1.3 megajoule energy output – and for the first time, exceeding energy absorbed by the fuel used to trigger it.
It starts with a capsule of fuel, consisting of deuterium and tritium – heavier isotopes of hydrogen. This fuel capsule is placed in a hollow gold chamber about the size of a pencil eraser called a hohlraum.
Then, 192 high-powered laser beams are blasted at the hohlraum, where they are converted into X-rays. These X-rays implode the fuel capsule, heating and compressing it to conditions comparable to those in the center of a star – temperatures in excess of 100 million degrees Celsius (180 million Fahrenheit) and pressures greater than 100 billion Earth atmospheres – turning the fuel capsule into a tiny blob of plasma.
For the Conversion MJ to W-hr 1.3 MJ = 361.1 Wh. Billions in equipment to run 6 each 60w lights for an hour?
I think that using fusion-generated electricity to crack water would be the best path to the H economy. The fusion part is only 30 years away with only a couple of decades more to develop the hydrogen storage, etc. problems.
The only competition to this approach is the perpetual motion generator which is only about three decades away.
“The fusion part is only 30 years away” Fusion has always been 30 years away for as long as I can remember. If and when it comes it will not be free energy. Yes the fuel will be cheap but hardware will cost lots of $$$$.
Did you read the last line?
“The only competition to this approach is the perpetual motion generator which is only about three decades away.”
Really!!! Sarc. !!!
“Governments do not care that they are completely wasting money and are busy creating fake engineering/analysis to justify working on a white elephant.”
“Governments do not care that they are completely wasting Taxpayers money and are busy creating fake engineering/analysis to justify working on a white elephant.
There, all fixed!!!
https://plasmakinetics.com may have the solution to N2 storage but fuel cells require platinum may be the big H2 problem.
IIRC in a previous article it stated that in order to deliver the same amount of energy in a single tankerload of petrol it would take 16 tanker loads of hydrogen.
Presumably the tankers would themselves use hydrogen as a fuel, so they in turn would need a much larger fuel tank, 16 times the size if they are to cover the same mileage.
PS: I hope the students were made to clear up the mess they made blowing up the hydrogen balloon.
In the UK Network Rail looked into the possibility of hydrogen fuelled trains replacing diesel but decided that as it would require fuel storage 8 times bigger, and also take up to 20 hours to refuel the train, hydrogen trains were not suitable for freight or high powered/ high speed passenger trains.
Use the Hydrogen to make Ammonia or methanol.
Much more efficient to just use the natural gas for energy.
I’m not a scientist, but I just use logic.
You’ll never get a fat juicy grant admitting to that
When has “logic” ever been used in the Climastrolgy business? It’s a contradiction in terms!!!
Hydrogen is not a very good source but electricity is useless as it must be used when produced but at least hydrogen can be time shifted – that is produce stored and used when need
obviously the electrical engineer in the activist group has no comprehension of how most of his power is produced
Solar energy is never free.
And to get an economic return you would need to run the electrolysis plants using battery storage of solar energy, making it even more expensive and totally ridiculous from an energy ROI perspective.
Being a former 25-year resident of New Mexico, I can say that this squabble between Greenies and the inept (and corrupt) governor is essentially a ridiculous three Stooges movie
You mean these guys? :
Hydrogen also has the ability to permeate through materials and cause issues. Hydrogen embrittlement of aluminum is well known. There is a very big reason why the external tank for the space shuttle wasn’t fuel until the last hours prior to launch, and its not just the cryogenic issues.
BTW LOX/LH2 is a much better high altitude to deep space mixture usually saved for 2nd stages. First stages work better on a LOX/LCH4 (liquid oxygen and liquid methane). LH2’s very low density is a detriment in our atmosphere. It requires very huge tanks to contain the very small mass. Liquid hydrogen is as dense as it comes, and it is just not very dense. A block of wood would sink in it.
And the exhaust is H2O – water, right?
Yep. The most powerful “greenhouse gas”.
Yes, the worst GHG. https;//plasmakinetics.com has a safe storage system but the problem may be platinum is needed for fuel cells…kinda expensive stuff.
The metallurgical technology of storing and handling hydrogen is very advanced. It just requires proper design.
And I assume a lot of money?
” New Mexico Climate Activists Fighting to Kill Hydrogen Economy Bill ”
… A climete civil war? … or an over-anxious autophagic behaviour?
Surely not cannibalism? After all Climate is a matter of taste!
” New Mexico Climate Activists Fighting to Kill Hydrogen Economy Bill ”
… A climate civil war? … Or an over-anxious autophagic behavior?
Producing Hydrogen from Methane, the dominant route now, generates exactly the same quantity of CO2 as when the Methane is used directly.
The only really green Hydrogen is produced electrolytically with electricity from a source which is not backed up itself by a fossil fuel burning plant. Currently those do notexist.
“Currently those do not exist.”
Heck, all they need to find is a perpetual motion machine. That oughta do it.
However if you are doing at large scale you can capture that CO2 and stick it underground. The H2 can then be distributed and used at small scale with no adverse emissions. If you are worried about GHGs doesn’t that count as ‘green’?
Water vapor is the primary GHG, so no.
I went thru all the H2 issues in essay ‘hydrogen hype’ in ebook Blowing Smoke. Even IF all the many H2 problems (leakage, embrittlement, storage) could be solved, I showed that even with a fuel cell Vehicle operating at 60% efficiency (about PEM today ignoring PEM temperature and cost issues)) that a 2014 Toyota Prius would produce better net energy efficiency with lower CO2 emissions, as practical CCS from methane steam reformation does not (yet) exist.
Rud, refineries, petrochemical plants, and pipelines already know how to handle high purity, high pressure hydrogen.
But those aren’t the issue. How about the academic philosophy teacher that knows nothing about plumbing or burners messing around with the furnace or the piping in the house? How about pipes carrying hydrogen next to a busy street subject to lots of vibration due to heavy truck traffic. How about filling propane tanks with hydrogen when propane becomes unavailable? How about backyard barbecue storage tanks full of hydrogen?
You can’t just ignore the end users by arguing that the professionals know how to handle it.
Somehow these people have been able to manage with electricity, natural gas, automobile fuel, and other things which can be dangerous if not properly handled, but hydrogen is just too unsafe for the average person. You cannot possibly know that to be the case.
Can you see a hydrogen flame? If not then how do you protect yourself from being burned?
To be fair, you cant see a methanol flame either.
That’s true and why racers wear nomex fireproof suits.
I know. And I also know several Boy Scouts that have been burned trying to cook with alcohol.
True. In bulk, and when used just after produced, in hydrogenation units. But not stored in small quantities for days/weeks, as vehicles require.
And we know this because…
Because the major auto companies have all worked on hydrogen vehicles. Toyota put hydrogen fueled trucks into port operations in California to test out the technology. I don’t know what became of that test.
Tom, everywhere that these hydrogen process units operate are high explosive danger areas in refineries and upgraders, fenced and regulated to the nth degree with only high skilled and trained individuals allowed in
Because it’s bloody dangerous.
And you propose to snap your fingers and make this everywhere?
Because vehicles are just one item, people talk about piping into homes to burn in furnaces.
In small volumes, while spending lots of money.
“Would NOT want anywhere near…”
This is while their roads are the worst in the nation and they waste the huge energy trust funds there.
Any green energy transition will be a costly failure. The delusion of catastrophe will be self-fulfilling.
Problem is it will be explosive :
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2022/02/01/new-mexico-climate-activists-fighting-to-kill-hydrogen-economy-bill/#comment-3444441
The idea of using hydrogen as a distributed fuel makes no sense whatever. The energy requirements to produce, compress and ship it are very large, in many cases exceeding the energy value of the hydrogen itself. Search for The_Future_of_the_Hydrogen_Economy_Bright_or_Bleak for a through analysis of the problems of this concept. It is even more lunatic than windmills and solar panels.
Hydrogen is just not dense enough to be practical as transportation fuel, even as LH, a cryogenic liquid. Musk’s rocket project used liquid methane.
If you attach multiple hydrogen atoms to carbon atoms, about 2/3 hydrogen to 1/3 carbon, with 5 or more carbons, the storage containers can be plastic or thin metal…..very energy, cost, and resource saving from a container fabrication and storage cost perspective….with much reduced fire hazard compared to hydrogen, allowing the carbon/hydrogen molecules to be stored in, say, residential garages….this is much better than storing hydrogen in, say, metal hydrides or as cryogenic liquid.
Let’s call it gasoline…
Hydrogen from steam reforming gas emits almsot as much as CO2 as burning the gas in the first place, even if you have CCS
For a start, reforming with CCS is extremely fuel inefficient, so you need lots more gas..
Second, that gas involves upstream emissions
Thirdly CCS, even if proven at scale, can only take some of the CO2 out
Oil and gas companies of course love it because they can still sell oil and gas, and get billions in green subsidies to convert them to hydrogen
Electrolysis is an even bigger joke, taking expensive electricity and inefficiently processing it
Yes indeed. A highly expensive and explosive fuel that yields almost zero reduction in CO2. Plus, CO2 is the fundamental building block of Life, it’s in short supply atmospherically, and warmth (should it happen) is preferable.
The nuts are loose and the wheels are about to come off. What we need is a good wrench.
Or a good explosion.
In the future there will be MSRs fueled by thorium and the electricity produced during night hours can be used to produce H2.
That sounds perfectly safe. What could possibly go wrong with a nuclear reactor producing hydrogen gas? See “nuts are loose” comment above.
Well, Mike…it doesn’t have to be next door. MSRs are very safe anyways. Possible H2 safe storage is https://plasmakinetics.com H2 could have a place in the energy future…maybe fuel cells
There is more than one side to that. California reportedly spends millions of $/month, at least some months, to get other states to take the excess from existing southern CA solar farms, which produce most of their electricity at the times much of it can’t be used within the state grid. Similar situations exist for wind produced electricity, Scotland being a prime example.
Thus there is often excess electricity production from these ultra stupid projects and they keep building more of them. If something like the Chiyoda Corporation process noted above by philincalifornia could economically utilize that excess electricity to produce hydrogen, then the easily stored MCH from the hydrogen, it might actually be a useful energy storage option, possibly much cheaper than batteries.
While I don’t know many of the details, I have read about the major major problems some industrial electricity intensive processes face if the electricity supply has interruptions. Any storage system would have to be able to operate in an intermittent electricity situation, just being idle when the electricity is actually being used by the grid.
Yes, thank you. You understood my comment/post.
Ship this to Santa Fe…..
Colorado company readies to start turning Iowa cow manure into fuel (yahoo.com)
I’m sure the lunch crowd won’t mind.
I liked it better when NM Governors were out of the country doing diplomacy in NK.
Of Course! It was never about the environment anyway. ANY technology that emerges that could offer cheap energy not easily controlled by the government will be opposed by the watermelons.
Somebody please explain this to me….
Depleted oil & gas reservoirs can be used to sequester CO2 or most other gases and liquids.
Why? Just because because something can be done doesn’t mean it should be done. CO2 is our friend. Live it or live with it.
I do not understand why would do it either.
We don’t want to sequester CO2…we need that stuff out there greening the world.
If we store the plant food where it cannot do harm today, then one day when the AGW scam is proven false we can just open the taps and let it release
Or we hold it until needed during the next glaciation period, build massive greenhouses to grow food and slowly release the CO2 into the dome
And the feds are planning to offer big money (from your pocket) to do it.
I don’t object to research on these “green” technologies. I object to the implementation of their products when the products are not shown to be beneficial. If that premise was applied, windmills and solar panels would still be on limited acreage and several hundred Texans would still be alive.
Who decides what product is “beneficial”, governments?
Merely allowing Adam Smith’s ‘Invisible Hand’ to apply alleviates any need for it.
“…. develop the infrastructure to separate the energy source from natural gas…”
at what cost?
Eric, have you ever worked in an industrial plant that uses hydrogen? It does not sound like it. How did you arrive at this opinion?
Ever hear about K141 ?
Please, enlighten me.
K141 was the Kursk Russian submarine that sank when, according to the Russians, a hydrogen peroxide fueled torpedo exploded. Nothing to do with nuclear power, nothing to do with H2. The hydrogen peroxide was high-test (>85%) that explodes when it comes into contact with a catalyst. They were using it for torpedo propulsion but it leaked out of a faulty weld on a pipe.
somebody explain nuclear to the governor
Your list of hydrogen disadvantages:
Also add that at any pressure hydrogen gas contains about a third the thermal energy of natural gas. This means the existing natural gas storage and transportation infrastructure is completely inadequate for hydrogen, even aside from embrittlement and increased leakage issues. Given that most of the local distribution pipes are buried, replacing it all means massive excavation projects with attendant massive costs and disruption. Much, much worse than upgrading residential electric loops so everyone can charge their EVs.
Hydrogen has a very low heating value on a volume basis, but it has a very high heating value on a weight basis (about 2.5 times a typical hydrocarbon). The reason its heating value is low, besides the low density, is due to the fact the its primary combustion product is water vapor, which carries away much of the energy as latent heat. It is difficult to capture this heat because it is only available at a low temperature. Low temperature heat is not worth much.
Tom.1:
For storage and transportation purposes volume is what matters; weight is largely irrelevant. Until there is adequate storage/transportation infrastructure, hydrogen will be at best a localized niche option, even assuming you can produce sufficient hydrogen in the first place.
Take a look at the list of hydrogen fueling stations, should you wish to get a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle — only California has any usable number:
What I do not get, is how this was forgotten :
Helium was planned but due to sanctions in 1937 not possible.
This luxury aircraft even had a smoking cabin!
Result?
With a top restaurant :
They were in a rush to return for the crowning of King George VI of Great Britain. Interesting!
We not going to filling any blimps with it.
What are you going to be filling for the folks who have propane tanks today? Will current tanks and piping suffice?
I guess people could store the H2 in personal blimps.
Ideologic purity must be maintained above all else!
Hydrogen, despite its severe shortcomings, is a dispatchable form of zero carbon energy, and is therefore a grave threat to useless renewables.
No, hydrogen is an integral part of any and all renewables roll outs…
UK hydrogen strategy – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Precisely Griff. Hydrogen fuel is utterly necessary for remewable energy rollouts AND requires emitting more CO2 through combustion of fossil fuel tor extraction than can possibly be obtained from hydrogen energy generation at the point-of-use. You’ve also provided the perfect example — the UK’s fantastic “plan” for a hydrogen use case that will never be implemented because it will create more GHGs than just buggering on and cost much more than they are ever likely to earn. Just as you so aptly demonstrate, renewables are all political confidence games for the benefit of charlatans and illiterate fools. Thanks again for playing!
But this is a green hydrogen roll out, with surplus renewable energy off peak used to generate the hydrogen. No fossil fuel use intended
Another fiction — there is NO excess off peak energy, even if it is oversold many times. Your excess off-peak energy was supposed to be stored in batteries to support your night time, dark days, and 0 and greater-than-excess wind days.
In fantasy future world all of todays energy resources will have been used at a high rate just in order to develop replacement for minimal eleectrical support of today’s current usage and the infrastructure to deliver and exploit it. The increased production of generation capacity, alone, will be fossil based, and it will have to continue to increase exponentially just to service distribution, maintenance and replacement needs of the “green” energy grid. In order to rid the world of fossil fuels, they’d have to be burned at an increasing rate, forever.
The informal definition of thermodynamics is something like “you can’t get ahead, you can’t break even, and you can’t get out of the game.” Wishful greeness doesn’t change the formula.
But feel free to continue to indulge in any fantasy you wish, just keep your hands on your own wallet.
The Swedish energy authority released a paper on hydrogen some months ago.
The cost of one kWh produced from wind power to hydrogen to electricity was reported to 7 SEK, circa 70US cent.
Interesting. In 2008, in a resource estimate, the U.S. geological survey cited the carbon cost of a land based wind turbine is estimated at over 300 Kilotons of petroleum, gas, and coal — both as raw and finished materials and power generation — per 2MWh nameplate capacity over a 25 year lifespan. It works out to a megaton of fossil fuel materials expended over a hypothetical lifespan (rarely achieved in the real world) for the most common 6MWh nameplate turbine, and doesn’t include transmission losses or power conditioning. Most of that use was manufacture and installation. No one seems to account for actual carbon costs on actual wind turbine installations, but Sweden is usually pretty good about book keeping. Does Sweden report the carbon cost per MWh of wind generated electricity?
The UK plan makes funny reading, I got a good laugh … you are so doomed 🙂
The world is grateful for the Great UK Green Experiment…the world watches and waits for the results. Thanks griffter.
Watching the USA descend to the same status as the late 19th century Spanish Empire, with failing infrastructure and no modern technology is a horrid spectacle…
You mean the 5% of Obama-Pelosi stimulus that went to roads and bridges did not fix the problem? Or the 12% under Biden stimulus?
With three of the least energy dense sources providing power for the planet, we’ll need to stripmine half the planet and clearcut the other half.