From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
The cost of producing and installing electrolysers for green hydrogen production in China, the US and Europe — three of the world’s biggest markets — has risen by more than 50% compared to last year, research house BloombergNEF (BNEF) has found, rather than the gradual reduction its analysis had previously indicated.
The main culprit for Western manufacturers has been inflation, which has pushed up the costs of materials, utilities (such as water and electricity) and labour in the US and Europe, said BNEF in its new report, Electrolyser Price Survey 2024.
As a result, average system-level cost (including both stack and balance of plant) is now at a mid-range of $600/kW for an electrolyser made in China, while machines made in Europe or the US are around $2,500/kW.
This makes Western electrolysers four times more expensive than Chinese equivalents, a gap that has not closed at all since the previous report, BNEF noted.
The research house had previously predicted that costs would gradually decline over three years from 2022, as more large-scale projects approached completion.
Green hydrogen, once touted as a saviour of Net Zero, seems to have gone off the radar recently. A few years ago there were wild, unsubstantiated predictions that hydrogen would become so cheap and easy to produce that we could all give up fossil fuels.
Instead, as Bloomberg now report, costs of electrolysers are going up, not down. Moreover the real cost of wind power is also much higher than previously thought, so green hydrogen will be much more expensive as a result.
So let’s take a closer look at these costs.
Back in 2018, BEIS published this report:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/hydrogen-supply-chain-evidence-base.
I analysed the report here.
It featured this table:
I gather that PEM technology (Proton Exchange Membrane) is the most likely one to be rolled out. The Base Cost in 2025 was predicted at £500/kW.
A study last October suggested a mid-range cost of Eu727, equivalent to about £630/kW. Bloomberg reckon $600, but this is based on ultra-low Chinese manufacturing costs, almost certainly highly subsidised. Significantly they estimate that European made electrolysers are four times the price.
We can reasonably work on a cost therefore of around £600.
The BEIS study assumed 52.0 kWh/kg H2 in 2025. The energy density of hydrogen , however, is 33.3 Kwh per kg, which means that the electrolysis process only works at 64% efficiency. In other words, 36% of the energy input is wasted.
Previous cost estimates have been based on rock bottom costs of renewable energy, particularly offshore wind, which would have to supply most of the power needed for electrolysis in the UK. As we now know, these costs were never realistic. The Administrative Strike Price of offshore wind for AR6 is now £100/MWh at 2023 prices. Allowing for energy efficiency of only 64%, the energy input cost of hydrogen is therefore £156/MWh.
On top of that, are operational costs. BEIS reckoned £21/MWh in 2018, which is probably in the range of £30 now.
Already, therefore, we are up to £186/MWh, before adding CAPEX. BEIS estimated this at about £30/MWh in 2018. But this assumed loan interest rates of 5%. Given interest rate rises since then and general inflation, a CAPEX of £60/MWh is not unreasonable.
This therefore gives us a total cost of £246/MWh.
Wholesale prices of natural gas have been ranging between about 55 and 85p/therm this year. The conversion rate is 29.3 kWh/therm, giving a cost of £23.90/MWh, based on a mid-point of 70p.
Anybody still think hydrogen is a good idea?
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H goes from a waste of money to an even bigger waste of money.
But they make for awesome fires. A nice rival for EV fires.
Well nothing is Truly Green. Energy wise the wind blows … Sometimes … The sun shines … 1/2 the day … And modern society can’t function for only Half the Day, Sometimes. But extracting that energy is costly, more costly and more damaging than FF use.
Green = Agrarian Society, not Technological Society
Carts not Cars
Horses not Engines
Candle Light not Electric Light
1850 not 2050
1.2B people not 8B
But that is the goal.
Yes, it’s a feature of the greenies’ plans, not a bug.
You’re right about that…fer sure
Yes it’s called a New Dark Ages and directly follows from all the assumptions about “saving the planet” with a green new deal.
That’s why the west is doomed to global irrelevance because a neo- feudal order amounts to cultural and economic suicide. And that’s why the future belong to the BRICS + nations led by Russia and China.
The Chinese are hurtling towards energy independence using the country’s vast reserves of coal and uranium to power their economy. With 600 new coal fire plants in the pipeline and the target of 200 nuclear energy plants over the next few years China will have larger achieved energy energy independence.
I think the current green deal is working fine. That is, we put out Co2 and the Earth gets greener. That’s a good deal.
It depends on where you are on the gravy train…
There are eye-watering amounts of our money being thrown at “the Hydrogen Economy” as governments are taken in by the snake oil men.
“”Village revolt stops switch from gas boilers to hydrogen””
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/01/village-wont-forced-give-gas-switch-hydrogen-government-says/
As Orwell put it: If there is hope, wrote Winston, it lies in the proles. If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there in those swarming disregarded masses, 85 per cent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated.
He wasn’t wrong.
All it will take is one hydrogen accident and the villagers (proles) will arise with their pitchforks against the monster H2.
And burning creates an even more effective greenhouse gas!
Water doesn’t count….
That’s because currently water isn’t an emission of consequence. So water is counted as a feedback. But make it an emission and suddenly things change. As you “Force” atmospheric concentrations to rise, water changes from a feedback to a forcing.
They’d ban bathing
DHMO is worse than any “greenhouse”!
Especially once it becomes an emission and more than a feedback
Remember the R101?
R101 was to be built only after completion of an extensive research and test programme by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL). As part of this programme, the Air Ministry funded the costs of refurbishing and flying R33 in order to gather data about structural loads and the airflow around a large airship.[11] This data was also made available to Vickers;[17] both airships had the same elongated tear-drop shape, unlike previous designs. Hilda Lyon, who was responsible for the aerodynamic development, found that this shape produced the minimum amount of drag.[18][19] Safety was a primary concern and this would have an important influence on the choice of engines. – Wiki
All that development in a methodical fashion we can recognise – and it crashed and burned. I’m sure everyone remembers the Hindenburg….
I was astonished to see that Airbus is “developing” a hydrogen-fueled commercial aircraft. I put it in quotes because they are probably only studying such a thing on European Union contract, the equivalent of a U.S. NASA contract which costs a lot and produces nothing. The first thing that occurs to me is that the number of materials available to the aircraft designers automatically shrinks dramatically. I once linked to a NASA report on material compatibility with hydrogen in these pages, to demonstrate that there are materials that are compatible. If there weren’t, high pressure hydrogen cylinders and many machines using hydrogen would be impossible, which is clearly not the case. But the choice of materials is far smaller for hydrogen applications than for hydrocarbon applications. The list surprised me in many ways. Some 300 series stainless steels are hydrogen compatible, but many aren’t, and commercially pure titanium is rated as compatible, while most alloys are not. In fact, the Linear Aerospike SR-71 Engine (LASRE) test in support of the X-33 program was finally abandoned, because the NASA SR-71 would be structurally damaged because of “casual hydrogen” leaks.
I don’t think this technology will fly. [see what I did there?]
Where’s Twiggy?
Here…
And here
“Anybody still think hydrogen is a good idea?”
Ed Miliband?
Please….
It’s Edstone Miliband.
Add in the processing costs of dealing with hydrogen and is gets still more expensive. Hydrogen is very difficult and therefore costly to compress and to ship by pipeline or truck. It contains much less energy per cubic foot (at any pressure) than natural gas. For example, it would take as many as 12 semi-tractor trailer trucks to deliver to a “gas” station as can be delivered by a single semi-tractor trailer gasoline carrier.
I used electrolytic systems for years to treat environmental contaminants. During presentations of my proposals I always had someone ask about capturing hydrogen. Theoretical calculations of H2 production by electrolysis are around 50%. But that was in clean water. In my experiments, the anode and cathode chambers could not be pressurized because of the experimental equipment used. I was not interested in the H2 but the production of protons and hydroxides. Electrolysis is an excellent way to product chlorine and hydroxide. In fact, chlorine production is preferred over splitting water in the it elemental components by electrolysis.
The use of electrolysis to product hydrogen is very inefficient but does increase with newer types of electrodes. It is well known that production of hydrogen from water is only useful in small systems.
The cycle:
make electricity from: saturated organics compounds, coal, wind mills, solar panels, or pixie dust.
Use that electricity to make hydrogen from water.
Totally inefficient and should be called a “thermodynamic crime.”
People should go to economic jail for laying waist to taxpayer money on these projects.
When there is a will there is a way. The will is to get off hydrocarbons, the way is to promote alternatives and NOT look at the numbers (or manipulate them). It is an article of Faith, ‘thou shalt not use the devil’s work, hydrocarbons’). Everything follows. It even goes as far as blinding intelligent people to the truth. My brother, an engineer by profession and a lifelong reader of left leaning weekly publications ( as was i until about 10 years ago) was talking about the wonderful prospects of green hydrogen he read in one of those publications. This was supposed to be in reach and wouldnt cost much. I already crunched the numbers 5 years earlier so knew that was fraudulent. But, he seemed NOT to want to know and put faith in The Transition. Imagine that, a smart guy, highly sceptical otherwise totally falling for an apparent false presentation. It is years of indoctrination and mind training to look away from reality. My other brothers are the same. The once sceptical Boomer generation in rebellion against the Establishment in the 60s and 70s have totally flipped. They have been nutured and are actually suspicious of sceptics of whatever mainstream narrative presented. And blind. It’s so sad. Im now supposed to be a far right conspiracy theorist just by standing still and asking the right questions..
And if you include green hydrogen it is even more lossy. Around 80% loss if i remember correctly. And a shitload of extra solar panels and windturbines needed. And im not even including hydrogen infrastructure.
Compare hydrogen to natural gas and it’s not a fair fight.
You forget to debit the “value of Virtue” from the cost per MWh. The Lefties I live around place a high value on their ability to Virtue Signal, and remain pretty much oblivious to nuisance real world costs. Unfortunately , they also are the ones in charge of these decisions. Do I sound too cynical?
Costings??
The author understates the conversion efficiency of PEM electrolysers, which generally run 70-80% efficient. A new process claims to increase that up to 95% using a capillary process rather than generated gas bubbles in the water. We’ll see if that pans out.
That must be compared, apples to apples, to the amount of energy required to produce a barrel of crude oil, transport it to the refinery, refine the oil into useable fuel, then transport the fuel to its point of sale. Production of crude and transporting it to a refinery incurs a 5% reduction in energy at the wellhead. Then another 10% of what’s left is used in the refining process (down to 90% of 95% or 85.5%. Then transporting the finished fuel product to a retail outlet (depending upon whether pipelines, trains, barges, or trucks are involved – usually a combination of all of the above) uses another 5% of energy, so down to 81% percent available for fuel to a vehicle.
It’s really difficult to figure out total end to end efficiencies.
Of course, the really big waste of energy in internal combustion engines is the waste heat. Typical gas or diesel engines waste 70-75% of the energy content of the fuel (only 25-30% efficient) as waste heat discharged to the atmosphere. Electrical motive systems are generally around 60% efficient in converting stored energy into motive power.
All of the above is why it generally takes only about 1.5 kg of pressurized (10,000 psi when full) hydrogen to fuel a typical mid size passenger vehicle for 300 miles of travel, vs. about 32 kg of gas or diesel fuel for the same distance traveled. That is the bottom line.
Your numbers were pretty good till you slipped a decimal on how far a kg of Hydrogen will take your mid-sized passenger vehicle. Gasoline = 34 MJ/Kg, Hydrogen = 140 MJ/Kg. so about 3 times the energy per Kg, NOT 32 times….not mentioning that KG of hydrogen takes up a lot of volume….
check the energy per liter vertical axis, hydrogen isn’t great….
I admit that I used the wrong number for the amount of fuel in kg for 300 miles range in a typical FCV passenger vehicle (I was quoting old numbers from a decade ago for the Honda Clarity, which had only a 5,000 psi hydrogen tank). For a 2024 Toyota Marai, with its three-tank fuel system, it’s around 5.6 kg not 1.5 kg . The volume of that tank, pressurized at up to 12,700 psi, is 37.5 gal, as compared to a typical passenger sedan tank of 16 gal, so yes, it’s a bigger tank, but it also gets 402 mile range on a full tank which is comparable to its cousin the Toyota Camry.
However, you’re mixing apples and oranges again. What is the apples to apples comparison of kg of hydrogen to kg of gasoline to power an identical vehicle for a given mileage range. It is as I said, about 5 kg of hydrogen to 43 kg of gasoline (comparing full tank to full tank). The Marai completes a hydrogen fillup in 5 minutes – about the same as filling a gasoline or diesel tank, if not less.
And where are those hydrogen filling stations? A number of our neighbors here in Southern California have HCVs, but I have as yet to actually see a filling station.
If you are trying to cool the planet, expelling more water vapor into the atmosphere will not help.
https://news.mit.edu/2024/how-light-can-vaporize-water-without-heat-0423
https://scitechdaily.com/mit-uncovers-photomolecular-effect-light-can-vaporize-water-without-heat/
https://news.mit.edu/2023/surprising-finding-light-makes-water-evaporate-without-heat-1031
I have yet to find any analysis that indicates burning hydrogen generates more energy than is consumed in manufacturing hydrogen.
Hydrogen is Net Zero Energy.
Hydrogen stores energy chemically. And generally hydrogen isn’t burned in an internal combustion engine, like gasoline or diesel … because if you do that you get the same heat losses as any other ICV suffers from (70-75% of energy consumed gets wasted as heat to the environment). The efficiency of FCV is the overall efficiency in converting stored energy in the H2 tank to motive force in the power train, as well as other auxiliary draws like AC, heat, instruments, lights, etc.
Think of hydrogen as being a gaseous battery. Put energy into it, and then extract that energy, in the form of generated electricity.
hydrogen is a means of storing, moving, using, or otherwise manipulating energy. It cannot create energy, even if the conversion was 100% efficient. There is no unknown or other expectation about it.
The capital cost is an issue, but a far bigger issue is that these hydrogen plants must operate 24/7/365 in order to even attempt to be profitable.
Or in other words – it is guaranteed that “green” hydrogen plants will be sucking in significant fossil fuel electricity over the course of a year.
Yet another detail underlying the scam of present green tech.
Hydrogen is generally produced in one of three methods:
Method 1 is one of the most commonly produced industrial chemicals on earth, being used for a wide variety of purposes one of the largest of which is in refining of crude oil. It’s not particularly expensive actually.
Method 2 is also used quite a bit today, as discussed somewhat inaccurately here in this post. If the new and improved electrolyser technology comes to fruition, this method will be cheaper than no. 1, quite cheap overall. Method 2 also does not require any pipeline or industrial infrastructure, just a supply of electrical power. Meaning that one can install an electrolyser anywhere, in your garage, at a service station, out in the middle of nowhere that has a supply of electrical power.
Method 3 is well known, but the efficiency of the process until recently was not too great because it required high temperature reactors (chemical, not nuclear), but the latest tech involves low temperature catalyzed reactors that can be carried on a vehicle to produce ammonia for fuel cells from ammonia fuel. Ammonia is the most common industrial chemical used on Earth, used virtually everywhere in production of petrochemicals, fertilizers and numerous other chemical products. The other advantage of method 3, besides well developed ammonia infrastructure, high efficiency, and low cost, is that the fuel (liquid ammonia) does not need to be carried around in a high pressure hydrogen tank, but at a very low pressure ammonia tank. The conversion of ammonia to hydrogen is extremely efficient. Test vehicles are in operation now.
So, method 1 requires natural gas, a bad, very bad, FF. Method 2 requires (continuous?) electricity, plus water (let’s not forget the water). Method 3 is based on ammonia – how is that produced? I thought that it was evil because you need FF to get ammonia.
Test/prototypes are usually hyped up. How old is the bright future of hydrogen now? 50 years? ( never mind the Hindenburg). Outside the current use it is still much too expensive for general, mass rollout let alone making ‘green’ hydrogen. I think nuclear will get the (renewed) focus first. We know how it works and costs. Coupling it w hydrogen production looks promising in the medium future. My thinking is that, once the big green monster has been chained down and cut to size all kinds of energy production will be pushed simultaneously. There will be a role for hydrogen, as well as solar and wind depending on location. As long as we don’t try to surpress any source it will sort itself out. But for security and clean environment we should have a mix of nuclear and natural gas first, followed by oil and gas. They are very reliable. I certainly would not put all my hopes on hydrogen. But if it turns out to be a solid performer w new tech it can sit at the table. And of course coal will always be available if need be. Economics will drive it..
As far as transportation is concerned, ICE can still improve..
“Costings”? Was this article written by Borat?
I questioned it above as well. It’s like the use of the word “trainings” that has taken hold recently. “Training” does the job just fine.
Costing is an activity, producing a number == the cost. Used quite commonly in my world.
Participle-ing?
Yes, quite common in the DoD world, and among engineers.
Moreover the real cost of wind power is also much higher than previously thought
… than previously SAID, by our oh-so-scientific Net Zero optimists. Cheap green power was only the bait in their scheme to abolish our economy.
Hydrogen is not a substitute for fossil fuel and nuclear energy. It is in the same category as wind and solar. Build new fossil fuel and nuclear generators, remove wind and solar from the grid, remove all government mandates for renewable energy. It is all foolishness.
Anybody still think hydrogen is a good idea?
don’t forget to include all interested parties. What would the sun think about no hydrogen?
A lot of the Chinese plans for hydrogen are simply to capture the gas in the form of industrial byproduct. That’s relatively cheap although I’d love to see cost estimates there. There are some pilot programs for green and blue hydrogen but it’s not a very strong program from what I can see. It’s definitely a minor afterthought.
Hydrogen production atm is small scale and local. Like any technology, the initial push looks promising, engine prototypes are made, then improvements kick in. The problems usually lie in upscaling. How long have people been talking about the great future of hydrogen now? 50 years? I think it was Mark Mills who stated it roughly takes 20-25 years from initial to scaled up mass production/use. Outside of its current use as a byproduct we are still waiting for the jump. It is i think atm not economical for general rollout. Will it ever be?