from NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Joe Public
From Aberdeen’s Press and Journal:
Aberdeen will claw back only a tiny fraction of the taxpayer cash spent on the city’s fleet of hydrogen buses, The Press and Journal can reveal.
The P&J has obtained details of Aberdeen City Council’s fire sale of the 25 H-powered buses, stashed away at the First depot on King Street.
And we can reveal that the SNP and Lib Dems running the city voted through a cut-rate deal at the start of August, which returns only 6p for every £1 of public money spent on the low emission vehicles.
A leaked council dossier details the bargain-priced sale of the £13.9 million fleet of buses by Aberdeen City Council, wiping 94% off their ticket price when bought five years ago.
The local authority expects to pay only £1 to get out of its hydrogen joint venture with BP…
A Freedom of Information probe by STV in April revealed the combined cost of bringing the fleet of world-first hydrogen double-deckers to the north-east was £13.9m
The Press and Journal can now reveal Aberdeen City Council stands to recoup only £816,000 for its 25 hydrogen buses.
Full story here.
Last year, I reported how all of these buses had been mothballed because of a lack of hydrogen supply in Aberdeen.
Presumably the eco-nutters thought it came out of thin air!
Scots do not like losing money. They will not forget this disastrous decision.
We do not like losing money but most of us outside Aberdeenshire won’t remember this ‘cos it hasn’t been reported apart from in the P & J, so most of us don’t know about it.
It’s been reported on the BBC several times.
Didn’t know that but don’t watch BBC much; certainly haven’t seen it in the newspaper.
So Aberdeen bought Hydrogen Busses, kept them unused for 5-6 years then sold them for pennies on the pound. Given the depreciation rate for all things renewable powered they likely will sell them at a profit.
They’ll still keep voting in the SNP though, which is why they keep getting these disastrous decisions.
So, a Scot did not buy them?
Perhaps a Scott might.
Maybe Scotland is Scot-free?
So has anybody been sacked or resigned over this fiasco? Stupid question. Of course not.
a good case for the return of tar and feathers.
Was Nicola’s hubby involved?
I have seen a video clip of the Queen being told that the Royal train had been switched to green diesel fuel – she looked at the paper and remarked on the expense.
“Eco-nutters” have been critical of Aberdeen Council’s foray into hydrogen buses for a considerable while. See, for example, the website of the Hydrogen Science Coalition, and the LinkedIn postings by regular “eco-nutter” contributors such as Tom Baxter, Paul Martin, David Cebon, and Michael Barnard.
Hydrogen buses are more expensive than battery-powered buses on all counts. There is very little prospect of investors coughing up for the infrastructure they would need, and they are a gross waste of renewable energy that can be put to much better use elsewhere in the energy economy.
“renewable energy that can be put to much better use elsewhere in the energy economy.”
So-called renewable energy is of negative economic benefit.
Your evidence for your assertion is what? Or is it just heresay?
You really think the dilute, intermittent, unpredictable energy produced by windmills and solar cells is superior to oil, gas, coal and nuclear?
Evidence? 60 years of experience with renewable energy.
It’s always more expensive and rarely available when needed.
Renewables are weather dependent so need backup, so you end up with two systems. So double the investment but the output is the same, so can only be grossly inefficient.
It is also a ridiculous name. Energy use is always accompanied by increase in entropy. Can we all agree to call it something more real like Alternate electricity.
I like “alternatives to energy” since it generally seems that you have to put more into them than you will ever get out.
Considering the least expensive source for creating Hydrogen is Natural Gas I would say you are correct. The better use of Hydrogen is to keep it bonded with Carbon until it is burned to release energy.
Creating? Producing or extracting or collecting. It was all created some time after the Big Bang
Nice attempt at dissembling.
It can’t be separated from atmosphere as its measured in Parts per Billion in atmosphere. However, it extremely light and in it’s free state floats to top of atmosphere and is easily lost to space. It can be created from atmosphere by extracting water vapor and separating the H2O molecule which is fairly energy intensive.
It can also be created by separating the CH4 molecule and much easier.
Why Methane is Easier
The term “Created” was used because free Hydrogen doesn’t naturally exist in sufficient quantities and so must be separated from other molecular forms.
I had a high school science teacher who referred to everything that combined with oxygen, as rusting.
I’m surprised that the irony hasn’t been mentioned yet. It’s as if libtards do it on purpose. GoogleAI:
Aberdeen is widely known as the main hub and closest major city for Britain’s North Sea oil industry, earning the nickname Europe’s oil capital.
Key Facts About Aberdeen and North Sea Oil
· Location: Situated on the northeast coast of Scotland, right next to the central and northern North Sea oil fields.
· Role: Serves as the primary operational, logistical, and headquarters base for companies extracting oil and gas from the UK Continental Shelf.
· History: Transformed from a fishing port into an oil boomtown after discoveries began in the late 1960s and 1970s.
I learned almost everything I needed to know about hydrogen power in a high school chemistry class in the 60s, which was DON’T. The teacher discussed electrolyzing water to make hydrogen, so I decided to try it at home using a steel dishpan full of water and a doorbell transformer. I was, at least smart enough to include the transformer to avoid working with full house voltages in steel dishpans full of water.
I was able to make a hydrogen-oxygen mix suing two copper wire probes close together. The AC bubbled the mix off of both probeswhich I could collect it in an upside down cup in the water that started out full of water. The mixture made a nice BANG when ignited.
I wanted pure hydrogen, though, so I added an old rectifier from a discarded TV set giving me oxygen of of one probe and hydrogen off the other. BUT, there were many fewer bubbles. That’s when l learned that water has fairly high resistance. I had to keep the two probes separated between the two collection cups.. This decreased the current flow. I added salt to the water to increase the conductivity, but then found dirty sediment forming in the dishpan. I also found that the copper wires were eroding away and increasing the sediment as well. They also became quite brittle and easy to break off. Hydrogen embrittlement? I was finally able to fill a gallon jug with hydrogen after several weeks of bubbling. I was able to store it, as long as I kept it upside down in the dishwater pan, at least for a while.
That ended my electrolyzing career. I learned a lot more about hydrogen embrittlement as an automobile engineer much later, dealing with brittle fractures in otherwise ductile steel. This added to my initial advice about hydrogen power… DON’T.
When I tried electrolyzing water, I used carbon rods take from batteries as the electrode. I don’t think they make batteries like that anymore.
Sounds like it could be copper chloride. The anhydrous form is brown in color. It turns blue as water is absorbed into the crystal.
“Last year, I reported how all of these buses had been mothballed because of a lack of hydrogen supply in Aberdeen.
Presumably the eco-nutters thought it came out of thin air!”
Not exactly, they had been mothballed because of mechanical failure of the refueling station.
They are being replaced with battery powered buses which have turned out to be must cheaper to run in any case.
I feel sorry for the Aberdonians whose buses will lose much of their range in Winter. Either that, or they will have to forego bus heating.
Yes! And depending on the temperature minimums between being parked at end-of-day and needing to be ready-to-go first thing in the morning in winter, those buses may need electrical heaters on their battery packs to avoid “thermal shocking” that would seriously degrade their useful life.
Just wondering it the cost of all that associated electrical energy consumption has been factored into the phrase “cheaper to run”?
Based on experience here in the US, it’s only a matter of time before those battery-powered EV buses are sold off for, oh, about 10 pence on the British pound.
Thanks for your update.
Can you explain further what went wrong with the refueling station, please.
The sheer incompetence of governmental bureaucrats never ceases to amaze!
A comment in this regard, frequently used here “across the pond”, is:
“Do you ever wonder whatever happened to the bottom half of your graduating class?”
The words “competence” and “Scottish National Party” almost never appear in the same sentence, unless the former is in the negative.
So Aberdeen is having a Fire Sale on their Hydrogen Bus fleet.
Sounds like the council is in need of a different kind of Fleets!
When I read “bus fire sale” in the headline I instinctively attached the word “fire” to the preceding word “bus” instead of the following word “sale”, but in this case apparently the buses weren’t actually on fire – yet 🙂
£13.9 million … Bah, you Scots got off cheap. California laid out $300 million.
https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2020/01/12/californias-hydrogen-highway-never-happened/
Wonder why this type of story isn’t more in the news? Most be an advantage of hydrogen vehicles! When you have a fire sale other people can’t see it?
Because the MSM have drunk the Koolade and won’t report anything that makes AGW seem unlikely.
It’s a paywalled article and I can’t find any other sources. Any idea who bought them, and why? My guess would be scrap except for the price. Maybe they can be profitably converted to battery electric or ICE buses.
There was an electric train that ran from Chicago to Milwaukee from 1919 to 1963.
I used to ride it in 56 and 57 Chicago & Milwaukee Electric Railroad. Made Hydrogen busses look obsolete.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_North_Shore_and_Milwaukee_Railroad
Most of them are being converted to battery electric buses.
I’m sure that they didn’t include the cost of the hydrogen infrastructure and the cost of training the mechanics to handle the the hydrogen as well as the tools they needed.
Electrolyzing water to make hydrogen uses way more electricity than trolley buses of the 1960’s used.
The theory, the excuse, is that you use free solar power to create the hydrogen.
[…] hydrogen bus fire sale […]
Cleverest headline of the day. 😆
Haha, I missed that!
I know this is a stupid question but did any council member or any other government member face any consequences for this fiasco? This is exactly why governments should be very limited in the decisions they can make or the things they can buy. They suck at it.
Considering the lack of fuel, it’s a wonder that they were not forced to pay someone to accept them. Now? Find some land, gut them and turn them into dwellings?
CH4 is easier to manage than H2.
CH4 Certainly doesn’t carry embrittlement issues with it that H2 creates!
…. and how do you think they could transport CH4 to Aberdeen ?? Oh, hold on a sec …….
But, but, but, the air is FULL of hydrogen. 😉
Oh. Wait. You said “thin air” so maybe not so much. 😉