you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 26 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Something else no one has said yet (I think) is that most hydrogen is produced from natural gas, so this is in no way a climate solution. It's been sold as one and it's bullshit.

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 8 child comments
  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago

    Yes but not for long.

    As (generally climate denying) people love to point out, wind and solar is erratic power generation. For this reason you need triple capacity Vs requirements.

    This means that for a huge amount of time you'll have excess energy, once we start to be predominantly renewables, battery storage is expensive. One of the solutions is to create hydrogen, also pumped hydrogen, etc.

  • source
  • parent
  • [+] -16 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)
  • [–] 23 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Fossil fuels are the dominant source of industrial hydrogen.[2] As of 2020, the majority of hydrogen (~95%) is produced by steam reforming of natural gas and other light hydrocarbons, partial oxidation of heavier hydrocarbons, and coal gasification.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_production

  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago

    That is irrelevant to the topic.

    The reason why hydrogen is produced by steam reforming is because natural gas is cheap and is needed to produce ammonia. In Norway where there is plenty of cheap electricity from hydroelectric, there is hydrogen production via electrolysis.

    The advantage of hydrogen as fuel is that can be used to decarbonise things like ships, and possibly things like branch rail lines, and planes. Passenger vehicle is probably the least attractive application, but somewhat lower capital investment than a green hydrogen plant on a industrial scale.

    However this can only make sense if electricity is cheap i.e. if they are running with waste electricity from renewables.

  • source
  • parent