New Mexcio In Depth: Hydrogen is a false climate solution (See update at reply #10)

[abqtommy]

Last edited Sun Jan 16, 2022, 07:20 PM - Edit history (1)

https://nmindepth.com/2022/01/16/hydrogen-is-a-false-climate-solution/

>Indigenous communities in New Mexico have long dealt with the negative impacts of experimental energy projects promoted by state and federal governments.

This legislative session, as the state faces a climate crisis that is already disproportionately impacting Indigenous, low-income, and communities of color, the stakes of energy policies are higher than ever.

Why, then, is New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham touting the hydrogen fuel industry, which is nothing short of a scheme to subsidize oil and gas companies and keep the state dangerously reliant on fossil fuels?

The governor’s proposed “Hydrogen Hub Act” promotes hydrogen as a clean energy solution. But 96 percent of hydrogen production in the U.S. requires fossil fuels, and burning hydrogen is worse for the environment than burning coal.<

There's much more text at the above link. I was directed to this site from NEWS NOW.

https://www.newsnow.com/us/US/States/New+Mexico?type=ln

[Spider Jerusalem]

1. Hydrogen is a net energy sink, anyone who thinks it's a climate solution is ignorant or delusional

but it's really no surprise that people will turn to solutions that don't work in an effort to sustain the unsustainable.

[NutmegYankee]

4. As someone who built fuel cell/hydrogen ICE hybrids as university Senior Design Project - Agree.

Storage alone for the least dense gas makes it a wasteful venture. The production to make what is essentially an energy carrier, is wasteful compared to storage of electricity.

It would be better to make electric drive trains with ethanol or bio-diesel recharge/range extender engines to enable long distance travel.

[Shermann]

5. Say what you will about Elon Musk, but he was right about that nt

[Caribbeans]

18. Tesla (way before Musk) Evaluated different fuels around 1999-2000

Way way before anyone thought making hydrogen from solar panels or wind turbines was ever going to be even remotely cost effective.

Musk came to the company around 2003 after that decision was made, and then sued for the legal right to somehow weasel his way into "founder" position - he didn't found Tesla.

Funny thing happened between 2001 and 2013- China dropped the prices of solar panels by ~80%.

Scientific American: Why China Is Dominating the Solar Industry

Between 2008 and 2013, China's solar-electric panel industry dropped world prices by 80 percent
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-china-is-dominating-the-solar-industry/

So now making H2 with renewable energy is a whole different ballgame.

And not only Asia- but the Middle East knows it as statements like this from the ENERGY MINISTER of the UAE

Hydrogen to create new opportunities, jobs: UAE energy minister. Suhail Al Mazrouei says hydrogen will play a critical role in the global energy transition. Al Mazrouei noted that a global energy transition will “disrupt the current energy systems on a grand scale”.
https://www.khaleejtimes.com/environment/hydrogen-to-create-new-opportunities-jobs-uae-energy-minister

Musk not only is FOS on H2- he's a major hindrance to a green future.

[Caribbeans]

9. Secretary Granholm?

The US is way behind Asia when it comes to hydrogen

[Spider Jerusalem]

11. Yep

Hydrogen is not an energy source, it is an energy carrier. It is always going to take more energy to produce hydrogen (through water electrolysis, or however) than you get by using it as a fuel.

[Caribbeans]

17. Pretty sure Secretary Granholm knows this.

All fuel requires energy to produce/refine it.

The first Energy Earthshot, launched June 7, 2021—Hydrogen Shot—seeks to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen by 80% to $1 per 1 kilogram in 1 decade ( "1 1 1" )

The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Energy Earthshots Initiative aims to accelerate breakthroughs of more abundant, affordable, and reliable clean energy solutions within the decade
https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-shot

The gas that fuels motors now requires energy to get it out of the ground, store it, ship it and refine it and then transport it to the end user.

With solar / wind / renewable electrolysis all of that can sometimes be done on site like this:

Many times per year the North Sea wind turbines produce more electricity than the UK grid can handle and then these turbines are "curtailed" - shut down. Rather than curtail turbines and solar panels, make hydrogen. Hydrogen is "bottled sun" or wind energy. The lost renewable energy is now transportable. The low efficiency is better than none.

[Spider Jerusalem]

19. She's a lawyer, not a scientist, so probably not

And there's a measure called "energy return on energy investment", or EROEI. For conventional oil, the EROEI ranges from 5 to 20--that is to say, for every BTU of energy expended in extracting and refining, you get back 5 to 20 times as much. For hydrogen? That number is below 1. If you're spending more energy to make hydrogen than you're getting back from burning hydrogen as a fuel, then it'd be more efficient to use the energy for something else (like, say, charging EVs, since hydrogen is produced by electrolysis). The only purpose of hydrogen is portability for use in road vehicles. It may have some niche uses where electric vehicles are impractical due to battery demand exceeding capacity, but it's not anything to build an economy on.

[uponit7771]

2. This is false, "burning hydrogen is worse for the environment than burning coal" The CURRENT ...

... extraction of hydrogen might burn traditional fuel to a net negative rate but that doesn't make burning the gas itself more harsh to the environment.

Poorly written article

[NickB79]

3. In the current energy environment it is reality

Where you're just stripping H2 from fracked natural gas, because fracked natural gas has such high methane leakage rates.

In a far-off wind and solar utopia, hydrogen would be cleaner than coal, but not while there's money to be made by the fossil fuel industry today.

[ProfessorGAC]

13. Isn't It Leaking Now?

I think you're overstating that problem.
I have no doubt there's a net negative energy output overall, given current technology.
But, the fracking gas is being used now as fuel, the only added losses would be when extra gas is pumped from the ground. But, if hydrogen is used as the fuel, it could easily be no worse in terms of methane release, as it supplants the use of natural gas. Of course, all that home heating use will remain unchanged for quite some time.
I simply don't buy that ultimately H2 wouldn't be more environmentally friendly.

[NickB79]

14. It depends how much natural gas you have to reformulate to hydrogen in equivalent BTU's

If you theoretically replaced all the natural gas generation today with hydrogen in it's place, reformulated from natural gas, your natural gas demand will spike to generate an equivalent amount of hydrogen. You're going to lose quite a few BTU's in the process.

We need to cut our natural gas consumption just as urgently as we need to cut our coal consumption.

[ProfessorGAC]

15. Generally Agree

Upon combustion methane releases 55.5 kjol/kg. Hydrogen combustion releases 142 kjol/kg. About 266% of methane.
We would need 4 kg of methane to get 1kg of hydrogen.
But, the "spike" at full displacement is only 50% higher. (4 * 3/8, or 12/8ths.)
Such a spike would exist, but it's not a high multiple.
The input energy consumption is real & high, but can be optimized as technology improves.
I don't have the same negative long term view on this, from an environmental basis.
The technical obstacles to even getting to the environmental aspects a realistic discussion are the real problem.

[hunter]

6. My personal "Fuck you all!" to the hydrogen economy fantasy of the early 'eighties wasn't pretty...

... and almost cost me my university degree. I burned a lot of bridges and hurt a lot of people.

I'd gone into the quest a hydrogen enthusiast.

I was crushed by the reality. The hard math and engineering didn't work.

After my raised middle finger second alternate senior thesis got me graduated I crash-landed much better than I deserved. My wife and I were big city school science teachers when we married.

Forty years have passed since I first began to suspect the hydrogen economy numbers were not right.

Why is this still a thing?

Like wind turbines, it's just another way to sell natural gas.

[honest.abe]

7. What if hydrogen was produced from wind or solar energy?

Changes everything.. right??

[jmowreader]

16. Not really

The hydrogen produced by "wind and solar energy" is made through the extremely energy-demanding process of electrolysis, which would call for huge numbers of solar panels or wind turbines to power electrolysis cells. About the only way you're going to amortize this project - wind and sunshine are free, but the equipment to exploit them is not and they come with problems of their own, starting with the source of the polyester resin in a wind turbine blade or the silane used to make solar cells - is to forget standard electrolysis cells, install chloralkali cells instead and make money selling sodium hydroxide and chlorine. This leads to the next problem: who's going to buy it? There's no shortage of either product, and it's not like you're going to be able to sell containers of elemental chlorine to the kids. As for the lye, I'n fairly certain the police would prefer you DIDN'T try selling it to the kids; it's used to make meth.

[abqtommy]

20. Thanks for this excellently informing reply. nt

[honest.abe]

22. You need to think of hydrogen as an energy storage medium, not a fuel source.

Last edited Mon Jan 17, 2022, 05:08 PM - Edit history (8)

It's a replacement for massive expensive batteries in vehicles and other electric powered devices. And when produced from green sources of energy it is a clean green alternative to fossil fuels.

Yes, currently it is expensive to produce but there are new methods being developed that are making this process much more efficient and cost effective.

Hydrogen will be a major player as an energy source in the future.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-electrolysis
https://scitechdaily.com/advanced-new-catalysts-for-more-efficient-clean-hydrogen-production/
https://www.bloomenergy.com/news/bloom-energy-unveils-electrolyzer/

[jmowreader]

23. You're going to have to solve a lot of problems to get it to work in vehicles

The biggest problem is the amount of tankage you need to hold a reasonable amount of it. According to Air Liquide, who has more experience in dealing with hydrogen than most of us (they manufacture and sell compressed and liquified gases), hydrogen compressed to 700 times atmospheric pressure requires 25 liters of tank to hold 1 kilogram of gas. In a fuel cell electric vehicle, you need to carry 5 to 10 kg of hydrogen to have a reasonable range from one fill-up. Hydrogen works well in buses, in no small part because a bus is big enough to hold enough tankage to deal with the problem.

Also, when you change from battery storage to hydrogen storage you get to trade a set of massive expensive batteries for a massive expensive fuel cell.

There's also the fire part. Cars catch fire in bad wrecks. Firefighters HATE fighting hydrogen fires because it burns with an invisible flame. They're not real happy about alcohol fires for the same reason, which is why Indy cars now burn E85 - the gasoline adds a nice color to the flame so you can tell when the driver is on fire.

I think the best way to go forward with hydrogen is to convert it into ammonia. There are ammonia fuel cells in development. There's already a good ammonia infrastructure. Fire departments know how to deal with it. It's easier to store ammonia than hydrogen, you can store more ammonia than hydrogen in the same tank volume, and when you run it through a fuel cell you get water and nitrogen as your exhaust species. There IS the problem that anhydrous ammonia is a meth precursor, but then again so is gasoline. Also, think of the employment opportunities for ammonia handlers at gas stations.

[honest.abe]

24. No doubt challenges but I think all surmountable in time.

Thanks for your detailed explanations. Clearly you have good understanding of the issues.

[jmowreader]

26. Toyota has a nice FCV on the market now

They call it Mirai. You can get one if you live in California or Oahu, because there are hydrogen stations there.

Non-lithium batteries would solve a LOT of the problems of electric cars. Given that, I still don't want one - I go to places there will never be EV charging stations and there won't be hydrogen stations either. A lot of North Idaho doesn't even have natural gas.

[Mosby]

8. I would take this article with a grain of salt.

The Navajo are the third largest coal producers in the entire US.

That said only hydrogen made without reformers is truly green, wind and solar is probably the way to go for the tribe in the long term, but they created that company, Navajo Transitional Energy Co. which is somewhat independent from the tribal council. They increased the tribes coal mine holdings, and are now selling overseas, places like Japan.

[abqtommy]

10. I don't have a background in science so I get confused with all the informaton

available. In the past I've questioned ops here at DU that use the words "green" or
"net-zero", and for good reason. I went to another source, the U.S. Department Of
Energy website to learn more about hydrogen.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-fuel-basics

While there are various methods of producing hydrogen*, the DOE information states
that...

>Thermal Processes

Thermal processes for hydrogen production typically involve steam reforming, a high-temperature process in which steam reacts with a hydrocarbon fuel to produce hydrogen. Many hydrocarbon fuels can be reformed to produce hydrogen, including natural gas, diesel, renewable liquid fuels, gasified coal, or gasified biomass. Today, about 95% of all hydrogen is produced from steam reforming of natural gas.<

Compare the value of 95% given here with the 96% given in my original op here.
Pretty close, right? So I'll accept this information.

There are also Electrolytic Processes, Solar-Driven Processes, and
Biological Processes used to generate hydrogen. However, these processes
together generate only 4% to 5% of the hydrogen used at this time.

Some of my questions are getting answered and I hope you are experiencing the
same.

[Mosby]

12. Hydrogen production types by color

http://www.chem4us.be/blue-green-gray-the-colors-of-hydrogen/

[sl8]

21. "How Green is blue hydrogen?"

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/ese3.956

How green is blue hydrogen?

Robert W. Howarth,Mark Z. Jacobson
First published: 12 August 2021

https://doi.org/10.1002/ese3.956
Citations: 4
Funding information:
Funding was provided by the Park Foundation and by Cornell University


Abstract
Hydrogen 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.

[...]

[Silent3]

25. Good article!

As far as I'm concerned the only place for hydrogen power would be for applications where electric power and battery storage just won't cut it, and the hydrogen comes from an efficient and truly greenhouse-gas-neutral source.