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NYC_SKP

(68,644 posts)
6. Treehugger: Time to drop the idea the Hydrogen vehicles are green.
Fri Mar 20, 2015, 11:50 PM
Mar 2015


You may ask: But couldn't hydrogen be created using renewable energy? We've seen numerous stories about that, right?

Yes, in theory, but the point is that creating hydrogen via electricity is extremely inefficient and doesn't compare with today's batteries. The efficiency for hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles is about 18-20% while it's about 77-80% for battery electric vehicles. Furthermore, it doesn't compete with the creation of hydrogen from natural gas, which is why you see the figure above.

"Hydrogen is locked by the force of economics to natural gas and natural gas is increasingly locked by the same force to the practice of on-shore hydraulic fracturing of shales. Hydrogen is the Hydro in fossil HydroCarbons and hence hydrogen cannot be extracted from the ground without simultaneously extracting and disposing of carbon as CO2. Re-capturing the carbon (sequestering CO2) costs about the same as the resulting hydrogen fuel and hence it is simply released to the atmosphere."

Unfortunately, numerous environmentally oriented policies and programs have essentially been hijacked and allow FCVs and related infrastructure to compete for the same funding that BEVs and BEV infrastructure are eligible for, resulting in watered down or even counterproductive efforts to deal with global warming.


http://www.treehugger.com/cars/it-time-drop-idea-hydrogen-fuel-cell-vehicles-are-green.html
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