Hydrogen

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A community about hydrogen and its use as a way to fight climate change.

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Green Hydrogen Will Become The 21st Century Version Of Oil (www.forbes.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Countries and companies are now preparing and forming international coalitions to position themselves for the green hydrogen future.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Advancement in technology and economies of scale will ensure it will be very cheap in the long-run. People who doubt this are just repeating the same arguments used against renewable energy in general. We were told many times that it was "impossible" for wind and solar to be cost effective, until they did.

[–] Iceblade02 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Same thing could be said for Hydrogen tech?

I think the key advantages with hydrogen is cheaper construction of large storage, ease of long-distance transportation and long-term storage.

Thing is that current battery tech is fundamentally incompatible with large scale application. It's been challenging to use it effectively even on the scale of vehicles - and gridscale is magnitudes larger. From the numbers I've seen (correct me if there's newer data) it isn't even competitive with pumped hydro.

Btw, the problem with variable renewables isn't the cost-effectiveness in electricity generation, it's their inability to guarantee a stable energy supply on their own without incurring huge overhead costs (a problem that still hasn't been solved).

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Making renewable energy reliable will require hydrogen as an energy storage mechanism. Except for a few special cases, 100% renewable grids are impossible without it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

There are many chemosynthetic pathways to smooth intermittent supply from renewable energy sources. Electrolysis is only one of them.

It certainly isn't "impossible" without hydrogen.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

They all basically require hydrogen. E-fuels or green ammonia all require water electrolysis. Attempts at alternatives inevitable up trying to make crazy ideas work, like burning sodium or boron or whatever. Those ideas are pretty much all nonstarters.

[–] Iceblade02 2 points 10 months ago

Definitely agree, at least if seeking a cost-effective solution.

I expect an optimized clean electricity system would see renewables built to a ratio of hydro availability (35-50% of renewable production being hydro, depending on longitude, climate and storage investments), and the rest being some mix of nuclear, biomass & situational options (such as geothermal or regional interconnects).