The Shocking Truth About Hydrogen Energy: What They Don't Want You to Know
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- čas přidán 16. 11. 2020
- Cutting through the hydrogen hype! Are we getting a hydrogen economy or is Elon Musk right to call hydrogen fuel cells "fool cells?"
Probably the answer is somewhere in the middle, but what are the applications with real potential, and what is just hot air? In this video series I am going to be looking into individual applications and talking to experts to try to figure out what makes sense.
This is the first video, where I have done some basic engineering and commercial analysis which forms the basis of my initial opinion on hydrogen. The plan is that I learn and update my opinion throughout the series as I learn more!
You can find a written version of this on Medium, which also has links to all my sources:
/ cutting-through-the-hy...
#engineering #stem #educational
Sources for images:
00:14 Water to hydrogen reaction By JSquish - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
01:09 'Integrated modelling of variable renewable energy-based power supply in Europe,'
Energy, Volume 123, 2017, Pages 173-188
01:20 Tumut 3 By Cmh at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
01:21 Medium and low pressure storage in the hydrogen station pad outside the ESIF. Photo by Dennis Schroeder / NREL 40081
03:45 IEA (2019), The Future of Hydrogen, IEA, Paris, All rights reserved
05:16 IEA (2019), The Future of Hydrogen, IEA, Paris, All rights reserved
06:40 Energy 101 video U.S. Department of Energy, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
11:00 Natural gas demand in Europe in 2017 and short term expectations, The Oxford Institute of for Energy Studies Anouk Honoré
11:24 Steel forging By Payton Chung from DC, USA - Fiery Finkl Forging, CC BY 2.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...
Thanks for watching the video Green Hydrogen Explained - Is it all it’s hyped up to be? | Engineering with Rosie - Věda a technologie
One other problem with hydrogen is embrittlement. Hydrogen causes embrittlement of the metal leading to eventual failure. I don’t think this can be ignored if we plan to use existing natural gas infrastructure to pump hydrogen.
maybe the Hydrogen could be blended with hydrocarbons until that problem is solved, a natural gas hydrogen blend.or ceramic engine components,browns gas is quite destructive is pure hydrogen the same?
@Wildly Optimistic
A huge amount of hydrogen is already used in industry as Rosie pointed out. All the details of how to store and transport hydrogen in low carbon steel, etc. are well known and it's done safely without issues.
You’re right that hydrogen is used in industry already and that the issue of embrittlement is well known. Natural gas already has some hydrogen in it. As a case in point, the company I used to work for makes fuel metering valves for industrial gas turbine engines. For the most part they burn natural gas with some exceptions. We have to plan for a hydrogen content in the natural gas, I believe the specs called for around 20%. The issue we faced was the call for what they called “high hydrogen” where the percentage is much greater. This requires using different metals that resist embrittlement.
All I am saying is that where you have existing infrastructure, is it suitable for high hydrogen gas. If not then those pipelines and pumping stations would need to be retrofitted to handle it. That could be extensive and very expensive. This issue cannot be ignored. As stated, our customers are well aware of the push for high hydrogen and taking steps to prepare for it.
There are metallurgical solutions to hydrogen embrittlement so this is not a show stopper
@@wildlyoptimistic1352
The existing infrastructure does not have to be replaced to use hydrogen because the green hydrogen can be generated on site by electrolyzers and consumed on the spot @Wildly Optimistic
The existing infrastructure does not have to be replaced to use hydrogen because the green hydrogen can be generated on site by electrolyzers and consumed on the spot. The gas utilities want to maintain their market share and are adamantly against generating hydrogen on site. They demand that their existing infrastructure be reused so they can keep their market share. The switch to hydrogen, like most other paradigm changes, is fraught with political maneuvering for financial gain. And it's extremely bad when fossil fuels must be ended and replaced by sustainable energy. Naysayers be damned; the changes must occur or it will be the end of civilization as we know it.. The gas utilities want to maintain their market share and are adamantly against generating hydrogen on site. They demand that their existing infrastructure be reused so they can keep their market share. The switch to hydrogen, like most other paradigm changes, is fraught with political maneuvering for financial gain. And it's extremely bad when fossil fuels must be ended and replaced by sustainable energy. Naysayers be damned; the changes must occur or it will be the end of civilization as we know it.
I have heard it said by others that Electrons are easy to transport and molecules (even of hydrogen) are MUCH hard to transport. I think the logistics of the H2 economy are what are getting the existing Petrochemical distribution companies excited and so pro Hydrogen. They have big plants for manufacturing, big trucks for distribution and big forecourts on the streets for sale of H2. Most of which will become dead assets in a couple of decades when 80% of our cars can be charged at home. We are on the cusp of a massive upheaval and H2 is not the solution to most of the problem. Excellent video thanks
For the transportation of molecules and electrons I think in most practical cases the opposite is true. I know that in the Netherlands the infrastructure for electricity costs about 5 time as much is the transportation of natural gas for the same capacity. And try to stick electrons in a ship, it's possible but loading and unloading will take a while.
@@joostvandergun5518 LOL very good points, but also transportation is only a marginal part of the final cost of energy. Much of the cost of hydrocarbons goes to those who are gifted it by geography, with prices effectively set by global demand. Similarly there may in future be a good business case to ship green hydrogen produced by low population countries with abundant renewable resources. This could have very interesting effects on the balance of supply and demand, so perhaps the fossil fuel suppliers should not get so exited.
Good points, here in the UK I think the forecourts already make more revenue from the convenience store than from selling fuel. The biggest UK forecourt chain just brought a major supermarket, so it looks like maybe they are already shifting their business model away from liquid fuels and you call this just right.
Electrons take a long time to charge.. not practical for practical people. 😊
Hydrogen is an economy, and should not be shackled with green hydrogen.. batteries are for golf carts, of grid with year round solar.. rest is just patch work..
Carbon tax is a scam..
One of the best videos I saw on hydrogen. Also remark that it is not easy to store hydrogen because the atoms are so small that they escape through many other elements traditionally used as containers or piping. Spot on explanation about do’s and don’t s, thank you
And that's even before the word embrittlement was uttered...
@@derloos Thank you for pointing that out, English is not my native language.
@@paulbrouyere1735 gosh, sorry, I wasn't nitpicking at all, I'm not a native speaker either 😂🤦♂️
I only meant to say that yes, storage is hard, and so is the transmission. I've recently read a couple of research piece summaries about the embrittlement, and they said 4..7 mm deep penetration (sorry!) of hydrogen isn't a problem for the modern pipes but it may be a problem for the intermediate compressor sub-stations.
if it is failing on storage for hydrogen , so is the transmission of conventional electricity . The losses in the transmission is HUGE !
@@gauthapandith
The losses in transmission are no more than 5%. You're making false statements.
www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=105&t=3#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20Energy%20Information%20Administration,States%20in%202016%20through%202020.
I see it as an emergency energy reserve. It seems pretty reasonable for governments to pay some regular fee to keep a certain amount of hydrogen storage available. Then they can deploy it in cases where other storage methods run low and demand management tops out. They can still buy electricity at the lowest rates and the rates they sell at will be quite high as well if it's an emergency.
Yes I think you get this exactly right, this is what already happens with natural gas. Gas is much more expensive than renewables but it's also extremely valuable, as a bulk on-demand reserve, which is not needed often. So the fuel cost is not actually very important, because the electricity produced commands a very high price, at those few times when renewables and battery storage are not available. It needs to be swapped to a low carbon alternative, like Hydrogen. Its expensive to produce, but it can be stored in huge quantities very cheaply, so it's better for this occasional, high-demand, profile, than things like batteries, which need to be utilized regularly, to pay for their much higher investment cost per storage density.
@@enemyofthestatewearein7945 Interesting point. Basically you're saying we could use h2 as peaker plants (so localized) or for longterm storage (maybe seasonal). I believe we'd need to check the economics against alternatives. Looking at what's happening in Australia for instance, with battery storage, they're using batteries to replace peaker plants successfully. Su much that the investment broke even in less than 2 years. Not sure h2 could do the same. Maybe someone can shed some light on it?
As a chemist, I'm all in for green h2 to replace old fashion brown one for steel, cement and ammonia production. This has a double effect: decarbonize and bring prices lower. In a matter of a few years we could have cheap green h2 and afford to use it as seasonal storage or else. We need a lot of renewables in the first place thou
It wont work, because hydrogen cannot be contained, it will boil off, even through metal tanks. You will pay to constantly re-fill your "emergency reserve". For emergencies, we can just do what Germany does, burn fossil fuels. All that will cost is the mothball maintenance of an already built power station.
I am not a technical person but I think Rosie did a good job with this. I have seen videos stating that either hydrogen is the answer to all of our prayers or concerns or it is a total fool's errand. I think the truth lies between these two extremes.
Congrats Rosie!!...indeed a very clear, rational and comprehensive analysis about hydrogen economy.
Thanks for creating the perfect video to share with anyone with well-intentioned but excessive enthusiasm for hydrogen as the solution to our energy problems!
Amen!
I see the red flags similar, but not quite the same:
1. Once installed, there is zero incentive for a solar panel to be turned off. It has to be regulated for grid stability. In Germany the same solar panel provides 10 times the power in july that it provides in january. So people are already looking for what to do with surplus solar.
2. As you pointed out there is a much larger need for natural Gas in Winter in northern countries. Peaple have to heat their homes. At the same time Solar provides only a small fraction to nothing.
Some renewable fuel ( hydrogen or derivated Ammonia or methane) is needed through the winter. If we use fuel cell small scale cogeneration for heating and electricity, a large portion of the conversion losses can be saved.
3. Since there is no Battery for seasonal Storage availible, and a lot of extra electricity and heat need goes together in winter, hydrogen or derivated fuel is currently the only technical vialble option for a 100% renewable Grid in Regions off the Equator.
Thank you for the good video,
I agree 100% on road transportation, that case is already hopeless for hydrogen.
While there exists short periods with negative electricity prices, they are by far not enough to warrant a large scale wasteful hydrogen extraction. It would only make sense if/when, in a hypothetical future, a good economic case can be made for setting up solar panels or windmills for the main purpose of hydrogen production, and/or the hydrogen can be used for applications where the much higher energy price is warranted due to logistical or other challenges. Obviously, energy production from other sources are already being turned down to match solar peaks, and the lower amount of winter and nighttime solar is significantly mitigated by higher availability of wind energy in these periods. While long-term (seasonal) hydrogen storage sounds nice, it is still a "challenge to be solved", unless significant additional losses and leaks are accepted.
The one hole in the 'Hydrogen for winter domestic heat' (as opposed to high grade industrial heat) use case is that excess summer VRE electricity can be stored via deep storage Pumped Hydro (where topography allows) - which may be 70-85% round trip efficient. Electrified heating with heat pump (COP >4) in that case will already achieve the decarbonisation goals of domestic heating at lower cost rather than creating new H2 infrastructure to achieve the same end.
@@andrewpintar1620 Do you have numbers for the potential energy storage of theese systems. I can see the large elevation drops produce nice peak power, but the cavern sizes aren't close to big enough to cover the storage need for a whole winter.
12' 18" "It will be very easy to get perverse outcomes if we don't carefully target hydrogen to the right applications where it has the most potential to reduce emissions." Exactly. A clear exposition once again. Thanks
Storing energy in pumped water is a great use of hydrogen (if every 2 atoms are combined with an oxygen atom already.)
it also only outputs water and electricity!
@@Maric18 Yes, and no Heat, whereas a Combined Heat and Power( CHP) HFC will provide both!
Your Hydrogen needs a friend to share another electron with, it would make both of them happier.
Thank you for the fantastic and realistic overview of a very complex yet often “simplified” potential “green” energy technology. I wonder about corrosion type effects due to hydrogens properties? You are a great presenter and I look forward to seeing more interesting content.
That was jolly interesting. You explained your views clearly and succinctly and explained your reasoning intelligently. Thank you.
Excellent summary of the issues and the Paul Martin article in the link is a deeper dive into the subject
Metal smelting really seems the most practical application, metal ores must have the oxygen removed from them to become metal and hydrogen is the only chemical able to do this other then carbon monoxide. Even if you were to electrically melt ore you would not have smelted it unless a chemical capable of stripping oxygen is applied. As system that collects and stores solar thermal energy would be most promising here as it provides the process heating for smelting and allows heat energy to substitute for electricity in electrolysis which raises it's efficiency, and it means the electrolysis is able to run much more consistently.
The only other application I see being practical is some long term seasonal energy storage. This might actually mean synthesizing hydrocarbons and simply storing them in large conventional tanks allowing conventional burning of it in a turbine. Hydrogen would thus just be an intermediate step in the process.
Great comments! There's a big green steel project (using hydrogen) starting up here in Australia, I hope to get a tour of it some day.
Making fertiliser that used to be sourced from natural gas
It is a very difficult gas to deal with after produced. I looked at this over a decade ago with former engineers of a major petrochemical company.
FTR, I do know about electrolytic separation and use in Fuel Cells as Dow Chemical with free hydrogen produced from its Chlor Alkali process went back to using as supplement boiler fuel instead of a 5MW fuel cell after a brief trial and massive press release while I had an offices in their plants.
Hello Rosie, first thank you for that neutral an honest review. Most of my concerns are confirmed.
But - to be open to new technologies - I'm interested in "green fuels". One side of the medal, as I assume, hydrogene is mostly the base of green fuels. On the other side - for transportation uses (trucking, airplanes) these use cases need much more dense and easy to handle fuels - perhaps green fuels.
I'm German - you made me cry in anger: You mentioned, that in Germany only 2% of green electricity ist wasted . On the other hand there are huge fights about these - for example the wind energy shall rise "a little bit" - but no one in the government cares about the fact that many old wind turbines need to be "re powered" - but this needs a new license. Most of that old sites would not get a new license due to hard limitations. So - calculating the new systems and substract the old going off systems many are afraid that the wind energy in Germany will be less in near future.
Nice video :-) Another problem with hydrogen for passenger cars is the fueling infrastructure. It will be much more expencive to build that charging stations, and I believe with the current tech, a fueling station takes about 15 min to repressurize. Thus, they can only serve about 3 cars pr. hour.
Absolutely correct! Of course, you can increase the number of pressure tanks, and the power of the compressor pressurizing them, but then, you also increase the cost of the hydrogen fueling station substantially... and this cost is already atrocious: around $1M for a capacity of refueling 3 car per hour. A (Tesla) fast DC charger (aka Supercharger) can also refuel about 3 cars per hour, but costs only around $45'000 to install!!! Furthermore, EVs are being recharged 80-90% of the time at home or at work, vs HFC vehicles 100% of the time at hydrogen fueling station! The total investment for a network of hydrogen-fueling stations offering the same service than a network of fast DC chargers is 50-100 times greater!
There is just NO case for hydrogen in light road transport!
This reminds me of the cheap flashlights that are battery operated. They almost give you flash light so you have to buy the disposable batteries. 35% efficiency for hydrogen and the company supplying the source of energy makes profit off the least efficient process.
You have made many, well explained reasons why cautious optimizm is appropriate.
A major problem is getting the energy back out of hydrogen as a direct vehicle fuel.
Hydrogen is different from *_fossil fuels_* in a few VERY significant ways.
a. Unlike fossil fuels, Hydrogen doesn't "burn" as such, it detonates. The mechanics of any reasonable conversion of an internal combustion engine (ICE) will easily be overloaded by the abrupt impulses of detonation well before in can respond inertially. A bit like bouncing your head off concrete as opposed to a pillow. It's nearly impossible to bounce your head off concrete gently enough to be comfortable.
Engines will fail rather quickly. Don't expect to get 300'000+ miles out of them. Maybe not even 10k. *
b. Fossil fuels are basically _low_ yield explosives in a controlled burn, much slower than detonation, allowing ICE pistons, cranks, and other moving parts time to overcome inertia, to move and change direction.
This also increases the time that torque can be asserted on the pistons' travel length and thus to the wheels, increasing mechanical life, smoothing power transfer (ride comfort), traction, and controllability of the vehicle.
c. Hydrogen dissolves into and embrittles many metals including steels and can cause premature failure.
d. Moving parts generally need lubricants. IECs use oil for lubrication. ICE pistons 'seal' the cylinder compression with rings, but the seal isn't perfect. In a modified ICE hydrogen will mix with and hydrogenize the lubricant oils causing immediate loss of lubrication and engine failure.
These are fundamental to modern ICEs so revolutionary engine designs would be necessary. IMO these designs are extremely unlikely.
* _not to mention micro.detonations which can adversely affect turbines as well._
Wow, my thoughts exactly… for storage air liquefaction seems more efficient. Hydrogen is also dangerous. The flame speed is really high, as witnessed by the destructive explosions of storage facilities…
In the UK the main use for Hydrogen that I hear getting pushed is to replace gas boilers for home heating. Hydrogen boilers are similarly sized and priced to gas boilers with similar performance that people are used to. Heat pumps are very expensive, bulky, noisy (air source) with much worse performance, particularly in time taken to get hot and lower operating temperature meaning that even when the pump is hot it takes longer to heat the house. So you have to have it running more of the time and if your insulation is not great then you therefore have higher heat losses to the outside than with a gas boiler that you can turn on just when you need it. I say all this as a big fan of heat pumps who seriously looked into getting one installed. So I can see why there is a huge appeal of the idea that hydrogen boilers magically avoid these problems while also being green. But it's a bait and switch. If you use blue hydrogen then it still pollutes a lot because of the methane leaks and imperfect CO2 capture. If you use green hydrogen then the efficiency from power source through to heat in your house is very bad compared to a heat pump, even running poorly in very cold weather, (45% Vs say 150% so it's at least 3 times worse and therefore 3 times more expensive). I think that the idea you could use hydrogen boilers as the primary domestic heating system is basically a scam which would be much more expensive in the long run. The only way hydrogen makes sense is for time shifting energy from low demand to high demand, but as you say that means underutilising the equipment. I think using the excess energy production that would otherwise be wasted to produce hydrogen for use in those favourable applications you highlighted should be a good use but I don't think there will be enough left over for large scale home heating use. The only exception to this would be if we could do truly long term storage at a vast scale such that we use summer surplus to make hydrogen to last through the winter. But that level of storage would surely have large safety concerns. Also as you mentioned in a free market system it's very hard for the economics of it to work out. In the UK we had a chance to vote for a government with a policy of nationalising the whole energy system and if they had won then such large scale strategic thinking would be possible. Unfortunately they did not win and the new leader of that party has moved away from the nationalisation policy.
Hydrogen is the tiniest probability cloud, and that's part of why it's so hard to confine and store. Because of this, hydrogen never made sense to me.
Then I found out where most of the hydrogen comes from, and it (the hydrogen hype) all made perfect sense.
"Can I haz subsidies?"
"So you can produce hydrogen with renewable energy?"
"yeeeeess"
"Natural gasso taim!"
Great video covering the potential apps of H2
I don't see h2 as a good option in the aviation sector due to the extremely low volumetric density... but I'm also not an engineer, so we'll see how off i am
We are able to make artificial kerosin out of it.
@@Atef-ph6cs kerosin?
Assuming you mean kerosene, kerosene isn't hydrogen. So it wouldn't really fit in with this discussion.
Additionally, the losses from converting hydrogen to kerosene aren't small either, meaning you have to pump a significant amount more energy into its production than you can hope to recover. Basically, a shitty battery.
On driving vehicles charging times typically is not an issue at all. Normal vehicles have battery ranges that last the whole day. So you simply refill at night. Or if on a long range journey you combine topping up the battery with some lunch break. The same is true for heavy duty vehicles. While loading or unloading them, they could easily be recharged as well. So the ubiquity of electric power will easily outperform any hydrogen use case, Vehicles with wheels will all get electric soon. The only reason we don’t already see trucks on the roads in numbers is, that the obviously needed gigantic amounts of batteries are not available, yet.
Hydrogen will be used in steel production or other chemical processes to replace coal or natural gas. In transport application I do not see that much of a potential. Maybe on airplanes. But even there batteries are coming close to be a viable solution already.
Nice video!
There is something more to mention: scale. It's true that at the current production volumes, batteries outperform hydrogen storage in price and other metrics. However, it's not clear how quickly and how much they can scale. The raw material for hydrogen storage is practically unlimited and available immediately. The same is not true for batteries. This factor alone, combined with low wind and solar power prices could be enough to make hydrogen not just viable, but necessary.
Further, some aspects of the technology may be new, as you say, but a lot of the infrastructure, such as pressurized tanks and long range pipelines are known very well from natural gas. Battery production and *recycling* at a 100x current scale however is not (not to say it won't get there).
Yet, your red flags are quite valid. As you say we shouldn't believe that hydrogen is a panacea to our energy problems, but it could also be much more useful than your tone suggests.
Hydrogen is a very aggressive and volatile gas. Transporting it in pipelines is not a good idea for a long term application, since they would get brittle and break. Tanks must be checked and replaced on a regular basis to avoid undetected material degradation. You can not swap out a complete pipeline. To be able to transport and store hydrogen your best option would be to further transform it into maybe methane. That basically is natural gas with all its applications. Anyhow doing that on top will further reduce efficiency of the complete process.
Battery manufacturing is expanding very rapidly. China will soon have more than 100 battery 'gigafactories'.
The problem there is not only storage but also production/conversion.
Most hydrogen storage options don't need rare materials to make, so they got an edge over batteries there true. But the more efficient ways of either making green hydrogen or transform it back to electricity later requires even rarer materials than batteries, while batteries mainly just need transformers which hydrogen also needs, and which require very basic materials only.
@@reappermen
It's looking very likely that the majority of EVs and battery storage will use an iron, phosphate, lithium (LFP) chemistry.
No material shortage there. No 'rare' materials.
Hydrogen is so energy inefficient that it's not likely to play a role in storage. There are some other storage systems that make make it out of the lab and into the real world that might serve for grid storage.
This issue is not likely to be settled for some time. LFP batteries are likely to get the majority of use for the next several years but, theoretically, we could see even better option.
Tesla's LFP 4680 cells should bring cell price to
@@bobwallace9753 oh, i agree that 'rare' materials is a term that should be used very loosely here, and 'expensive'is probably better to be honest.
Even stuff like Lithium, Cobalt and similar that we currently have a shortage of, or the somehwat ineptly named 'rare earth' minerals aren't actualy rare. It's only the easy/cheap to mine deposits of them that are rare. Up the price of the raw materials by 50% and you suddenly have orders of magnitute more deposits that become interesting to mine/exploit.
Regarding the economic incentives to build more renewable solar generation. It can still be profitable to overbuild solar if the price per installed watt keeps falling so dramatically.
Especially if you can export the energy.
at 36% efficiency? There is no way you will be able to compete with fossil fuels at 36 percent efficiency. You'd be better off shipping charged batteries at 95% eff. At least they don't leak hydrogen during transport.
@@garethbaus5471 You won't be exporting hydrogen around the world mate. You would need to cool it to liquid form to put it on a tanker. That's gonna take you to probably 10% efficiency.
@@technokicksyourass I wasn't necessarily advocating for the use of hydrogen to export the energy. I am not a huge fan of using hydrogen for energy storage, for exactly the reason you listed.
Thank you. I'm new to the topic of green energy. It's helpful to hear the details of what technologies work best for which applications.
The third most important thing (after air and water) is food, and agriculture uses huge amounts of hydrogen in making fertilizer. Now, the hydrogen is made using fossil fuels, mostly methane, and the fossil fuels must be eliminated ASAP. The hydrogen must be made by other than fossil fuels and the governments must force this to happen, by carbon taxes or by laws.
Rosie spoke a lot about the economics, but the "green premium", the additional cost of going green, must be dealt with by governments. The economics will come as various methods are developed to solve the needs for hydrogen *without* generating CO2.
There is no time for ruminating about this. It must be done at all costs and the details will be worked out as it's done. There is no argument among scientists about this; we have to get the ball rolling immediately.
Well put Rosie! I keep thinking that storage, transport and piping hydrogen is another red flag. H2 molecules are smaller than the gaps between molecules of most other materials. So leakage is a massive problem! Like containing sand in vessels made from apples....
Excellent spot on analysis, I fully agree with all of your concerns and hopes. I think though like all things, after maybe a few detours the Hydrogen economy will likely just follow the money. Green Hydrogen is not cheap, and despite costs falling rapidly, there will always in reality be a price floor, set by the cost of manufacturing, installing and maintaining the needed renewable generation and conversion facilities. The price of all renewable energies cannot therefore forever trend to zero, because otherwise at some point, no one will bother to build it. Arguably there needs to be a good price floor, to encourage developers to get on with it.
So I suspect eventually hydrogen will find it's way easily into the most valuable applications that don't have cheaper alternatives, like long term storage back up to renewable electricity grids, long distance buses, trains and road freight, just as you pointed out. Hydrogen cars and home heating will not be economically sustainable without expensive ongoing government support; even blue hydrogen cannot hope to compete here, because carbon capture perhaps doubles costs over unabated fossil gas, battery electric cars are already cheaper to run, and electric heat pumps are already at least equal cost, despite distorting subsidies in some countries that favor fossil gas. On the flip side, blue hydrogen can still provide a helpful pathway to eventual green hydrogen, where there is not yet enough renewable infrastructure in place to close the loop, but it must not do so by undercutting the nascent green hydrogen industry, or that will fail to grow fast enough. It doesn't hurt, that small local projects like hydrogen buses, help to commercialize the technology needed for e.g. long distance transport, even if these interim solutions don't really make economic sense.
So IMO the immediate problem is the apparent - but in reality nonviable - simplicity of fuel substitution and the consequent attraction to politicians and fossil fuel industries, like oil & gas and car manufacture. But as the global climate consensus grows, the influence of fossil lobby groups is already diminishing surprisingly rapidly, and financiers & industry are increasingly aware of the risks of investing in technologies with a diminishing future. Some good examples here is that most all European domestic gas boiler suppliers are already transitioning to manufacturing electric heat pumps, and many proposed coal power stations are getting canceled all around the world, due to lack of finance. In the political sphere, representatives increasingly see vote winning potential, both in being seen to be 'green' and in opportunities for jobs and economic growth from the green revolution, further diminishing the influence of the fossil fuel lobby.
So perhaps one of the biggest risks in the transition is that the existing, fossil fuel based energy systems will start to become much less dependable, as support for these industries shrinks, before hydrogen & renewable infrastructure are fully ready to take up the slack. This creates a very important dilemma, because the biggest and most intractable problem, for the whole world, is industrial emissions, most especially in China. This piece is absolutely vital, because the renewable system itself, is now completely dependent, on China's huge contribution, to reducing the cost of production. Unlike many other areas, there is no option to simply reduce this activity. And because many of these industrial process need high grade, high temperature heat, this conundrum cannot be solved, without a viable Hydrogen economy.
But on the plus side, China has already shown willing, and are making very rapid progress in doing the easy bits - solar, wind & EV - just like everyone else. So there is no question that China will quickly do what's necessary, if a viable solution can be found to the much more difficult hydrogen and industrial piece. So the challenge for the richer countries, is to find a pathway to make the Hydrogen piece economically viable. And the easiest and quickest way to get to get to that, is to build a hydrogen system funded and supported by the various existing demands we have for natural gas, even if hydrogen for these applications doesn't make sense in the longer term. There are some very difficult decisions that will need to be made very soon about where the best balance between Hydrogen and Electrification will need to be, both for the immediate future and longer term, and the policies that governments will need to set to get there. All governments will need to rapidly get much better, at explaining to their populations what needs to be done and why, which need not be so difficult, with increasing concern about climate change.
TLDR; Hydrogen is not at all easy, but it's also vital to net-zero. So we need to find a way to get there, and the shortest path is not always the easiest.
At last - a sensible video about hydrogen and all its shortfalls. Batteries are far more efficient at storing surplus electricity than the production, storage and use of hydrogen. Hydrogen cars are a case in point; expensive to but, expensive to run, inefficient and still require a battery for acceleration boosting and energy recuperation, when braking.
All great points Rosie - 100% concur. Medium - long term, best terrestrial transport application for Hydrogen will be sea freight - maybe airliners to be de-carbonised. Electrical energy gen / storage is a non starter (dead duck) - as you rightly point out re -ve prices a VRE plant will not get up, ie needs a PPA. 100% VRE grid will be nearly entirely Solar, wind & batteries (+ PHES). Also, Industrial direct heat or feedstock replacement in certain processes (cement, steel, fertilisers etc) also potential niche's for H2 where electrification via VRE is hard.
There are some direct Hydrogen use cases like steel production, but most of the industry just needs a ton of heat. Here molten salt / metal storage would be ideal. Direct energy heating the stuff when there is a surplus of energy then using it over the day to keep the production running.
Thank God for rationality, Rosie! Keep 'Tubing! Great channel.
Thanks for the video, I had one of those "of course!" lightbulb moments when you talked about banks not lending to renewable generation facilities if they will be losing money.
On the #2 point, one of the big pushes I've seen in Europe is to instrumentalize the North Sea for energy and aquaculture. Offshore wind has far less intermittent power production and being surrounded by water the hope is that something will make hydrogen production cheap with sea water in the North Sea wind farming hubs that are being built. Some are pushing for cheaper desalination to precede hydrolysis, some are pushing for photo-catalysts, and others are pushing for new cathode/anode materials that prevent the corrosion of saltwater electrolysis.
Thank you Rosie, the economics are key, niche applications are target market.
And I was getting excited about being able to refuel my future EV in a few minutes..... :( - I'm a new watcher of your channel, and very impressed - keep it up!
Couldn’t agree more with your view of hydrogen, although one element which you seemed to miss was that burning hydrogen in air creates oxides of nitrogen which are potent greenhouse gases. In the U.K. the government is pushing the idea of hydrogen replacing natural gas for domestic heating as 80% of U.K. households rely on gas for heating, I suspect this is on the basis of gas companies having stranded assets if we move to electric heating and therefore lobbying hard. As you point out the inefficiencies this would introduce is huge. Hydrogen for specific processes yes, ( steel, cement etc) and possibly as a long backstop for electricity production, but distributed storage at the domestic level by batteries ( including idle electric cars) plus demand management and the other grid scale storage is a much better economic solution than large scale hydrogen storage.
Thanks for making a video about hydrogen which is not pure hype. Great job!
Your concerns about fossil fuel companies and resources dependent economies embracing hydrogen production that still emits significant carbon are spot on and already materialising. The West Australian government just announced a new Woodside hydrogen project in Kwinana on land provided at no cost by the government. It will produce grey hydrogen, dressed up as blue hydrogen, since they claim emissions will be offset. If true, the offsets will no doubt be paid for by the Federal Government's Climate Solutions Fund that pays polluters. As a further greenwashing measure there will be a token green hydrogen electrolyser which it is claimed can produce up to 1/3 of the hydrogen output. This will be a perverse outcome, heavily subsidised by taxpayers, that does not reduce emissions. Further it will make it less likely that true green hydrogen projects (such as those promised by Andrew Forrest) will be able to compete as their costs will be significantly higher.
Yeah I read that they're trying to change the definition of blue hydrogen to not just mean with carbon capture, but with any kind offset. It really just reinforces a point that I've been making about blue hydrogen: it is just grey hydrogen with CCS, why not put the CCS on an already-existing power plant and then let the new grey hydrogen's business case be assessed on its own (polluting) merits? It's such rubbish, but I can't see it working because our hydrogen will mostly be for export, and countries have no reason to change to hydrogen except if it has lower emissions than what they're currently using.
I'll do an update video on blue hydrogen soon (I'm just finishing up a few on carbon usage/ storage first). It's all pretty depressing really 😥
The key point this video misses is that the robustness of a system isn't determined by the average, but at the extremes. We don't build wings to withstand the weight of the aircraft, we build them to withstand many times that weight, plus some additional safety reserve. For a grid to operate using stochastic sources of generation, we won't be generating the amount we need on average, because we still need the grid to function at the extreme ends of the weather distribution; rather, we'll almost always be generating excess, where the amount of excess is driven by whatever reserve is deemed statistically sufficient. This is also implied by the idea of connecting otherwise separate grids to improve reliability -- site A can send power to site B to cover for a shortfall, but of course, for this to be a strategy at all, site A must have an oversupply.
The reason hydrogen is getting a lot of traction now is because it scales better than any other form of energy storage for this type of scenario. The US has operated roughly 350GWh of underground hydrogen storage for several decades now, with the oldest site running continuously since 1983, so the technical knowhow already exists. You can add hundreds of GWhs of salt cavern hydrogen storage at a time, and you can burn it in a gas turbine the same way we run peaker plants today. Electrolyzers themselves are also a more efficient use of materials than say, batteries, since they decouple the components of the redox reaction from the storage of energy. An electrolyzer inherently uses less material, and stores more energy over the course of its life than a battery does, even after accounting for thermodynamic losses.
Whether or not you believe hydrogen will be used in cars (because that's what is driving a lot of the pushback against hydrogen -- the BEV movement), it's definitely here to stay. Personally, I think methanol -- which is made from hydrogen -- is what we'll eventually use in cars. It's a good fuel, and can be even be carbon negative. It's what the shipping industry will most likely use, and you have to ask yourself why you wouldn't also use it in cars if it's cheap enough, especially if hoped for improvements in battery technology don't pan out.
Great video! My guess is that government and industry back hydrogen because this way the seem to do something green without actually doing anything at all.
Yes, I find it unlikely that grids will overbuild intermittent renewables to the point where there are persistent oversupply issues, and I don't think this cheap energy will be reliable enough for synthesis companies builds to be at large enough scales to ensure the capture of all excess power while needing to compete for this power from other storage technologies. Short-term fast-reacting storage technologies like battery setups are likely a better fit for shaving the peaks and troughs of intermittent power.
Instead I think it could be more feasible if hydrogen synthesis becomes directly paired to dedicated renewable power installations on micro-grids. That way these companies can directly estimate their needed capacities and will be able to tune their system to be as efficient as possible, rather than needing to be super flexible in order to react to a volatile grid supply.
If this method were to be used then a portion of the produced hydrogen can be stored and utilized by the grid to keep power production stable, while reducing the amount of over-build required by renewables to ensure the grid supply remains reliable.
Fantastic summary! You're doing awesome job on CZcams!
Thank you kindly!
I appreciated your reasonably balanced critique of green hydrogen.
I think we need research into all means of energy storage, as many possibilities are out there, and the technologies are still relatively undeveloped.
Solar, as you know, only accounted for about 3% of global electricity production and has been heavily subsidized all along. The 47-unit residential building I live in would not be installing solar at this moment if not for the heavy subsidies being received. To declare that we have all the technologies we need and that future technologies no longer need the heavy subsidies historically given for R&D would severely retard the attempt to drastically lower CO2 production by 2050.
Variable-term storage is a major Achilles heal of moving to a greener future. Batteries are fine for balancing the grid, but the main means of supplying gaps in green electricity in the US is still the use of natural gas generation plants, and batteries are still a long way from providing even moderate term electrical storage. Moreover, home heating in much of North America is by natural gas, or, in the case of NYC where I live, even by fuel oil. Converting all the buildings involved to electrical heat will be a major challenge at a time of the year when solar energy production is lowest, both in terms of energy supply and the cost and technology involved in converting buildings from fossil fuel heat to electrical or some other green form.
My impression is that most hydrogen vehicles will use fuel cells instead of ICEs, perhaps because fuel cells and electric motors are more efficient than hydrogen ICEs (my speculation).
I certainly agree that there is a lot of hype about green hydrogen and many barriers to its economic use. Still, I think green hydrogen needs more exploration for such uses as you noted in your video and as a flexible means of storage.
Solar still needing subsidies is not correct. Saudi Arabia is building insanely big solar farms, because it's cheaper in producing electricity than using their own oil. If solar isn't yet price competitive to fossil fuels, then the legislation is subsidizing fossil fuels too.
The problem I have with hydrogen is that it takes attention away from compressed natural gas in combustion engines, the cleanest (and potentially cheaper) of fossil fuels with infrastructure already in place and the perfect option for plug-in hybrids.
Being conservative, you could power twice as many plug-in hybrids with the same amount of batteries required for bEVs, cutting twice as much emissions, possibly more. And at the end of its battery life, you can replace it with the latest battery technology, potentially turning that hybrid in a full time EV for practical purposes, because in the end of the day, electricity should be even cheaper.
The only BIG problem with it is the long term business strategy for natgas suppliers. However they could turn some of those fracking wells into geothermal to power the EVs they once fuelled so there is still hope.
Now we just have to actually think long term without the interference of lobbyists. The great thing about this is that it does not only makes environmental sense, but economic sense as well, for everyone involved.
I'm concerned about limited supply materials, rare earth minerals, duplicating the OPEC challenges and eventually becoming exhausted. Clean hydrogen seems to be a great plentiful egalitarian replacement for batteries as back up to to wind, solar, etc. which may have temporary down time. Thoughts?
Rare earth elements? There are no rare earth element in batteries! None! There are not even any rare metal that cannot be replaced by a very abundant one in batteries, especially for grid storage applications.
Clean hydrogen, on the contrary, DOES need the rarest of metals as catalyst for fuel cells: platinum or platinum-group metals. As a matter of fact, the entire world's production of those metals would allow no more than the production of around 1 million car... 1.25% of the total market. For grid storage? The hydrogen cycle is ridiculously inefficient.
Those are the thoughts of a chemical engineer working in improving hydrolysis processes to produce hydrogen... but, as Rosie said, for being used as a raw material by industry (fertilizers, chemicals, steel-making, oil refining while there is still some, ...), NOT as energy storage... save niche exceptions.
Hi from the uk
I to believe hydrogen will have a big part to play in the future but it is all dependent on manufacture, storage and supply. I cant see it in the near future for shipping or aviation, its not a great fuel in any ic engine yes it can work but not great and then as far as aviation goes storage is a problem, we have had a pilot study going on over here to look into domestic heating, I can't see that coming to fruition as the whole of the gas network would have to be replaced as it leaks so badly only tolerated by the the fact gas is so cheap but less of my negativity I still see it has a future but as you say not the silver bullet
Keep up the good work
I have two problems with the arguments in this video. The first is that you don't need to use free, overproduced solar to create hydrogen for energy storage. Using hydrogen storage will create demand for afternoon solar where there currently isn't enough demand. The supply and demand for solar will balance out throughout the day and you won't have to shut down solar in the afternoon because of oversupply. Hydrogen storage just has to be cheaper than battery storage for hydrogen to be a viable solution.
The second problem is the claim that we shouldn't deploy hydrogen storage until the grid is not yet 100% clean. Deploying hydrogen storage will drive its price down as it becomes more and more efficient. While this will actually release more CO2 because it is only 35% efficient, this will be offset because it will allow more and more wind and solar to be deployed. This will continue to decrease the CO2 problem until you have 100% solar, wind, and hydrogen battery running the grid. An alternative would be to use lithium batteries for a generation then have hydrogen storage replace lithium to clean up lithium's environmental problems and limited supply problems. You don't want to wait for a clean grid to deploy hydrogen storage because without a solution to the intermittency problem, you won't be able to get started building a clean grid.
Thanks for a great summary.
What about breaking apart CO2 to make C and O2? That would seem like a great way to clean the air of excess CO2 and store energy in the form of carbon. Or is the chemical reaction too complicated or energy-hungry to make it practical? (I'm not an engineer)
Amazing timing with this comment. Just yesterday I interviewed a chemical engineer who is working on ways we can use CO2 to make things like biochar, methanol, fuels by splitting the CO2 molecules. Check back in a few weeks for that video.
@@EngineeringwithRosie
Great timing indeed! I look forward to watching your video on the topic.
10:35 But you still need to get the hydrogen to where it's needed. If a area is difficult to connect to an electric grid in a efficient way, wouldn't that problem will be exponential with trying to get hydrogen from that area? If you send the hydrogen via pipe, wouldn't loss from leaks be a big issue? And if vehicles driving on roads exclusive for this purpose are used, that's really wasteful, better to connect via long distance wire.
10:51 Similar problem here. How do you collect and get the hydrogen to where it's needed without too much waste? You avoid the cost of undersea cables only to trade it for the cost of... boats? used to collect the hydrogen then further land transport necessary to get it to it's final destination.
All good points, thanks for commenting. I am working on a video about hydrogen transport through natural gas pipelines, stay tuned for that one I hope to release within a week.
@@EngineeringwithRosie
But doesn't hydrogen being so much smaller than natural gas leak much more? Also are natural gas lines easier to lay than electrical wires? Why would that be?
@@firstlast-cs6eg yep, leakage is an issue due to small molecule size. And the idea is to use existing gas pipelines, not install new ones.
Sounds like you will be interested in what my gues has to say on the topic :-)
@@EngineeringwithRosie Thanks for a great video!
Many large cities have reticulated gas networks. If these were built before the middle of the 20th century, they were originally built for "coal gas" or "town gas", and the urban landscape was littered with gasometers used to store and distribute gas. When town gas was replaced with natural gas, existing distribution pipes were used. Town gas was typically 40-50% hydrogen, so the issues with pipes being embrittled by hydrogen-rich gas were well understood back then. It's really "back to the future" with the proposals to inject hydrogen into the natural gas reticulation network.
The hype around the "hydrogen economy" is likely in part due to the petroleum industry looking for a way to save stranded gas assets - just add a bit of CCS to the existing steam methane reforming (SMR) plants and Bob's your uncle! Unfortunately (as with CCS added on to coal-fired power stations) it only succeeds in making the production process less efficient (and thus less competitive with electrolysis).
One interesting alternative to SMR is a process under development to split methane into hydrogen gas plus solid carbon (as graphite) rather than hydrogen gas + CO2 as is the case with SMR. This has the potential to offset process cost with the value of the graphite "waste" product. They are currently building a pilot plant in WA to use methane from a waste water processing plant as feedstock.
hazergroup.com.au/about/#hazerprocess
Hello Rosie. - your videos are always most interesting With regards to Hydrogen have you come across a CZcams channel called New Energy for Europe - they also have a website - their videos cover Hydrogen a lot and details ongoing and new hydrogen projects in Europe. There is a lot of development going on. The port of Rotterdam is aiming to become a hydrogen hub for storage a d distribution using existing pipelines to the heavy & chemical industries in NL & the Ruhr/Rhein area in Germany. That will probably depend on Shell going ahead using part of their oil refinery nearby which proposes to use Off-shore wind & solar power to produce Green Hydrogen.
Almost certainly the big oil & energy companies will move towards hydrogen once the EU puts money on the table. In my humble opinion it is no longer “ if” but when!
I agree with most of the information and was a great video, only a couple of things that could have been mentioned the Victorian Government and Toyota did an investment program into Hydrogen Fuel cell fleet about 2 years ago and the Mirai already has about 250 KM longer range than the Electric equivalents not to say that this is the best solution for green Hydrogen but is commercially available although fuel distribution is an issue. Also Lavo a Sydney startup who has government and market funding for their Hydrogen Batteries using metal hydride storage and local water supply for electrolysis system with three times the storage ten times the life. too expensive currently but with further development they could assist in firming supply with power generators and the distributor which is something discussed. Then the recent announcement from Rex and Dovetail Electric Aviation to deploy a fleet of small shortrange Fuel Cell planes first by 2024 and potential fleet change by 2030. Not to suggest this clears any of the red flags entirely just to provide some context to some of the points.
Regarding the first red flag. It follows the premise that it would use the "free" electricity because no one is going to use it, but the premise changes because now the hydrogen facilities would be using it so the demand changes and thus it wouldnt be free anymore.
Great video! Had me pushing that subscribe button. 😎
It's perfect for nuclear. We can reduce nuclear risk by placing it in low risk areas, have the kind of larger generator capacity that doesn't make sense if we're plugging it into the grid, and export the hydrogen. It decouples the location of consumption and the location of production; which is absolutely necessary in many regions of the world. The current price of green hydrogen isn't something that makes sense to even bring up. Most things we own would cost insane amounts if not mass produced.
Rosie, great video, thank you. My firm develops green and blue hydrogen projects at scale in multiple geographies using multiple technologies, for both heavy vehicle and power applications.
You're right that hydrogen is problematic from numerous standpoints, just like every other energy technology has been (and continues to be).
I'd like to point out that I could make a video like this about *any* energy technology you can possibly think of: batteries (cobalt & lithium wars, kids enslaved, same old mercenary geopolitical antidemocratic regime-changing resource dominance issues in Congo, Bolivia and everywhere else); nuclear (fantastic technology until some private equity firm buys the reactors and slashes costs to improve $$$profits$$$ which eventually cause massive radiation leaks); nat gas (continued emissions of both methane & CO2, continued fossil fuel politics that distort or prevent democracies), on and on.
It's important to keep an open mind. Every one of these technologies has their niches and continues to evolve very rapidly. There isn't "one clean tech to rule them all". My experience has been that almost every single problem that has arisen in any of these technologies eventually finds some new innovation that solves it to a sufficient degree.
Point well.made. Indeed the question about the killer application is often dodged. Fuel for rockets and shipping and some industries it seems to me.
The trend in rockets is towards methane fuel, which largely combines the advantages of hydrogen and kerosene.
It would theoretically be possible to generate the methane from hydrogen via the Sabatier reaction, but whilst most hydrogen is actually obtained from natural gas it currently makes much more sense to just use the natural gas right away.
0:38 Now is the time for Hydrogen to shine???
It has been doing that nicely for billions of years already
Maybe get to the root of *who* is funding all the hydrogen research and development... During the last hydrogen fad in 2012, my energy engineering lecturer was very keen to point out this cycle of pushing hydrogen every few years when the petroleum industry needed a distraction. Whether they needed to counter the promise of non-oil technology, or just raise their share prices, its self fulfilling either way.
As James Kunsler said: "there isn't going to be a hydrogen economy. Forget it. Its not gonna happen". Simple - now can we move on from there petroleum industry obfuscations?
In Europe, many countries' power grids are connected together, particularly around the North and Baltic Seas. In these seas are many many privately owned wind farms which are connected to the power grids of their home nations - all or most of which belong to the system of connections mentioned above. So, significantly, is Spain.
These countries span an official time difference of 2 hours - although Spain's offiicial time allows the sun to stay in bed for an extra hour or so. The citizens tend to stay up late and get up late when given the opportunity. The physical time span is nearer 3 hours than 2. This helps spread the peak load.
One of the biggest things going against Hydrogen is the usual suspects, Oligarchs, University trained financial wizards scamming for profit or property, Old Tech corporations who won’t benefit from the new clean offers … we really should be teaching people to be more efficient, using the Gas from processed waste is a cheap way to power generation systems … where I live Summer is a demanding time thanks to Air Conditioning systems … we still have steam and Air pressure to exploit. So we really need to find a way to get our students to learn the things that will help their world rather than protest about the past. There is a great need to create the new world …
Smoothing the production/demand differential doesn't require free electricity, just cheap enough relative to peak prices that it is worth storing. If I can by electricity for $5, and sell it the next day for $10, I can potentially make a profit, and if a bank knows that even when overproducing the current demand, electricity sells for $5 to a storage company, they'll be more likely to finance a project.
The problems with hydrogen are numerous and significant though, low utilization is a problem, it drives up cost, the efficiency is terrible that drives up cost, hydrogen is explodey af, that drives up cost (it can be made reasonably safe with a lot of effort, which costs money), electrolyzers and fuel cells are expensive. It is extremely unlikely that hydrogen will ever be competitive with any other form of storage where energy density isn't critical.
And hydrogen might not even be best in those cases, I'm very curious to see things like methane and ammonia as chemical fuels that might be easier to work with. Between the terrible volumetric energy density, and the leakage, I'm far from convinced that hydrogen is the way to go for aircraft, rockets, long haul trucks, or ships.
The only scenario where hydrogen makes sence to me is this:
The country has many plants recycling food and bio-waste to produce clean methane (or biomethane) and there are plenty of renewable sources, e. g. photovolatic panels on the roofs of buildings and houses. In summer with excess production of electricty instead pf batteries (which use heavy metals, degrade over time etc.) the excess energy is used for hydrogen production from the biomethane - since It's more efficient than from water and It comes from waste (so It's somewhere between blue and green??) ofc with carbon capture. So during the summer you create hydrogen and during the winter or bad weather you use that hydrogen back to generate electricity (and water).
So in this scenario you're basicaly producing hydrogen from waste without mining oil or gas or heavy metals from Earth (ofc. with the exception of the metals needed for the photovoltaic panels)
I'm just a (Bio-)Chemist and I've many of these same question and opinion about Hydrogen energy. Thanks a lot for confirming some of my concerns and leading me to correct direction for other.
Btw, I don't think long haul trucking, aviation or heavy industries like steel/cement are niche application. They are some of the most energy intensive process AFAIK.
On that topic, she mentioned how rare it is to have cheap zero emission electricity, and AFAIK, nearly all of Fenno-Scandia has it (Finland, Denmark, Sweden & Norway). I'm from Norway, and we don't have any* active coal power plants or nuclear power plants. It's all* powered by hydro, solar/PV and wind.
(* except for Svalbard, a overseas territory in the Arctic Circle, where conditions make it very difficult to use renewable power. They have one coal power plant there, which is in the Longyearbyen/Longyeartown. Additionally, we have some disconnected nuclear power plants for research purposes, one active iirc).
But back to the point - we have hydrogen-powered buses and battery-powered buses in some regions. We also have the same tech incorporated in some ferries. Ferries are an essential part of transportation in the coastal regions of Norway, as we have countless fjords, mountains and islands, which makes it extremely expensive to build bridges, tunnels or drive around it. E39 for instance, is a long-planned route where the government has for two/three generations planned to build a complex network of bridges and tunnels to get across these massive bodies of water while cutting down on the long-term costs of ferries.
Additionally, due to Norway's economy and geography, long-haul trucks are an essential component of our economy. This is due to the demands of the industry, as well as the geography of the industry. The maritime sector is huge along the coast, which is far away from the central roads connecting to Europe (e.g. Møre og Romsdal, where a key industry is fishing, large vessel maintenance, and logistics. There it's a 6-8hr drive to Oslo, the capital, from which you'd go to Sweden or Central Europe).
I'm not sure where the ship-maintenance industry gets their components/materials from, but some probably go by truck, depending on the weight of the goods, quantity, location, and demand.
That previous part was just to add to what you were saying with how long haul trucks and steelworks aren't niche industries at all.
But on the topic of the difficulties of hydrogen, I think the largest roadblock in deployment is the lack of a hydrogen-refining/electrolysis and distribution industry.
Iirc, PEM-cells have a lot more endurance than common modern Li-Ion-batteries, though. That part is what makes me so attracted to it, since it can endure more charge/discharge cycles, and doesn't suffer from the inherent issues with Li-Ion (like dendrite formation).
I'm not a material engineer, have never studied chemistry, or anything like that. Only biology, psychology, physics, and English Politics in tertiary level education. Aside from that, my highest (or soon-to-be) degree is PR, Media & Communication -- which is completely unrelated to energy storage technologies. So because of that, please correct me if I'm wrong, and please do add more to it. :D
Have a great day!
@@zanderhenriksen6776 Wow! Thanks for such an informative comment. Also thanks to your region for adopting such awesome tech. Not all the world is blessed with such renewable energy source as yours. But still, you guys surely will lead the rest of the world for hydrogen powered automotive.
Very clear and engaging. Thank you!
Glad you enjoyed it!
I thought I understood hydrogen (at least as far as a non scientist non engineer can). I could quibble on a couple of points but on the whole, I am the one who has been persuaded by you.
High temperature electrolysis is more efficient, if we preheat the water using waste heat from fission and gas power plant condensers, it would reduce the power cost...
Solar and geothermal preheating may also be possible..?!?..
Electrolysis should be cheaper in the Sahara, than the Antarctic
I can see some use cases for hydrogen in long range vehicles, trucks, aircraft, spacecraft and buses etc..
We may also see smaller, cheaper, gimballed H2 thrusters on more flying vehicles and drones in the future, which could be fun :)
I'm kinda binge watching Rosie right now. I was not unfamiliar with this topic, and I'm still learning while watching Rosie smile into the camera, while speaking with a positive calm tone of voice. Nikki on Transport evoved does it too. Hope they never stop.
Great video. Your flags make it clear that building electrolysers and related plant to store excess renewable energy is not now economically sensible. I suppose the most sensible application of electrolysers to produce green hydrogen will be to use cheap energy in remote applications with an abundance of renewable resources. The green hydrogen produced could then replace grey and brown hydrogen otherwise produced, replace fossil fuels in industrial heating applications, replace coal to make cement and steel and replace fossil fuels in transport applications in which batteries are not feasible. As the scale of hydrogen production increased and its cost came down, it might then come into its own as an energy storage method. This might require some sensible political decisions and international cooperation. Hope springs eternal.
Simon Romijn said,
"...building electrolyzers... to store [hydrogen] is not now economically sensible."
This is nonsense. There are several companies that make economically sensible hydrogen storage. Lavo, Picea Home Power, Gencell, Bloom, Ballard, Plug Power and others make and sell systems for doing just that.
For long distance heavy transport would electrified freight trains be worth consideration?
I live in a rural environment surrounded by farms and ranches. To me hydrogen seems like a great fit in these environments where farmers can generate power from wind and solar and store as hydrogen. It would give their cars the needed range for trips to large centers. It could eliminate significant fuel costs and even provide a clean source of potable water. Hell they could possibly make their own fertilizer. Efficiency isn't an issue as you just a larger installation which you can amortize as just another capital cost with the savings. What makes me less optimistic is that even though a fuel-cell tractor was announced back in 2009, I can't see any on the market today. Clearly smarter people than me have looked at this and decided it was a bad idea.
@@JorgTheElder I'm not sure if I agree with that assessment. Hydrogen storage is cheap and long lasting in comparison to batteries. Farming is seasonal so they would want to store up for the high seasons in fall and spring. Also farmers want to have their tractors running 24/7 during those times. Hydrogen refilling is significantly quicker reducing turn around times.
Finally someone who can explain the issues with hydrogen of energy storage
I have a couple of questions.
1st, how green does the grid have to be, for electrolysis to be more efficient than grey hydrogen?
2nd, in colder climate, seasonal storage is extremely important. What are the alternatives to hydrogen, particularly in areas where pumped storage is not an option?
3rd, I don't know of any country that plans to reach it's Paris Climate Agreement obligations solely with existing technology. How big of is chance is there that technologies like hydrogen, batteries or carbon capture are going to plateau and what does the cost risk analysis looks like for diversifying funds into so many technologies?
4th, why are governments investing in hydrogen powered cars?
Ahh politics. Why do governments invest in anything?
Great video. Let me just challenge your points one by one:
1) The private banks are not the ones to look for to borrow any money for something relatively new. The money will (is) be from public funds. Most governments are already funding low carbon electricity generation whether it is to produce H2 or not. So, problem solved! (Hopefully)
2) It is not very clear what industry you are talking about when you say "manufacture". Is it fuel cells'? Is it electrolyzers'? Anyway, both of them, as you correctly say, are up in the cost per kW produced. That is why you forcefully need to scale up these technologies, markets and applications. To bring the costs down.
3) I have never ever seen somebody complaining because of the 20%-25% typical gasoline engine-to-wheel efficiency. Basically electrolyzers are 60-70% efficient and fuel cells vary from 40 to 65% depending on the electrolyte and temperature. In that sense, the cycle of electricity to H2 and then H2 back to electricity is what you mentioned, but H2 can be transported in ways that electricity cannot. Steel and Cement (15% of global CO2) would have a hard time being produced with electricity. You can't power ships or aircrafts with electricity. So, electrification doesn't solve the problem.
4) Like which ones? For example, which types of energy storage are improving so fast? Supercapacitors? Pumped hydro? Compressed air storage? Li-ion batteries? Flywheels? Which of them are as versatile as H2 or byproducts of H2?
Cheers. Thanks for the discussion.
On your third point you forgot to add the energy cost for compressing of H2, ~15% loss. It is true that nobodies complains about that ICE are that low efficient, but in general fossil fuel is cheap, and abundant, so it ends up in the who cares department. But electricity, we do not have enough. Converting electricity, any generation type into H2 is not attractive: people with battery EVs have discovered the charging at home feature (genie out of the bottle), battery systems for storage or vehicles is more efficient, 4~5 times more than H2, and H2 economy, opens the gates for non green H2, which will for sure be abused.
On point 4, batteries are getting better, in terms of power/weight, capacity/weight, etc. For Li batteries the changes are not that much, but there are other chemistries that are showing up. I understand that a H2 fuel cells could get better, but we are already on the border there. On H2 generation there are people trying the path of direct sunlight to H2, no electricity required. I think there is potential there, mostly if it is used where there is lots of sunlight, but for that there is still the transportation, and other efficiencies that will affect it.
Surplus renewable energy isn't free, current levelised cost of electricity for renewables assumes that the grid can always take the electricity. If it can't you are curtailing the renewables and reducing its capacity factor and this increasing its cost of generation. If you create a new user for surplus generation from renewables at best you get the price back down to the one you currently pay.
Let's just build one giant hydrogen storage facility for every continent to benefit from economies of scale. Since we then have one giant zeppelin we should put a city on top of it that floats around from country to country, because we can. Either that or we make them gigantic hydrogen cargo vessels that float from continent to continent, dragging themselves along with power/hydrogen transfer cables. Because that makes total sense.
Floating above the weather, everyone would soon be dead. Bring it
Rosie I think you miss a very significant point. There is generally a fresh water deficit in many highly populated areas and water is needed for other things than generating H2. Using brines creates another issue. First, electrolysing brines generates Chlorine and NaOH as well as hydrogen. Second, if RO is front ended to remove salt, the costs go up dramatically. I agree that hydrogen will be a niche commodity unless large natural accumulations are discovered and developed . They do exist, but have not been widely discovered like fossil fuels have.
Boy, I needed that!
In other words I think we can forget about Hydrogen economy for the time being until there is a lot and lots more wind power generation capacity so that surplus and lower price electricity can be channelled off towards Hydrogen production at a commercially viable price. Until then I can't see green Hydrogen progressing at all. Come on chemical scientists, think harder and improve/invent a better battery. Thanks for your Hydrogen scepticism Rosie - you are 100% right.
Rosie, please review recent DOE (Feb 2021) announcement of catalyst boosted ambient temperature-pressure hydrogenation-dehydrogenation for LOHC technology, has implication for energy storage and carrier (e.g. repurpose fossil fuel pipeline infrastructure); there's now several emerging LOHC companies both European and Asian; can LOHC energy tech make the leap to be scaled up or down efficiently as energy cache/carrier for a true distributed hydrogen economy? Why not emulate Nature's millions-year Darwin development of energy cache/carrier metabolic systems of the role of biological ATP molecule and catalytic enzymes?
Very good video. I passionately hope that we can save the environment, but I see all too often that green initiatives like windmills, solar power, bio fuel and hydrogen get hijacked by the industry to make money and fool us into believing that we help the environment. I hope you make a similar video on solar power one day....
Has anyone spoken about NOx in hydrogen car exhaust ?
I have not yet had a chance to watch this video. That said, I wanted to 'throw this out there' regarding Hydrogen Fuel Cells vs. Batteries for ground vehicles.
Switching to all-battery vehicles means either replacing ALL the vehicles, or ripping out their existing drive trains and replacing them with batteries and electric motors.
Existing internal combustion engine-powered vehicles can already be converted to running on hydrogen. I know spark ignition reciprocating engines and gas turbines can burn hydrogen. AFAIK so can Wankel Rotaries and Diesels.
Since an infrastucture for H² would be needed to support H² Fuel Cells anyway, such a system would immediately go into operation, {probably} decades before a majority fleet of H² Fuel Cells was operating.
{Just my two cents.}
As for red flag #1 - Rosie failed to consider that most renewables projects are built with a PPA - power purchase agreement - where the generator has a contract with buyers at an agreed upon price. The US has carbon credits that the renewables generator sells to other polluters and this subsidizes the sale of power.
This is a must watch for all politicians
The claim at 6:24 that battery storage can achieve 95% efficiency needs to be supported. According to the EIA (see quote below), measured round-trip efficiency in 2019 was 82%. The article is available online here: www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46756
"According to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA),
in 2019, the U.S. utility-scale battery fleet operated with an average
monthly round-trip efficiency of 82%, and pumped-storage facilities
operated with an average monthly round-trip efficiency of 79%.
"
Does the 82% figure includes charger and inverter losses? I guess it does. Li batteries are 90% or more in general, so it not 100% incorrect what she said, but the 82% is more realistic.
I think the best way to produce green hydrogen that no one talks about is using the thermochemical Sulpher-Iodine cycle with a heliostat solar power tower to skip the conversion to electricity and expensive membranes for electrolysis. doesn't solve any of the practicality problems, but it should certainly cheaper for applications where hydrogen actually makes sense.
All this talk of "negative electricity prices" I've been hearing lately. Who dreams this stuff up? That will NEVER, EVER happen. NO generation owner will PAY to have his power consumed. EVER. He will simply stop generating once the price drops below his cost to generate. Curtailment. And that price will ALWAYS be a Positive number. I agree with all of your points though. Just as rushing to electrify everything while our grid is primarily powered by fossil fuels is inefficient, and wastes those fossil fuels, so too is the rush to make things hydrogen powered is putting the cart before the horse.
Well analysed, bravo
Appreciate the scepticism, with a little more effort some Judicious Cynicism will emerge from the Research.
The obvious case is the cost of energy and efficiency in applications. Mines and Refineries in locations where cheap energy is available, (eg Talga Resources and Graphite).
Northern Australia is loaded with Minerals and Sunlight, Hydrogen is more of a Catalyst than end product, but the propaganda says otherwise.
Good Engineering Review, thank you. Too right!, seems appropriate.
Other idea for talk: how to situate wind mills in a park
H2 is even worse than hydrocarbons because of its uncooperative nature. It doesn't like to be contained, requiring vast pressures to liquify, and finds its way out of vessels, making long-term (eg seasonal) storage unfeasible. Also, hydrogen embrittlement is a problem for the machinery. Elon Musk is my favorite source for explaining the inappropriateness of H2 for applications being pushed by the liquid fuels industry (but Rosie does a great job too).
you don't need the price of electricity to be zero to make hydrogen, it just needs to be around 10-20 euros/MWh so that the hydrogen you produce is competitive with grey hydrogen. fossil fuel extraction is an expensive business, and there's no evidence that the price of hydrocarbons will stay low long-term. still, you need to add a lot of renewables for this to happen; realistically, countries are better off just adding renewables and transmission so that they can decrease the percentage of energy from fossil fuels for the time being.
however, as european countries are seeing this winter, gas is of strategic importance and is only sold by a few countries. it won't be that hard for politicians to create extra subsidies for companies that produce hydrogen from renewables. the potential for a hydrogen economy is here, but because hydrogen so far has been tightly linked with the fossil fuel industry there are also some significant risks with it.
Companies who could use hydrogen to e.g. reduce coal use will be interested in green energy - perhaps could even build it on their own. E.g. SSAB and Vattenfal are cooperating in green energy production in an effort to produce coal free steel with hydrogen. Wind farms and solar are rather competitive ways to produce energy nowadays while old generation polluting power stations continue being closed as there are ever increasing penalties for emissions. The need for energy is not going away which means we're going to get that green energy even if it doesn't make short term economical sense - and we need to store it for less windy days. So, this has been decided and it will happen. It might not make economical sense in the short term but in the long term it makes absolutely clear sense. I believe you forgot to think about long term alternative costs, like millions and millions of dead people and refugees escaping intolerable heat waves and famine. Anyways, nuclear is also a possible option for hydrogen generation as you can split water also directly with heat but it has its own problems - biggest one being there's no affordable supply of nuclear plants. You mentioned subsidies but polluting energy sector has enjoyed these subsidies in the form of polluting rights but these days are over. We cannot afford fossil energy, it makes no economical sense.
Ur absolutely correct. I Wish u should talk about hydrogen ships 🚢 in future.