Hydrogen hopium: green hydrogen from water
Additional steps not shown in above figure: getting water to the electrolyzer, compress or liquefy to -423 F before storage, the trucks to deliver H to stations costing $75 million each, since pipelines are super expensive and may leak, corrode, and explode (Zhao 2018)
Preface. For all the reasons why hydrogen is not going to replace fossil fuels, see the other posts in they hydrogen category, especially Hydrogen: The dumbest & most impossible renewable.
As the Russian war with Ukraine is making clearer, we are far from being able to abandon fossil fuels, so perhaps why there’s ever more hopium articles in the news so that people don’t panic and behave badly, one last desperate attempt to keep people hopeful that we can and must move to renewables saving the world from climate change.
Hydrogen is the dumbest, most ridiculous energy alternative. It is insanely far from being renewable with the highest negative energy return of any alternative, because far more energy is used than you ever get back to split the hydrogen from natural gas or electrolyze it from water, compress or liquefy it, construct incredibly expensive and short-lived steel containers and pipelines, and deliver the hydrogen to non-existent hydrogen fuel cell heavy-duty trucks, locomotives, and ships. Fuel cell technology is far from commercial from the transportation that keeps all of us alive.
Hydrogen from water using electrolysis is 12 times more costly than natural gas, so no wonder “renewable” hydrogen from water is only made when an especially pure hydrogen is required, mainly by NASA for rocket fuel.
From Life After Fossil Fuels: A Reality Check on Alternative Energy:
…click on the above link to read the rest…
