this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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Just be aware, hydrogen in almost all its presented formats is basically natural gas. 96% of hydrogen is sourced from fossil fuels.
So whenever you see shit promoting hydrogen, read it as something promoting natural gas/ fossil fuels.
We already do. Electricity is free here at peaks or sometimes you even get paid for it. The main problem is balancing the network but batteries are an easier solution for that.
It isnt that its a problem, its that its a fantasy. Its a useful fantasy that fossil fuel companies use to prop up hydrogen as the answer when what the mean is BAU.
Show me some major source of renewable generated hydrogen.
Otherwise, stop participating in the fantasy that gives fossil fuel companies a pass on green washing, because right now, there is no such thing as renewable hydrogen. Its 96% fossil fuels.
The challenge with green hydrogen is it needs to be created using green electricity. If the electricity isn’t green you’re still burning fossil fuels to create it. Creating hydrogen from fossil fuel generated electricity and then burning it is less efficient than just burning fossil fuels directly and results in a net increase not decrease in carbon emissions.
As we build additional green electricity generation, it’s currently more impactful to use that to lower grid demand on fossil fuel generated electricity than to use it make green hydrogen. If it’s used to make green hydrogen instead, we’re only delaying the day we finally eliminate fossil fuel electricity generation, which again benefits the fossil fuel industry.
Only at some point in the future, when we’ve completely eliminated fossil fuels from the electric grid, and have created an excess of green electricity generation does green hydrogen even become possible to create.
And even assuming we can achieve that some day. It’s less efficient to use electricity to create hydrogen to power vehicle than to use batteries. Anything that can be converted to connect to the grid directly or run on batteries is better doing that than running on hydrogen.
It’s not completely crazy… there are some potential use cases for green hydrogen that would make sense in some theoretical future where there’s an abundance of green electricity generation, allowing replacing of fossil fuels where more direct forms of electrification isn’t viable. Aircraft in particular come to mind here since hydrogen stores much more energy per kg than batteries, which are currently too heavy to be viable in aircraft.
But almost all promotion of hydrogen today, including green hydrogen, is either more greenwashing by the fossil fuel industry or the work of well meaning idealists that have unwittingly become their shills.
Green Hydrogen is not a solution for the vast majority of things it gets presented as a solution to.
The bonus of hydrogen power is it can eventually be used for energy storage when the grid is fully renewable. This is useful for transportation of energy to other parts of the world by shipping hydrogen, but also locally to offset dips in production or peaks in demand. However, currently it is absolutely greenwashing.
The biggest point of me making a deal of this is that Hypx goes around propagandizing this shit, and if you arent paying attention, you might actually believe that hydrogen represent actually renewable tech. He spams this shit constantly and hasn't been banned on his lemmy home instance.
He's a completely bad faith actor.
Burning methane as a fuel is better for the climate than releasing it as methane. But the best thing would of course be to not release anythig at all
That’s technically true, but it’s not much better in the scheme of things. It’s best, as you said, not to release any at all while reducing the production of more as much as possible.