The hydrogen economy is dead. Long live the hydrogen economy!
October 18, 2020 1:09 PM Subscribe
We know that in theory green hydrogen could be used throughout industry, transport, power and heating. However, it won’t magically happen in sectors that don’t currently use it, just because it is green. Hydrogen is going to have to win, use-case-by-use-case, but it will not be easy. Not only does it have to beat the incumbent technology, it also has to beat every other zero-carbon option for that use-case. This is where hydrogen hype really meets reality.Michael Liebreich writes about "separating hype from hydrogen": Part One: The Supply Side, Part Two: The Demand Side
I'm not a sciencemaster or anything but this has never made sense to me and reading these articles it still doesn't:
Like it seems as though it would all work if we could run a hose from the surface of Jupiter to here, and not have to bother with the hydrogen generation otherwise, but... physics.
posted by XMLicious at 2:08 PM on October 18, 2020 [2 favorites]
Hydrogen is just a power transmission technology, right? So I would think the electrical load doesn't matter at all for comparison—it would be the gigawatt-equivalent of the sum total of all petroleum-based energy consumption in Europe, that would matter. Multiplied by some coefficient for the total technological and systemic energy to hydrogen and back to energy efficiency.The working assumption for EU electrolyzer capacity in 2050, tucked away in footnote 35 of the strategy document, is 500GW. To put that in context, the maximum peak electrical load ever recorded for all of Europe was 546GW.
Like it seems as though it would all work if we could run a hose from the surface of Jupiter to here, and not have to bother with the hydrogen generation otherwise, but... physics.
posted by XMLicious at 2:08 PM on October 18, 2020 [2 favorites]
People keep trying to make hydrogen happen. It's not going to happen.
Electrify everything.
posted by aramaic at 2:12 PM on October 18, 2020 [12 favorites]
Electrify everything.
posted by aramaic at 2:12 PM on October 18, 2020 [12 favorites]
(and I forgot, on that topic, thx biffa for your remark)
posted by aramaic at 2:16 PM on October 18, 2020
posted by aramaic at 2:16 PM on October 18, 2020
the incumbent gas companies have been trying to drive a narrative of replacing natural gas with hydrogen.
That seems to be the strategy here in the Netherlands: reuse the existing natural gas infrastructure for hydrogen generated by the newly build windmill parks out on the North Sea.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:32 PM on October 18, 2020
That seems to be the strategy here in the Netherlands: reuse the existing natural gas infrastructure for hydrogen generated by the newly build windmill parks out on the North Sea.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:32 PM on October 18, 2020
I think NL got a bit panicky over the downgrading of its Groningen gas field a little while back. Suddenly its a big problem for keeping all the gas boilers going in homes without major imports. Anything that looks like an option is on the table.
posted by biffa at 2:37 PM on October 18, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by biffa at 2:37 PM on October 18, 2020 [3 favorites]
What, again?
Circa the time of Peak Oil, H₂ was gonna be the thing. That, and flow batteries (remember them? How they made Vanadium junior mining companies hot stock. And then they weren't.
posted by scruss at 2:46 PM on October 18, 2020
Circa the time of Peak Oil, H₂ was gonna be the thing. That, and flow batteries (remember them? How they made Vanadium junior mining companies hot stock. And then they weren't.
posted by scruss at 2:46 PM on October 18, 2020
Hydrogen is always going to have an energy density and long term storage problem. Even at 10,000psi it's still a gas and the atoms are so small that leaks through damn near everything. Cryo is the only way to get decent mass and volumetric densities. Synthetic bio-fuels are probably going to be the only viable high density energy storage for the foreseeable future. There would need to be major breakthroughs in battery storage for a commercial aircraft to be viable.
posted by TheJoven at 3:03 PM on October 18, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by TheJoven at 3:03 PM on October 18, 2020 [6 favorites]
Yeah, I've spent a lot time looking at hydrogen (as energy transition planning in my job) and come to the conclusion that hydrogen probably has some roles to play in future energy systems. In descending order of usefulness:
-Hydrogen has a role to play in the areas where it is already used as a chemical feedstock but note that some of those are related to production of oil derived fuels which do not have a future
-Hydrogen can be used for high temperature heat industrial processes where gas is currently used
-Hydrogen *might* be used for certain long distance transport where even current battery trends do not look like they're taking us where we need to be.
-Hydrogen may be an option for long-term inter-seasonal energy storage in areas with salt dome storage available
-Hydrogen for light vehicles is a goner, it will never compete with battery electric
-Hydrogen may be used for heating in properties which are too old to insulate effectively enough for heat pumps to work and too sparse for district heating.
I personally think that H2 for heating is extremely unlikely. If you're only going to use it for the 1% of properties for which no other options are available then you might as well stick with natural gas on those. You will note that only if H2 is used extensively for home heating is there a case to keep our gas distribution networks. In all other cases we use it as a gaseous fuel in society but not in houses and therefore that grid is surplus to requirements. Ironically, the HDPE gas distribution grid is well suite to hydrogen use while the high strength steel transmission network is not at all well suited.
The most interesting use case is as some kind of energy flex.
For short-cycles like the diurnal load cycle, solar cycle and balancing across days, batteries are going to dominate that. The only place where H2 can play is storing a reserve for a two-week overcast, windless, and cold period covering all of NW Europe. That does happen once every few years and you need some way of dealing with it.
One model for that is to run the electrolysers when you have overproduction and would have to curtail wind generation otherwise, you then store the excess and use it when there is no wind. The problem with this is the economics are hard to make work. You need to pay for electrolysers, fuel cells, and storage that get used only very occasionally. If you have underground storage, the storage element gets cheap but you're still stuck with the others. I have modeled this option and never gotten it to stack up.
Another is to over-build renewables relative to average demand, run electrolysers for the most productive 6k hours a year and then not for the remaining hours. In this scenario there are no or minimum fuel cells, the H2 is just acting as a productive energy sink. This does require that your society consume some of its energy as H2, potentially as heavy duty transport fuel.
The problem with both this use-case of H2 is the same as it is with things like flow-batteries. They solve a problem that appears at very high renewable penetration but they do not solve any problems or generate any revenue now in 2020 so no-one will build them. You can get to a 90% decarbonised grid just using renewables, batteries, and the gas generation that's already been built (in the UK and parts of the US, Germany and NL are still too coal dependent to do that). That works because the gas is only running a small number of hours a year. This gives us a blue-print for the next decade and half or so but does not solve the problem of the last 10% and it does not tackle home heating.
That seems to be the strategy here in the Netherlands: reuse the existing natural gas infrastructure for hydrogen generated by the newly build windmill parks out on the North Sea.
The one currently being planned will use it for industrial feedstock though which is sensible idea. I do know that separately the Dutch gas distribution networks are pushing hydrogen to the home very heavily because it is the only way they have a future. Personally while I do understand the engineering logic behind it, I also think that it will be the best option only for a minority of properties.
H2 is being pushed very heavily by Germany industry who have a lot of capability in this area (and not so much on batteries). Germany currently has a grid carbon intensity of 400gCO2/kWh+ compared to Nuclear France a less than 100, many Scandinavian countries at 50 or so and the UK at 200 and falling rapidly (15 yrs ago UK was where Germany is now) but these are power sector emissions only. If you look at total emissions, France with its electric heating is way better than any of these countries which typically all use gas.
Hydrogen is just a power transmission technology, right? So I would think the electrical load doesn't matter at all for comparison—it would be the gigawatt-equivalent of the sum total of all petroleum-based energy consumption in Europe, that would matter. Multiplied by some coefficient for the total technological and systemic energy to hydrogen and back to energy efficiency.
Well the electrolysers are grid connected so the implication is that if all of those are built and run simultaneously, they would more than double the electrical production capacity needed! (It's more than because it's = to the historic peak and the network spends very little time close to that peak currently whereas electrolysers will be running at that capacity for a high % of the time.) So you're right that it's just an energy carrier but the implication here is that we would need a lot more generation.
The good news of all these scenarios - is that in all of them we have at least a decade of low-hanging fruit that is needed to achieve any of them. Insulate everything that moves to reduce heating energy demand, build lots of wind and solar, electrify what transport we can, build more grid batteries for balancing and management. So while we can disagree about what a net-zero 2050 looks like, there is no serious person who disagrees about what we need to work on in 2021.
posted by atrazine at 3:09 PM on October 18, 2020 [44 favorites]
-Hydrogen has a role to play in the areas where it is already used as a chemical feedstock but note that some of those are related to production of oil derived fuels which do not have a future
-Hydrogen can be used for high temperature heat industrial processes where gas is currently used
-Hydrogen *might* be used for certain long distance transport where even current battery trends do not look like they're taking us where we need to be.
-Hydrogen may be an option for long-term inter-seasonal energy storage in areas with salt dome storage available
-Hydrogen for light vehicles is a goner, it will never compete with battery electric
-Hydrogen may be used for heating in properties which are too old to insulate effectively enough for heat pumps to work and too sparse for district heating.
I personally think that H2 for heating is extremely unlikely. If you're only going to use it for the 1% of properties for which no other options are available then you might as well stick with natural gas on those. You will note that only if H2 is used extensively for home heating is there a case to keep our gas distribution networks. In all other cases we use it as a gaseous fuel in society but not in houses and therefore that grid is surplus to requirements. Ironically, the HDPE gas distribution grid is well suite to hydrogen use while the high strength steel transmission network is not at all well suited.
The most interesting use case is as some kind of energy flex.
For short-cycles like the diurnal load cycle, solar cycle and balancing across days, batteries are going to dominate that. The only place where H2 can play is storing a reserve for a two-week overcast, windless, and cold period covering all of NW Europe. That does happen once every few years and you need some way of dealing with it.
One model for that is to run the electrolysers when you have overproduction and would have to curtail wind generation otherwise, you then store the excess and use it when there is no wind. The problem with this is the economics are hard to make work. You need to pay for electrolysers, fuel cells, and storage that get used only very occasionally. If you have underground storage, the storage element gets cheap but you're still stuck with the others. I have modeled this option and never gotten it to stack up.
Another is to over-build renewables relative to average demand, run electrolysers for the most productive 6k hours a year and then not for the remaining hours. In this scenario there are no or minimum fuel cells, the H2 is just acting as a productive energy sink. This does require that your society consume some of its energy as H2, potentially as heavy duty transport fuel.
The problem with both this use-case of H2 is the same as it is with things like flow-batteries. They solve a problem that appears at very high renewable penetration but they do not solve any problems or generate any revenue now in 2020 so no-one will build them. You can get to a 90% decarbonised grid just using renewables, batteries, and the gas generation that's already been built (in the UK and parts of the US, Germany and NL are still too coal dependent to do that). That works because the gas is only running a small number of hours a year. This gives us a blue-print for the next decade and half or so but does not solve the problem of the last 10% and it does not tackle home heating.
That seems to be the strategy here in the Netherlands: reuse the existing natural gas infrastructure for hydrogen generated by the newly build windmill parks out on the North Sea.
The one currently being planned will use it for industrial feedstock though which is sensible idea. I do know that separately the Dutch gas distribution networks are pushing hydrogen to the home very heavily because it is the only way they have a future. Personally while I do understand the engineering logic behind it, I also think that it will be the best option only for a minority of properties.
H2 is being pushed very heavily by Germany industry who have a lot of capability in this area (and not so much on batteries). Germany currently has a grid carbon intensity of 400gCO2/kWh+ compared to Nuclear France a less than 100, many Scandinavian countries at 50 or so and the UK at 200 and falling rapidly (15 yrs ago UK was where Germany is now) but these are power sector emissions only. If you look at total emissions, France with its electric heating is way better than any of these countries which typically all use gas.
Hydrogen is just a power transmission technology, right? So I would think the electrical load doesn't matter at all for comparison—it would be the gigawatt-equivalent of the sum total of all petroleum-based energy consumption in Europe, that would matter. Multiplied by some coefficient for the total technological and systemic energy to hydrogen and back to energy efficiency.
Well the electrolysers are grid connected so the implication is that if all of those are built and run simultaneously, they would more than double the electrical production capacity needed! (It's more than because it's = to the historic peak and the network spends very little time close to that peak currently whereas electrolysers will be running at that capacity for a high % of the time.) So you're right that it's just an energy carrier but the implication here is that we would need a lot more generation.
The good news of all these scenarios - is that in all of them we have at least a decade of low-hanging fruit that is needed to achieve any of them. Insulate everything that moves to reduce heating energy demand, build lots of wind and solar, electrify what transport we can, build more grid batteries for balancing and management. So while we can disagree about what a net-zero 2050 looks like, there is no serious person who disagrees about what we need to work on in 2021.
posted by atrazine at 3:09 PM on October 18, 2020 [44 favorites]
In a past life, I worked for a small company that made hydrogen purifiers and devices to convert hydrocarbon fuels like diesel into a stream of hydrogen gas, with the intention of being able to more efficiently use these fuels by powering fuel cells with them, rather than just burning them. One of the company’s main clients was the navy, in fact. But yeah, the idea there was not to store and carry hydrogen as fuel, because that’s deeply inefficient, but to use existing fuels much more efficiently.
I do wonder about them from time to time; I hope they’re doing well.
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:40 PM on October 18, 2020
I do wonder about them from time to time; I hope they’re doing well.
posted by DoctorFedora at 3:40 PM on October 18, 2020
The fuel cost of renewables is zero. Collection and storage can be very inexpensive on large scales. No mining, refining, low waste, abundant everywhere. Damned hard to beat.
Hydrogen gas, OTOH, is so scarce it has to *be made*. And it readily burns.
It may be that one of the edge uses for H is as a storage medium for renewable sources in stationary locations. There are a lot of less-accessible / out there places too hard/too expensive to reach with wires, too small to invest in massive storage. Cases where the added cost of H is offset by the portability (as with propane for camp stoves).
It's possible that tech will find a way to efficiently densify the gas, in nanomaterials for example. But, again, added manufacture, weight, cost, safety and efficiency questions.
posted by Twang at 4:48 PM on October 18, 2020
Hydrogen gas, OTOH, is so scarce it has to *be made*. And it readily burns.
It may be that one of the edge uses for H is as a storage medium for renewable sources in stationary locations. There are a lot of less-accessible / out there places too hard/too expensive to reach with wires, too small to invest in massive storage. Cases where the added cost of H is offset by the portability (as with propane for camp stoves).
It's possible that tech will find a way to efficiently densify the gas, in nanomaterials for example. But, again, added manufacture, weight, cost, safety and efficiency questions.
posted by Twang at 4:48 PM on October 18, 2020
I have a plan to combine hydrogen with carbons together for long periods of high pressure. This will create a liquid battery like storage of dense, easily portable energy source that's stable at room temperatures. It can be used to power cars of the future!
posted by geoff. at 5:00 PM on October 18, 2020 [14 favorites]
posted by geoff. at 5:00 PM on October 18, 2020 [14 favorites]
hydrogen and the Atlantic race Great book!
posted by robbyrobs at 5:06 PM on October 18, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by robbyrobs at 5:06 PM on October 18, 2020 [1 favorite]
...the downgrading of its Groningen gas field a little while back.
Look, I had a bunch of stuff going on and it really did look good back in'93. Sorry.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 5:23 PM on October 18, 2020
Look, I had a bunch of stuff going on and it really did look good back in'93. Sorry.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 5:23 PM on October 18, 2020
Thanks, atrazine—I had misunderstood the context in which the electrical load was being mentioned because I foolishly assumed that the EU plan would have included providing power for the electrolysers... but instead I guess the point is that they're doing the equivalent of planning to go camping in the wilderness and bring along an appliance designed to plug into the mains.
posted by XMLicious at 5:54 PM on October 18, 2020
posted by XMLicious at 5:54 PM on October 18, 2020
hydrogen burns. Hydrogen is momentary and is costly. There will be no more hydrogen burned in many an office today...
posted by clavdivs at 5:58 PM on October 18, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by clavdivs at 5:58 PM on October 18, 2020 [1 favorite]
Ooh, I get to ask three questions to an educated audience
1) in the 'we're using renewable energy to make a storable fuel' category, what about other hydrogen based liquids like hydrazine & high test peroxide? Would a wind farm using its overcapacity to make H2O2, to be used later or elsewhere, make sense?
2) What about H2 for aviation, or transoceanic cargo? Would a port, with a tidal-powered electrolyzer plant next door to refuel H2-turbine-driven container ships, make any sense? What's the energy density to weight look like for an electric aircraft, for batteries vs a cryo tank?
3) I have my doubts about the Hydrogen Powered Home of the Future. But I did one visit someone with an AGA cooker, where that provided the range and the heating and hot water. It was years ago, so I've forgotten how the math came out. But I tried to do the calculations on how much solar or wind electrolysis they'd need, to produce enough H2 to keep the burner in their thermal mass cooker going vs gas or oil. Can anyone re-do my homework for me? (or would they just die from NOx poisoning)
posted by bartleby at 6:02 PM on October 18, 2020
1) in the 'we're using renewable energy to make a storable fuel' category, what about other hydrogen based liquids like hydrazine & high test peroxide? Would a wind farm using its overcapacity to make H2O2, to be used later or elsewhere, make sense?
2) What about H2 for aviation, or transoceanic cargo? Would a port, with a tidal-powered electrolyzer plant next door to refuel H2-turbine-driven container ships, make any sense? What's the energy density to weight look like for an electric aircraft, for batteries vs a cryo tank?
3) I have my doubts about the Hydrogen Powered Home of the Future. But I did one visit someone with an AGA cooker, where that provided the range and the heating and hot water. It was years ago, so I've forgotten how the math came out. But I tried to do the calculations on how much solar or wind electrolysis they'd need, to produce enough H2 to keep the burner in their thermal mass cooker going vs gas or oil. Can anyone re-do my homework for me? (or would they just die from NOx poisoning)
posted by bartleby at 6:02 PM on October 18, 2020
in the 'we're using renewable energy to make a storable fuel' category, what about other hydrogen based liquids like hydrazine & high test peroxide? Would a wind farm using its overcapacity to make H2O2, to be used later or elsewhere, make sense?
This is something people are doing, see for example this story from a few weeks back about Saudi Arabia sending ammonia to Japan for use as a fuel in power stations. Though in that particular case it is being made ultimately from fossil fuels. I think the long term dream is to make ammonia from green-hydrogen and use it as an easier-to-deal-with liquid.
posted by selenized at 6:53 PM on October 18, 2020
This is something people are doing, see for example this story from a few weeks back about Saudi Arabia sending ammonia to Japan for use as a fuel in power stations. Though in that particular case it is being made ultimately from fossil fuels. I think the long term dream is to make ammonia from green-hydrogen and use it as an easier-to-deal-with liquid.
posted by selenized at 6:53 PM on October 18, 2020
But I tried to do the calculations on how much solar or wind electrolysis they'd need, to produce enough H2 to keep the burner in their thermal mass cooker going vs gas or oil.
It doesn't matter because you're better off just using an electric range, an electric hot water tank and electric heating. Hydrogen doesn't give you free energy. You will use more energy to generate hydrogen than you get back from burning it.
Both of your other questions are discussed in Part Two of the article.
posted by ssg at 7:14 PM on October 18, 2020 [6 favorites]
It doesn't matter because you're better off just using an electric range, an electric hot water tank and electric heating. Hydrogen doesn't give you free energy. You will use more energy to generate hydrogen than you get back from burning it.
Both of your other questions are discussed in Part Two of the article.
posted by ssg at 7:14 PM on October 18, 2020 [6 favorites]
I’m all for switching transport over to battery electric. The one application that I was wondering about, though, is off road to remote areas. For a while I was wondering if hydrogen would work as a solution for that, but it doesn’t seem like that’s going to be the case. Range and rescue ability can be an issue with electric vehicles far away from infrastructure. Navigating terrain can eat a good bit of battery power, and if batteries are empty, getting them refilled or bringing replacements is a problem due to weight. If you’re going to be going out to distant areas, you can always take extra Jerry cans of fuel, or if someone has to bail you out because you ran out of fuel, they can bring fuel a lot easier than batteries. (I’m out west, and there are some places that outdoorsy types like to go that are far, far away from civilization.) It’s an edge case to be sure, and battery advancements may eventually solve this.
posted by azpenguin at 7:36 PM on October 18, 2020
posted by azpenguin at 7:36 PM on October 18, 2020
I don't know why we don't move cargo ships to nuclear. All major nuclear power powers have ice breakers that are nuclear, and safe nuclear navies have proven effective. I know that a lot of ports have restrictions on nuclear vessels but I assumed that was a reaction to being pawns in the Cold War. With advancements in nuclear technology since the 50s, I can't imagine we'd have a hard time building a long-lasting, nuclear reactor.
There's only 50,000 merchant cargo ships in the world. I don't know what the pollution breakdown there is, if converting 10,000 would account for 50%, but I can't imagine that cost alone is keeping this from happening. It costs something like $70k a day for a cargo ship to run on high sulfur oil. Uranium is comparatively cheap in the quantities needed to move a ship right? If we drastically lowered safety standards, what is the worst that could happen? This shipwreck page lists ~200 shipwrecks but doesn't break it down by ship type. I doubt most of those are large enough require a nuclear power plant, but even assuming they are is a nuclear reactor at the bottom of the ocean really that bad? Or I should say what's worse, CO2 emissions or a shipwreck with a nuclear reactor?
posted by geoff. at 8:03 PM on October 18, 2020
There's only 50,000 merchant cargo ships in the world. I don't know what the pollution breakdown there is, if converting 10,000 would account for 50%, but I can't imagine that cost alone is keeping this from happening. It costs something like $70k a day for a cargo ship to run on high sulfur oil. Uranium is comparatively cheap in the quantities needed to move a ship right? If we drastically lowered safety standards, what is the worst that could happen? This shipwreck page lists ~200 shipwrecks but doesn't break it down by ship type. I doubt most of those are large enough require a nuclear power plant, but even assuming they are is a nuclear reactor at the bottom of the ocean really that bad? Or I should say what's worse, CO2 emissions or a shipwreck with a nuclear reactor?
posted by geoff. at 8:03 PM on October 18, 2020
Maybe major governments can safely operate nuclear reactors (for whatever definition of safe includes creating hazardous waste that needs to be dealt with for longer than humans have had civilization).
Can the shipping companies that deliberately seek out flags of convenience to avoid regulations do so equally safely?
That would make, say, Liberia the world's largest nuclear regulator right until the second they wanted to regulate in any way at which point it would be the Bahamas or Mongolia or Luxembourg or whoever had slightly laxer regulations.
posted by Superilla at 8:16 PM on October 18, 2020 [7 favorites]
Can the shipping companies that deliberately seek out flags of convenience to avoid regulations do so equally safely?
That would make, say, Liberia the world's largest nuclear regulator right until the second they wanted to regulate in any way at which point it would be the Bahamas or Mongolia or Luxembourg or whoever had slightly laxer regulations.
posted by Superilla at 8:16 PM on October 18, 2020 [7 favorites]
My fault, ssg, I left out that this was a remote application, like azpenguin's concern. The fuel supply in that case was a tanker truck of fuel oil that had to be driven up a mountain, after being barged over from the mainland, after coming from wherever. I had been blue-sky-ing about the possibility of replacing those distant BTUS with locally produced ones.
Go out to the windmill out back and check the H2 cryotank buried underneath it; if it's 80% full by late July, you'll know you've stored enough over the summer to last you through until spring. BTUs that would otherwise have gone uncaptured and were impractical to store in electric batteries.
There's solarpunk stuff that relies on handwavium. Or hiding externalities. 'You've got generation inefficiencies!' 'Well you have storage and transmission losses!' territorial infighting. Forgetting that solar heating is, well, cold and dark kinda go together? Or that fuel cells probably lead to platinum wars instead of petroleum wars.
Or that depends on an Enlightened Humanity or Totally New Consciousness.
I was just thinking, in my old silly way, that we had the conceptual and infrastructure frameworks for 'fill cistern in rainy season, for use in dry season' worked out. But if 500 gallons of bunker fuel is equal to a square kilometer of solar panels x 6 months, stored as hydrogen...then it goes into the handwavium pile.
posted by bartleby at 8:39 PM on October 18, 2020
Go out to the windmill out back and check the H2 cryotank buried underneath it; if it's 80% full by late July, you'll know you've stored enough over the summer to last you through until spring. BTUs that would otherwise have gone uncaptured and were impractical to store in electric batteries.
There's solarpunk stuff that relies on handwavium. Or hiding externalities. 'You've got generation inefficiencies!' 'Well you have storage and transmission losses!' territorial infighting. Forgetting that solar heating is, well, cold and dark kinda go together? Or that fuel cells probably lead to platinum wars instead of petroleum wars.
Or that depends on an Enlightened Humanity or Totally New Consciousness.
I was just thinking, in my old silly way, that we had the conceptual and infrastructure frameworks for 'fill cistern in rainy season, for use in dry season' worked out. But if 500 gallons of bunker fuel is equal to a square kilometer of solar panels x 6 months, stored as hydrogen...then it goes into the handwavium pile.
posted by bartleby at 8:39 PM on October 18, 2020
I don't know why we don't move cargo ships to nuclear.
People tried but it was expensive.
All major nuclear power powers have ice breakers that are nuclear
Only the USSR/Russia.
safe nuclear navies have proven effective
...but it's also not for nothin' that nobody's running nuclear surface ships any more except for CVNs and the last one or two Kirovs. Not that I follow this remotely closely, but you'll see periodic vague motions in the US Navy to build future carriers with big diesels or (one assumes truly fuck-you scale) gas turbines to get away from the headaches of nuclear. The electromagnetic catapult is at least tangentially related to this as it reduces the need for steam.
It seems simpler to just tax diesel fuel at a high enough rate to pay for some industrial process to remove that much CO2 again.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:46 PM on October 18, 2020
People tried but it was expensive.
All major nuclear power powers have ice breakers that are nuclear
Only the USSR/Russia.
safe nuclear navies have proven effective
...but it's also not for nothin' that nobody's running nuclear surface ships any more except for CVNs and the last one or two Kirovs. Not that I follow this remotely closely, but you'll see periodic vague motions in the US Navy to build future carriers with big diesels or (one assumes truly fuck-you scale) gas turbines to get away from the headaches of nuclear. The electromagnetic catapult is at least tangentially related to this as it reduces the need for steam.
It seems simpler to just tax diesel fuel at a high enough rate to pay for some industrial process to remove that much CO2 again.
posted by GCU Sweet and Full of Grace at 8:46 PM on October 18, 2020
In my opinion civilian cargo ships adopting nuclear marine propulsion anytime soon is extremely unlikely. While building cargo ships that use batteries, hydrogen, or ammonia as carbon-free energy sources is possible, I think the adoption of carbon-neutral synthetic bunker fuels is a more likely path towards reduced global greenhouse gas emissions. A carbon-neutral synthetic bunker fuel would be possible via a combination of green electrical generation (solar, wind, etc.), direct air capture (to get CO2 or CO), electrolysis (to get H2 from H2O or to make CO from CO2), combining H2 and CO to get Syngas, and then via more conventional steps to produce synthetic fuel.
posted by RichardP at 8:55 PM on October 18, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by RichardP at 8:55 PM on October 18, 2020 [2 favorites]
azpenguin: I’m all for switching transport over to battery electric. The one application that I was wondering about, though, is off road to remote areas. For a while I was wondering if hydrogen would work as a solution for that, but it doesn’t seem like that’s going to be the case.
It's not just remote areas, but bridging the gaps while the EV network is built up, especially for heavy freight. But this means having hydrogen production and hydrogen-burning vehicles, and while the US is very much gearing up for a zero emission future (state by state at this point*, in addition to major companies who have publicly pledged to be zero emission by a future year**), that's going to take time to be 100% EV for all vehicles.
On the passenger side, there are pockets of California where you can find hydrogen fueling stations (alternative fuel station locator, from the US Dept. of Energy), though numerous states are (or were) optimistic to designate pending corridors for hydrogen fueling (U.S. Federal Highways map). Some in Utah are pushing for a (partially) Hydrogen future (Forbes, publishing a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group PR piece), and there are a number of other companies trying to make this happen on the big rig side of transportation. But this also comes as there are more models of EV medium- and heavy-duty freight trucks being developed. With that, I can see hydrogen possibly being a relatively short-term clean energy source for heavier loads, while EV technology advances, including the modernization of the grid. Kind of like how CFL light bulbs were briefly the replacement from the old incandescent style bulbs, before LED bulbs became cheap enough to largely replace compact florescent bulbs (except there's the need to develop different infrastructure and vehicles to run on hydrogen, where all bulbs fit into the same fixtures, and use the same energy source).
Links, if you haven't already seen them:
* California Executive Order directs the state to require that, by 2035, all new cars and passenger trucks sold in California be zero-emission vehicles, and that the California Air Resources Board will develop regulations to mandate that all operations of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles shall be 100 percent zero emission by 2045 where feasible.
* California, Oregon and Washington are focused on an electric truck charging corridor on I-5 (Auto Blog)
* 15 other states are adopting plans and targets developed by the California Air Resource Board (CARB) (The Verge) -- California, Connecticut, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington state, as well as Washington, D.C. Since that article, other states are in the process of adopting those goals (I think it might be up to 18 states adopting these standards).
** In September 2020, Amazon’s ‘climate pledge’ commits to net zero carbon emissions by 2040 and 100% renewables by 2030 (Tech Crunch)
** Around the same time, Walmart announced its aims to end emissions from global operations by 2040 (Bloomberg), and "the world’s biggest retailer also plans to secure enough wind, solar and other renewable energy sources to power its facilities with 100% green power by 2035."
posted by filthy light thief at 10:36 PM on October 18, 2020 [2 favorites]
It's not just remote areas, but bridging the gaps while the EV network is built up, especially for heavy freight. But this means having hydrogen production and hydrogen-burning vehicles, and while the US is very much gearing up for a zero emission future (state by state at this point*, in addition to major companies who have publicly pledged to be zero emission by a future year**), that's going to take time to be 100% EV for all vehicles.
On the passenger side, there are pockets of California where you can find hydrogen fueling stations (alternative fuel station locator, from the US Dept. of Energy), though numerous states are (or were) optimistic to designate pending corridors for hydrogen fueling (U.S. Federal Highways map). Some in Utah are pushing for a (partially) Hydrogen future (Forbes, publishing a Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group PR piece), and there are a number of other companies trying to make this happen on the big rig side of transportation. But this also comes as there are more models of EV medium- and heavy-duty freight trucks being developed. With that, I can see hydrogen possibly being a relatively short-term clean energy source for heavier loads, while EV technology advances, including the modernization of the grid. Kind of like how CFL light bulbs were briefly the replacement from the old incandescent style bulbs, before LED bulbs became cheap enough to largely replace compact florescent bulbs (except there's the need to develop different infrastructure and vehicles to run on hydrogen, where all bulbs fit into the same fixtures, and use the same energy source).
Links, if you haven't already seen them:
* California Executive Order directs the state to require that, by 2035, all new cars and passenger trucks sold in California be zero-emission vehicles, and that the California Air Resources Board will develop regulations to mandate that all operations of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles shall be 100 percent zero emission by 2045 where feasible.
* California, Oregon and Washington are focused on an electric truck charging corridor on I-5 (Auto Blog)
* 15 other states are adopting plans and targets developed by the California Air Resource Board (CARB) (The Verge) -- California, Connecticut, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington state, as well as Washington, D.C. Since that article, other states are in the process of adopting those goals (I think it might be up to 18 states adopting these standards).
** In September 2020, Amazon’s ‘climate pledge’ commits to net zero carbon emissions by 2040 and 100% renewables by 2030 (Tech Crunch)
** Around the same time, Walmart announced its aims to end emissions from global operations by 2040 (Bloomberg), and "the world’s biggest retailer also plans to secure enough wind, solar and other renewable energy sources to power its facilities with 100% green power by 2035."
posted by filthy light thief at 10:36 PM on October 18, 2020 [2 favorites]
Electrify everything.
A house with a 200 amp breaker at 110 volts can pull 22 kilowatts. To put this in perspective, an economy car running wide open throttle can deliver 100 kilowatts of power to the wheels at max power. A Tesla can pull 615 (!) kilowatts from its batteries during brief transient times of peak acceleration. With a 400 volt battery pack that's over 1500 amps.
Moving 4000 pounds of anything requires ridiculous amounts of energy and combustion puts out that absolutely fucking ridiculously amount of energy in spades. It's a modern miracle we've been able to electrify something as big as a Model S. Going bigger and bigger just makes the math worse and worse.
We're going to need to store pre-generated electricity in a form which lets us extract it at the same rate that combustion does. Hydrogen will most likely be that fuel because it's going to be trivial to generate from excess power and puts out stuff that is benign in the grand scheme of things when burned. It might not end up looking like pure compressed gas like we have now but short of some magical unobtanium energy storage method we're probably going to have to use it sooner or later.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 11:11 PM on October 18, 2020 [1 favorite]
A house with a 200 amp breaker at 110 volts can pull 22 kilowatts. To put this in perspective, an economy car running wide open throttle can deliver 100 kilowatts of power to the wheels at max power. A Tesla can pull 615 (!) kilowatts from its batteries during brief transient times of peak acceleration. With a 400 volt battery pack that's over 1500 amps.
Moving 4000 pounds of anything requires ridiculous amounts of energy and combustion puts out that absolutely fucking ridiculously amount of energy in spades. It's a modern miracle we've been able to electrify something as big as a Model S. Going bigger and bigger just makes the math worse and worse.
We're going to need to store pre-generated electricity in a form which lets us extract it at the same rate that combustion does. Hydrogen will most likely be that fuel because it's going to be trivial to generate from excess power and puts out stuff that is benign in the grand scheme of things when burned. It might not end up looking like pure compressed gas like we have now but short of some magical unobtanium energy storage method we're probably going to have to use it sooner or later.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 11:11 PM on October 18, 2020 [1 favorite]
I don't know why we don't move cargo ships to nuclear.
Leaving aside engineering questions I don't understand in any useful way, I think you have to consider the fundamental difficulties with making this a politically viable route. Nuclear would have to be far and away the best, or only viable, option before voting populations would support this, given the profound fear of nuclear disaster in most parts of the world.
posted by howfar at 12:47 AM on October 19, 2020
Leaving aside engineering questions I don't understand in any useful way, I think you have to consider the fundamental difficulties with making this a politically viable route. Nuclear would have to be far and away the best, or only viable, option before voting populations would support this, given the profound fear of nuclear disaster in most parts of the world.
posted by howfar at 12:47 AM on October 19, 2020
People keep trying to make hydrogen happen. It's not going to happen.
Funny you say that now. Turns out, the right catalysts turn some plastic into carbon nanotubes and hydrogen. There are many reasons it won't work/shouldn't be used as a replacement for natural gas, but a less energy intensive method of hydrogen production could help to reduce carbon emissions in certain industries by using waste materials rather than electrolysis.
That said, if we end up with a bunch of excess solar/wind production in the future as a side effect of decarbonizing the grid, water electrolysis is a perfectly fine use of that excess.
posted by wierdo at 2:18 AM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
Funny you say that now. Turns out, the right catalysts turn some plastic into carbon nanotubes and hydrogen. There are many reasons it won't work/shouldn't be used as a replacement for natural gas, but a less energy intensive method of hydrogen production could help to reduce carbon emissions in certain industries by using waste materials rather than electrolysis.
That said, if we end up with a bunch of excess solar/wind production in the future as a side effect of decarbonizing the grid, water electrolysis is a perfectly fine use of that excess.
posted by wierdo at 2:18 AM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
But if 500 gallons of bunker fuel is equal to a square kilometer of solar panels x 6 months
I'd just like to point out that you're out by a factor of about 20,000 here.
posted by ambrosen at 3:08 AM on October 19, 2020
I'd just like to point out that you're out by a factor of about 20,000 here.
posted by ambrosen at 3:08 AM on October 19, 2020
If you're going to build thousands of new reactors, you might as well put them on land and use them to produce fuel for your ships alongside other things. The fact that a very small number of navies have run a small number of their ships on nuclear power does not imply that we can run the lightly staffed and barely regulated merchant marines of the world that way.
1) in the 'we're using renewable energy to make a storable fuel' category, what about other hydrogen based liquids like hydrazine & high test peroxide? Would a wind farm using its overcapacity to make H2O2, to be used later or elsewhere, make sense?
2) What about H2 for aviation, or transoceanic cargo? Would a port, with a tidal-powered electrolyzer plant next door to refuel H2-turbine-driven container ships, make any sense? What's the energy density to weight look like for an electric aircraft, for batteries vs a cryo tank?
3) I have my doubts about the Hydrogen Powered Home of the Future. But I did one visit someone with an AGA cooker, where that provided the range and the heating and hot water. It was years ago, so I've forgotten how the math came out. But I tried to do the calculations on how much solar or wind electrolysis they'd need, to produce enough H2 to keep the burner in their thermal mass cooker going vs gas or oil. Can anyone re-do my homework for me? (or would they just die from NOx poisoning)
1) Yes, but only for long term storage. Otherwise you're better off just keeping it all-electric. Ammonia in particular is being seriously considered for shipping.
2) Very possibly, yes. I think given the enormous capital cost involved in aircraft engine development it may well make sense to just make synthetic liquid fuels similar to what the engines use now.
3) Oh they definitely work. I've seen H2 burners, water heaters, and radiant heating. You need to develop an odourant and flame colour additive. If you're real-time producing it from electrolysis, transporting it, and then burning it you should just go all electric since you need to produce about twice as much electricity in the H2 case. The real value is in storage and in buffering end-user loads like everyone running their heating all at the same time on a cold afternoon. The gas network easily handles a factor of 20 difference between a warm afternoon and a cold winter afternoon which the electricity network currently cannot do. I will note that the French do manage to run a 40% electric heating system and as a result they have a beefier distribution network. French domestic connections have an agreed maximum capacity and will soft-trip off when you exceed it whereas a US or UK domestic connection is constrained only by its technical capacity rather than by tariff paid (industrial users often have more complicated charging arrangements that include agreed maximum usage).
People keep trying to make hydrogen happen. It's not going to happen.
The problem with it is that it only solves any problem at all when you put a price on carbon and that the problems that it is best suited for only appear when you are already at moderately-deep decarbonisation and planning your route to zero. At the moment, by far the best investment of the marginal dollar in carbon abatement is on energy efficiency followed by building more low-cost renewables, batteries, and EVs. Hydrogen may have a role to play but I think the proposed EU investment plan is basically a German industrial strategy rather than a well worked out part of an overall transition plan. If the EU wants to reduce overall emissions it should:
-Invest in the most polluting countries first. Getting the French emissions intensity down from 100g while Germany is at 400g and Poland at 600g is nuts, the EU should be funding wind turbines in Poland. I understand that the EU is not a federal state and that it doesn't work that way but from a utility theory point of view the current strategy does not make sense and does not deliver the most emissions reductions the fastest.
-Ensure that current nuclear reactors are life extended. I have mixed feelings about whether building more is a good use of money. It's a whole topic that I could write hundreds of pages on and I might be one of the few people who does not think the HPC strike price in the UK was a big mistake. What I think is harder to dispute is the carbon case for life extending existing European PWRs. Germany's decision to close their nuclear plants has had catastrophic effects on their ability to reduce emissions. From a purely climate outcome point of view Angela Merkel has been worse for the climate than Donald Trump, a man who does not even believe that climate change is real. [You can argue that this is not fair to Merkel who had to make a decision in her own political context and that it gives Donny credit for something that would have happened anyway but the numbers are the numbers]
-Introduce a carbon adjustment border tax to equalise intra-EU with extra-EU post-carbon-tax/emissions permit energy prices. It is insane to charge EU steelmakers for all their emissions and then allow steel to come in by the mega-tonne from places with no carbon taxation at all. All that does is fuel deindustrialisation and actually make emissions worse since the energy mix in the steel exporting countries will be dirtier and you now have to transport the steel.
-Replace EU ETS with a carbon tax. Specialists will note that the introduction of the price stability mechanism to the ETS actually makes it a tax already since traded emissions prices are not allowed to fall below the floor. The UK additionally has a carbon price floor mechanism which predates the price stability mechanism. If it makes it easier politically, then I guess we can keep calling it an ETS but it seems simpler and cleaner to me to just have a universal tax. We'll have to give a lot of the collected money back to the poor and working class to offset the increase in their energy bills (or watch gilets of various colours appear on the streets everywhere) but this is really doable.
-Carbon taxes rates can then be set by a central banking type mechanism that delivers predictable forward carbon tax levels that are consistent with our required emissions reduction trajectory. In practice you would probably set 100% of a year's carbon price by mid-year of the previous year and deliver adjustments to the n+1, n+2...n+10 price levels in order to combine the requirement to hit the trajectory and the predictability needed to plan capital investment. For reference, based on current understanding of abatement cost curves, a carbon price that reaches $50/tonne by the late 2020s and up to $175 by 2050 is consistent with reaching net zero (because it will drive out behaviour where pre-abatement + tax costs more than post-abatement) and a 2C goal. A 1.5C goal will need a steeper price rise (though starting at roughly the same level).
Based on the mean consumption based emissions in the US that's $800 / person / year by 2030, rising from then on. When you consider that this is for the mean person (IOW someone who has less money and consumes less will pay less) and that this can all be transferred back via things like earned income tax credits or other mechanisms, it genuinely doesn't seem like such a big deal. When I first calculated this, I thought it would be a doom and gloom number that could never be made to work and we were all absolutely screwed. Instead it's a very workable number.
posted by atrazine at 3:15 AM on October 19, 2020 [11 favorites]
1) in the 'we're using renewable energy to make a storable fuel' category, what about other hydrogen based liquids like hydrazine & high test peroxide? Would a wind farm using its overcapacity to make H2O2, to be used later or elsewhere, make sense?
2) What about H2 for aviation, or transoceanic cargo? Would a port, with a tidal-powered electrolyzer plant next door to refuel H2-turbine-driven container ships, make any sense? What's the energy density to weight look like for an electric aircraft, for batteries vs a cryo tank?
3) I have my doubts about the Hydrogen Powered Home of the Future. But I did one visit someone with an AGA cooker, where that provided the range and the heating and hot water. It was years ago, so I've forgotten how the math came out. But I tried to do the calculations on how much solar or wind electrolysis they'd need, to produce enough H2 to keep the burner in their thermal mass cooker going vs gas or oil. Can anyone re-do my homework for me? (or would they just die from NOx poisoning)
1) Yes, but only for long term storage. Otherwise you're better off just keeping it all-electric. Ammonia in particular is being seriously considered for shipping.
2) Very possibly, yes. I think given the enormous capital cost involved in aircraft engine development it may well make sense to just make synthetic liquid fuels similar to what the engines use now.
3) Oh they definitely work. I've seen H2 burners, water heaters, and radiant heating. You need to develop an odourant and flame colour additive. If you're real-time producing it from electrolysis, transporting it, and then burning it you should just go all electric since you need to produce about twice as much electricity in the H2 case. The real value is in storage and in buffering end-user loads like everyone running their heating all at the same time on a cold afternoon. The gas network easily handles a factor of 20 difference between a warm afternoon and a cold winter afternoon which the electricity network currently cannot do. I will note that the French do manage to run a 40% electric heating system and as a result they have a beefier distribution network. French domestic connections have an agreed maximum capacity and will soft-trip off when you exceed it whereas a US or UK domestic connection is constrained only by its technical capacity rather than by tariff paid (industrial users often have more complicated charging arrangements that include agreed maximum usage).
People keep trying to make hydrogen happen. It's not going to happen.
The problem with it is that it only solves any problem at all when you put a price on carbon and that the problems that it is best suited for only appear when you are already at moderately-deep decarbonisation and planning your route to zero. At the moment, by far the best investment of the marginal dollar in carbon abatement is on energy efficiency followed by building more low-cost renewables, batteries, and EVs. Hydrogen may have a role to play but I think the proposed EU investment plan is basically a German industrial strategy rather than a well worked out part of an overall transition plan. If the EU wants to reduce overall emissions it should:
-Invest in the most polluting countries first. Getting the French emissions intensity down from 100g while Germany is at 400g and Poland at 600g is nuts, the EU should be funding wind turbines in Poland. I understand that the EU is not a federal state and that it doesn't work that way but from a utility theory point of view the current strategy does not make sense and does not deliver the most emissions reductions the fastest.
-Ensure that current nuclear reactors are life extended. I have mixed feelings about whether building more is a good use of money. It's a whole topic that I could write hundreds of pages on and I might be one of the few people who does not think the HPC strike price in the UK was a big mistake. What I think is harder to dispute is the carbon case for life extending existing European PWRs. Germany's decision to close their nuclear plants has had catastrophic effects on their ability to reduce emissions. From a purely climate outcome point of view Angela Merkel has been worse for the climate than Donald Trump, a man who does not even believe that climate change is real. [You can argue that this is not fair to Merkel who had to make a decision in her own political context and that it gives Donny credit for something that would have happened anyway but the numbers are the numbers]
-Introduce a carbon adjustment border tax to equalise intra-EU with extra-EU post-carbon-tax/emissions permit energy prices. It is insane to charge EU steelmakers for all their emissions and then allow steel to come in by the mega-tonne from places with no carbon taxation at all. All that does is fuel deindustrialisation and actually make emissions worse since the energy mix in the steel exporting countries will be dirtier and you now have to transport the steel.
-Replace EU ETS with a carbon tax. Specialists will note that the introduction of the price stability mechanism to the ETS actually makes it a tax already since traded emissions prices are not allowed to fall below the floor. The UK additionally has a carbon price floor mechanism which predates the price stability mechanism. If it makes it easier politically, then I guess we can keep calling it an ETS but it seems simpler and cleaner to me to just have a universal tax. We'll have to give a lot of the collected money back to the poor and working class to offset the increase in their energy bills (or watch gilets of various colours appear on the streets everywhere) but this is really doable.
-Carbon taxes rates can then be set by a central banking type mechanism that delivers predictable forward carbon tax levels that are consistent with our required emissions reduction trajectory. In practice you would probably set 100% of a year's carbon price by mid-year of the previous year and deliver adjustments to the n+1, n+2...n+10 price levels in order to combine the requirement to hit the trajectory and the predictability needed to plan capital investment. For reference, based on current understanding of abatement cost curves, a carbon price that reaches $50/tonne by the late 2020s and up to $175 by 2050 is consistent with reaching net zero (because it will drive out behaviour where pre-abatement + tax costs more than post-abatement) and a 2C goal. A 1.5C goal will need a steeper price rise (though starting at roughly the same level).
Based on the mean consumption based emissions in the US that's $800 / person / year by 2030, rising from then on. When you consider that this is for the mean person (IOW someone who has less money and consumes less will pay less) and that this can all be transferred back via things like earned income tax credits or other mechanisms, it genuinely doesn't seem like such a big deal. When I first calculated this, I thought it would be a doom and gloom number that could never be made to work and we were all absolutely screwed. Instead it's a very workable number.
posted by atrazine at 3:15 AM on October 19, 2020 [11 favorites]
This is just a subjective feeling, but the stuff about the impracticality of hydrogen now seems quite reminiscent of what people used to say about electric cars a decade or two ago.
People in the real world are buying electric cars that have energy storage systems significantly larger, bulkier and with a higher up-front cost than their petroleum equivalents.
If the incentives are right, the engineering doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't even have to match the cost and efficiency of fossil fuels. It just has to be sufficiently workable.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 3:41 AM on October 19, 2020
People in the real world are buying electric cars that have energy storage systems significantly larger, bulkier and with a higher up-front cost than their petroleum equivalents.
If the incentives are right, the engineering doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't even have to match the cost and efficiency of fossil fuels. It just has to be sufficiently workable.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 3:41 AM on October 19, 2020
Uranium is comparatively cheap in the quantities needed to move a ship right?
In addition to other points already mentioned, marine nuclear reactors generally operate on fuel of higher enrichment than land-based ones due to space constraints. With commercial nuclear shipping you would have hundreds of private entities moving lots of Uranium of various enrichment grades all around the planet. That's not a good scenario in terms of physical safety and non-proliferation - anybody with nuclear ambitions could just hijack a container ship or pay for a convenient "accident" and skip all that pesky centrifuge business.
posted by each day we work at 4:34 AM on October 19, 2020
In addition to other points already mentioned, marine nuclear reactors generally operate on fuel of higher enrichment than land-based ones due to space constraints. With commercial nuclear shipping you would have hundreds of private entities moving lots of Uranium of various enrichment grades all around the planet. That's not a good scenario in terms of physical safety and non-proliferation - anybody with nuclear ambitions could just hijack a container ship or pay for a convenient "accident" and skip all that pesky centrifuge business.
posted by each day we work at 4:34 AM on October 19, 2020
If the incentives are right, the engineering doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't even have to match the cost and efficiency of fossil fuels. It just has to be sufficiently workable.
I think the point is choosing which things to incentivise. The point of Liebrich's article is that hydrogen does not look like the right thing to apply in many cases. Specific applications of hydrogen look likely to be really valuable, but not all possible cases where hydrogen could be a technically feasible solution will work out to be economic in comparison with other low carbon solutions.
The EV example you mention is actually a counterpoint to your argument, EVs have not only been fighting to get into the mainstream, they have been the winners in a battle between EVs and fuel cell vehicles powered by hydrogen, a battle that took place from about 2000 to 2010 (or so). Non-hydrogen based alternative options for low carbon home heating also exist and look superior. Electrical storage on the grids currently looks like a more effective option for managing lots of variable generation than hydrogen. But in other places hydrogen does look like the best option. The thing to avoid is picking less economically feasible low carbon options because the current FF companies want to keep flogging their business model.
posted by biffa at 4:45 AM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]
I think the point is choosing which things to incentivise. The point of Liebrich's article is that hydrogen does not look like the right thing to apply in many cases. Specific applications of hydrogen look likely to be really valuable, but not all possible cases where hydrogen could be a technically feasible solution will work out to be economic in comparison with other low carbon solutions.
The EV example you mention is actually a counterpoint to your argument, EVs have not only been fighting to get into the mainstream, they have been the winners in a battle between EVs and fuel cell vehicles powered by hydrogen, a battle that took place from about 2000 to 2010 (or so). Non-hydrogen based alternative options for low carbon home heating also exist and look superior. Electrical storage on the grids currently looks like a more effective option for managing lots of variable generation than hydrogen. But in other places hydrogen does look like the best option. The thing to avoid is picking less economically feasible low carbon options because the current FF companies want to keep flogging their business model.
posted by biffa at 4:45 AM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]
many Scandinavian countries at 50 or so and the UK at 200 and falling rapidly (15 yrs ago UK was where Germany is now) but these are power sector emissions only. If you look at total emissions, France with its electric heating is way better than any of these countries which typically all use gas.
Denmark is majority district heating, the majority of which runs on renewables (counting biomass as renewable), and much of the rest run on industrial waste heat, or rubbish incinerator combined heat/power. Just 16% or so of households have a gas furnace. Oil-burning furnaces were traditionally the dominant heat source until it was supplanted by district heating.
Sources (in Danish): Energistyrelsen, Bolius
posted by Dysk at 6:15 AM on October 19, 2020
Denmark is majority district heating, the majority of which runs on renewables (counting biomass as renewable), and much of the rest run on industrial waste heat, or rubbish incinerator combined heat/power. Just 16% or so of households have a gas furnace. Oil-burning furnaces were traditionally the dominant heat source until it was supplanted by district heating.
Sources (in Danish): Energistyrelsen, Bolius
posted by Dysk at 6:15 AM on October 19, 2020
Hydrogen gas, OTOH, is so scarce it has to *be made*.
This isn't really that big a deal, imo. Hydrogen isn't rare at all and the gas is pretty easily made by any number of processes from several feedstocks, some of them quite renewably, others less so.
The problem with hydrogen is managing the gas. As atrazine says, it's an enormous pain in the ass to contain for any length of time and the containers to do it properly are very heavy, compared to ambient-liquid hydrocarbon fuels (gas, kerosene , diesel). This is it's main strike as a transportation fuel. It's inherently inefficient, has a low energy density, and heavy, because of the heavy, high-tech tanks, compared with a hydrocarbon.
Which brings us back around to synthesis: as well as hydrogen, there are ways to make hydrocarbons which would be 100% carbon-neutral. Some of these are as simple as hooking a solar/wind/hydro network up to a chemical plant that uses CO2 and water as inputs to generate fuel. The cost of fuel in pilot plants right now is about 5-8 times that of refining fuel from the squeezings of ancient sea organisms when pumped out of the ground in Saudi Arabia.
Costs are coming down though as the chemistry gets better and the price of renewable electricity drops through the floor. It seems almost certain to me that an airplane in two decades will still be using jet fuel, just not petroleum-based jet fuel, but carbon neutral fuel generated by "storing" wind or solar power chemically.
Hyrdrocarbons are inherently better in many ways compared to hydrogen as a combustion fuel; storage and energy density in particular. The same arguments that can be made for hydrogen as an intermediate between sustainable power generation and end-use can, in my view, equally be made for synthetic gasoline or kerosene. Particularly given the existing technology and infrastructure base for HC fuels, I think hydrogen has a long hill to climb.
posted by bonehead at 6:32 AM on October 19, 2020 [5 favorites]
This isn't really that big a deal, imo. Hydrogen isn't rare at all and the gas is pretty easily made by any number of processes from several feedstocks, some of them quite renewably, others less so.
The problem with hydrogen is managing the gas. As atrazine says, it's an enormous pain in the ass to contain for any length of time and the containers to do it properly are very heavy, compared to ambient-liquid hydrocarbon fuels (gas, kerosene , diesel). This is it's main strike as a transportation fuel. It's inherently inefficient, has a low energy density, and heavy, because of the heavy, high-tech tanks, compared with a hydrocarbon.
Which brings us back around to synthesis: as well as hydrogen, there are ways to make hydrocarbons which would be 100% carbon-neutral. Some of these are as simple as hooking a solar/wind/hydro network up to a chemical plant that uses CO2 and water as inputs to generate fuel. The cost of fuel in pilot plants right now is about 5-8 times that of refining fuel from the squeezings of ancient sea organisms when pumped out of the ground in Saudi Arabia.
Costs are coming down though as the chemistry gets better and the price of renewable electricity drops through the floor. It seems almost certain to me that an airplane in two decades will still be using jet fuel, just not petroleum-based jet fuel, but carbon neutral fuel generated by "storing" wind or solar power chemically.
Hyrdrocarbons are inherently better in many ways compared to hydrogen as a combustion fuel; storage and energy density in particular. The same arguments that can be made for hydrogen as an intermediate between sustainable power generation and end-use can, in my view, equally be made for synthetic gasoline or kerosene. Particularly given the existing technology and infrastructure base for HC fuels, I think hydrogen has a long hill to climb.
posted by bonehead at 6:32 AM on October 19, 2020 [5 favorites]
Denmark is majority district heating, the majority of which runs on renewables (counting biomass as renewable), and much of the rest run on industrial waste heat, or rubbish incinerator combined heat/power. Just 16% or so of households have a gas furnace. Oil-burning furnaces were traditionally the dominant heat source until it was supplanted by district heating.
There's still quite a lot of gas and even some coal in the Danish DH energy mix right now, although of course you're right that this is being supplanted by biomass and heatpumps. The design I've seen most commonly in Denmark is to use heatpumps for baseload heat and biomass burners for peaking. One of the advantages of collective heating solution is that this is a much easier change-over to make than replacing individual domestic water boilers.
Having checked, Sweden's emissions per capita are less than France's but Denmark's are higher. I would expect Denmark's to be substantially lower in a decade since the share of final energy supplied from renewable electricity will increase substantially and the coal DH/CHP plants will be decommissioned by then.
posted by atrazine at 6:50 AM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
There's still quite a lot of gas and even some coal in the Danish DH energy mix right now, although of course you're right that this is being supplanted by biomass and heatpumps. The design I've seen most commonly in Denmark is to use heatpumps for baseload heat and biomass burners for peaking. One of the advantages of collective heating solution is that this is a much easier change-over to make than replacing individual domestic water boilers.
Having checked, Sweden's emissions per capita are less than France's but Denmark's are higher. I would expect Denmark's to be substantially lower in a decade since the share of final energy supplied from renewable electricity will increase substantially and the coal DH/CHP plants will be decommissioned by then.
posted by atrazine at 6:50 AM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
the stuff about the impracticality of hydrogen now seems quite reminiscent of what people used to say about electric cars a decade or two ago. ... People in the real world are buying electric cars
"Electric cars ... accounted for 2.6% of global car sales and about 1% of global car stock in 2019" (Global EV Outlook).
I don't doubt that electric cars are the future but they're nowhere near displacing combustion engines yet, while Tesla only became profitable in the past year or so. So I think much of the skepticism about electric cars twenty years ago was quite sound. Hydrogen has an even bigger hill to climb.
posted by dmh at 6:55 AM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
"Electric cars ... accounted for 2.6% of global car sales and about 1% of global car stock in 2019" (Global EV Outlook).
I don't doubt that electric cars are the future but they're nowhere near displacing combustion engines yet, while Tesla only became profitable in the past year or so. So I think much of the skepticism about electric cars twenty years ago was quite sound. Hydrogen has an even bigger hill to climb.
posted by dmh at 6:55 AM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
Funny you say that now.
If hydrogen ends up being as pervasive as natural gas I'll buy a hat and eat it. Specific industrial process uses, sure. Powering your house and car? Nope.
posted by aramaic at 7:50 AM on October 19, 2020
If hydrogen ends up being as pervasive as natural gas I'll buy a hat and eat it. Specific industrial process uses, sure. Powering your house and car? Nope.
posted by aramaic at 7:50 AM on October 19, 2020
I actually agree that hydrogen is a bad choice, not least because fossil fuel companies are pushing it for their various reasons, some seemingly reasonable and others just because they prefer to maintain their status as middle-men.
Synthetic hydrocarbons are, barring more rapid advancement in battery technology than we've seen so far, probably the best option for making things like aviation carbon neutral. We must, however, keep in mind that burning said hydrocarbons also produces other kinds of air pollution that contribute significantly to bad health outcomes among the wider population.
That's mostly fine for aviation, especially if the synthetic replacement for kerosene can be made a more uniform mix than that currently produced and engines can be better tuned to run on that more consistent fuel without producing as much particulate matter and oxides of nitrogen. Aircraft themselves are a relatively small part of overall emissions and are less widely distributed throughout population centers. Seaports are much, much worse for surrounding communities, even in places where the use of high sulfur fuel is limited.
It would be an enormous mistake to allow road transport to continue burning gasoline and diesel fuel even if it were carbon neutral, however. While the smog certainly isn't immediately choking to most people like it used to be, auto and truck emissions are still a major health hazard everywhere their density gets very high at all. Burning shit in general is something we must strive to eliminate to the extent possible. I think it unlikely we will get to literally zero, but it will be a good day when only car collectors and farmers are burning stuff to make their machines move.
posted by wierdo at 8:11 AM on October 19, 2020
Synthetic hydrocarbons are, barring more rapid advancement in battery technology than we've seen so far, probably the best option for making things like aviation carbon neutral. We must, however, keep in mind that burning said hydrocarbons also produces other kinds of air pollution that contribute significantly to bad health outcomes among the wider population.
That's mostly fine for aviation, especially if the synthetic replacement for kerosene can be made a more uniform mix than that currently produced and engines can be better tuned to run on that more consistent fuel without producing as much particulate matter and oxides of nitrogen. Aircraft themselves are a relatively small part of overall emissions and are less widely distributed throughout population centers. Seaports are much, much worse for surrounding communities, even in places where the use of high sulfur fuel is limited.
It would be an enormous mistake to allow road transport to continue burning gasoline and diesel fuel even if it were carbon neutral, however. While the smog certainly isn't immediately choking to most people like it used to be, auto and truck emissions are still a major health hazard everywhere their density gets very high at all. Burning shit in general is something we must strive to eliminate to the extent possible. I think it unlikely we will get to literally zero, but it will be a good day when only car collectors and farmers are burning stuff to make their machines move.
posted by wierdo at 8:11 AM on October 19, 2020
A Tesla can pull 615 (!) kilowatts from its batteries during brief transient times of peak acceleration. With a 400 volt battery pack that's over 1500 amps.
Moving 4000 pounds of anything requires ridiculous amounts of energy and combustion puts out that absolutely fucking ridiculously amount of energy in spades. It's a modern miracle we've been able to electrify something as big as a Model S. Going bigger and bigger just makes the math worse and worse.
615kW is in fact more than a typical semi truck engine puts out. The math does not get worse and worse when you scale up electric vehicles. The weight of batteries on a loaded semi is a much smaller proportion of the total weight than the weight of batteries in a BEV electric car. Obviously, you need a lot more batteries, but the weight is not that big of a deal. The barrier to BEV semis right now is the cost of the batteries and the lack of charging infrastructure, not the weight of them.
This is, in fact, discussed in the article.
posted by ssg at 8:33 AM on October 19, 2020
Moving 4000 pounds of anything requires ridiculous amounts of energy and combustion puts out that absolutely fucking ridiculously amount of energy in spades. It's a modern miracle we've been able to electrify something as big as a Model S. Going bigger and bigger just makes the math worse and worse.
615kW is in fact more than a typical semi truck engine puts out. The math does not get worse and worse when you scale up electric vehicles. The weight of batteries on a loaded semi is a much smaller proportion of the total weight than the weight of batteries in a BEV electric car. Obviously, you need a lot more batteries, but the weight is not that big of a deal. The barrier to BEV semis right now is the cost of the batteries and the lack of charging infrastructure, not the weight of them.
This is, in fact, discussed in the article.
posted by ssg at 8:33 AM on October 19, 2020
The issue with BEV is purely that at long range, the batteries become a bigger and bigger % of the vehicle mass. I think the article also accurately points out that there are already EU mandated rest breaks for drivers. After 4.5 hours you need to rest for 45 mins. Yes, with another driver one of you can sleep in the back but that substantially increases labour costs.
Certainly one can imagine an HGV re-charging to 80% or so of its capacity in 45 minutes or so. There will likely be an optimisation between cost of driver idle time (anything over the 45), wear on the battery from frequent fast charging, capital cost of battery, idle time of the vehicle. Ultimately, for many applications hydrogen has to compete with that optimised solution.
If you want to drive a heavy lorry 16 hours almost continuously, probably you cannot do that with batteries but is that a big enough market to justify a whole separate hydrogen filling infrastructure?
posted by atrazine at 8:46 AM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
Certainly one can imagine an HGV re-charging to 80% or so of its capacity in 45 minutes or so. There will likely be an optimisation between cost of driver idle time (anything over the 45), wear on the battery from frequent fast charging, capital cost of battery, idle time of the vehicle. Ultimately, for many applications hydrogen has to compete with that optimised solution.
If you want to drive a heavy lorry 16 hours almost continuously, probably you cannot do that with batteries but is that a big enough market to justify a whole separate hydrogen filling infrastructure?
posted by atrazine at 8:46 AM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
If you want to drive a heavy lorry 16 hours almost continuously, probably you cannot do that with batteries but is that a big enough market to justify a whole separate hydrogen filling infrastructure?
Trucks carry something like 3/4 of the tonnage of freight in the US and Europe so I'm guessing yes.
The wonderful thing about hydrogen is that it can be used to flatten the duck curve of renewable energy and if we can eventually throw it in trucks we won't have to worry about large scale battery storage for the grid.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 9:02 AM on October 19, 2020
Trucks carry something like 3/4 of the tonnage of freight in the US and Europe so I'm guessing yes.
The wonderful thing about hydrogen is that it can be used to flatten the duck curve of renewable energy and if we can eventually throw it in trucks we won't have to worry about large scale battery storage for the grid.
posted by Your Childhood Pet Rock at 9:02 AM on October 19, 2020
I think also with a BEV truck, in the long term, you can justify additional charging time on economic grounds. The savings in fuel, engine maintenance, etc are potentially quite large, while the cost of the driver's time is not that high. Even if a BEV semi takes an extra hour of charging time to do a 8 hour trip (above mandated rest), then that additional cost is pretty small when you're looking at the total cost of the trip. As a bonus, we get better rested drivers and increased employment.
I kind of doubt the additional cost for hydrogen trucks, hydrogen filling infrastructure, the inefficiencies that make hydrogen more expensive than electricity and so on would end up cheaper than the additional cost of an extra half hour of charging time here and there.
Of course, we already have a very efficient method of moving goods long distances: trains.
posted by ssg at 9:06 AM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
I kind of doubt the additional cost for hydrogen trucks, hydrogen filling infrastructure, the inefficiencies that make hydrogen more expensive than electricity and so on would end up cheaper than the additional cost of an extra half hour of charging time here and there.
Of course, we already have a very efficient method of moving goods long distances: trains.
posted by ssg at 9:06 AM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
Go out to the windmill out back and check the H2 cryotank buried underneath it; if it's 80% full by late July, you'll know you've stored enough over the summer to last you through until spring. BTUs that would otherwise have gone uncaptured and were impractical to store in electric batteries.
The problem is the tank would be ridiculously large and ridiculously expensive (and even more ridiculously expensive and complex if you want to store it cold). Seasonal energy storage is quite hard and hydrogen doesn't make it any easier.
Thermal mass storage is more practical for off grid applications when you want to store energy for heat. Unless you're somewhere with absolutely no sun in the winter, you can still supply a lot with oversized PV and solar hot water. Economically, fairly extreme building envelope strategies to reduce heating load to near zero make more sense than trying to store hydrogen.
posted by ssg at 9:13 AM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
The problem is the tank would be ridiculously large and ridiculously expensive (and even more ridiculously expensive and complex if you want to store it cold). Seasonal energy storage is quite hard and hydrogen doesn't make it any easier.
Thermal mass storage is more practical for off grid applications when you want to store energy for heat. Unless you're somewhere with absolutely no sun in the winter, you can still supply a lot with oversized PV and solar hot water. Economically, fairly extreme building envelope strategies to reduce heating load to near zero make more sense than trying to store hydrogen.
posted by ssg at 9:13 AM on October 19, 2020 [1 favorite]
You don't need an electric truck that can go 1000 miles. You just need a fleet of tractors that can go 300 miles or so. At a truck stop you just swap your depleted tractor for a newly charged one, which takes five minutes, and keep going. Meanwhile your depleted tractor is recharged for the next trucker who comes in an hour later behind you.
This makes more sense than hauling around thousands of pounds of extra batteries all day you don't even use until hours into your trip. It's more economical having two trucks each using 1000 pounds of batteries than one truck using 2000 pounds of batteries.
posted by JackFlash at 9:28 AM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]
This makes more sense than hauling around thousands of pounds of extra batteries all day you don't even use until hours into your trip. It's more economical having two trucks each using 1000 pounds of batteries than one truck using 2000 pounds of batteries.
posted by JackFlash at 9:28 AM on October 19, 2020 [3 favorites]
Lotsa traffic on this topic, just going to leave this here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ytg23mDd1a4
Lazar is a . . . problematic . . . persona but his claim that Lithium-6 deuteride makes a great storage medium for gaseous hydrogen is easily disprovable.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:43 AM on October 19, 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ytg23mDd1a4
Lazar is a . . . problematic . . . persona but his claim that Lithium-6 deuteride makes a great storage medium for gaseous hydrogen is easily disprovable.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 10:43 AM on October 19, 2020
bartleby asks:
> 2) What about H2 for aviation
Last month Airbus released a plan to use liquid hydrogen fuelled airliners in the future.
posted by phliar at 11:42 AM on October 19, 2020
> 2) What about H2 for aviation
Last month Airbus released a plan to use liquid hydrogen fuelled airliners in the future.
posted by phliar at 11:42 AM on October 19, 2020
Decarbonising the EU is complex because of regional characteristics, yes. AKA our right-wingers in Poland got to power by promising Coal Forever to get the influential miners' vote, and whenever someone tried to close pits that only burn money nowadays, the miner riots trashed the capital. The Silesian mines have been significantly reduced, at a gigantic restructuring costs, but that's dwarfed by the subsidies they get every year to produce bad-quality coal much more expensively than Australia and Russia. But even here the last coal power plant block under construction was just converted to natural gas because of how much coal does not make sense financially, and everyone I know is considering solar. Tide's turning.
That said, the last two hydrogen transport projects I saw in Eastern Europe were solar-to-hydrogen and purifying waste hydrogen from production of other chemicals. Both were ideas by fuel companies trying to stay relevant in a field where power companies cornered the charging stations. And yes, both of them target trucks and buses. Electric buses in particular tend to need charging two-three times per day with high usage, and some cities are indeed opting for larger batteries to save on constructing rapid charging stations. (Buses tend not to be plug-in, there's usually a tram/train-like construction overhead.)
posted by I claim sanctuary at 11:45 AM on October 19, 2020
That said, the last two hydrogen transport projects I saw in Eastern Europe were solar-to-hydrogen and purifying waste hydrogen from production of other chemicals. Both were ideas by fuel companies trying to stay relevant in a field where power companies cornered the charging stations. And yes, both of them target trucks and buses. Electric buses in particular tend to need charging two-three times per day with high usage, and some cities are indeed opting for larger batteries to save on constructing rapid charging stations. (Buses tend not to be plug-in, there's usually a tram/train-like construction overhead.)
posted by I claim sanctuary at 11:45 AM on October 19, 2020
When building around humans, things that can be induced to go kaboom have been and remain a huge liability.
Make copious ammounts of electricity and bury the lines while you're at it so that the revolution can be illuminated.
posted by Fupped Duck at 2:06 PM on October 19, 2020
Make copious ammounts of electricity and bury the lines while you're at it so that the revolution can be illuminated.
posted by Fupped Duck at 2:06 PM on October 19, 2020
I don't doubt that the truck market is massive but when you consider the mandated crew rest period the case for ultra-long range (without recharging) gets weaker because you need a co-driver to use it.
This is really a case though where you need whole systems analysis to get an answer because:
1) Looking a transportation in isolation, maybe you just want to use EV trucks and tolerate slightly longer idle periods
2) Looking at the electricity system in isolation, storing excess renewable energy as H2 makes no sense
3) Looking at the two together, the cheap electricity available from renewables plus the potential use case in transportation may make 1 + 1 = 3.
I'm not fully convinced of that but it might be the case.
posted by atrazine at 2:20 PM on October 19, 2020
This is really a case though where you need whole systems analysis to get an answer because:
1) Looking a transportation in isolation, maybe you just want to use EV trucks and tolerate slightly longer idle periods
2) Looking at the electricity system in isolation, storing excess renewable energy as H2 makes no sense
3) Looking at the two together, the cheap electricity available from renewables plus the potential use case in transportation may make 1 + 1 = 3.
I'm not fully convinced of that but it might be the case.
posted by atrazine at 2:20 PM on October 19, 2020
I was surprised to learn recently that the battery electric buses in Sydney have sufficient range to last a couple of driving shifts. They are currently running them a single shift and on the worst routes they come back with over 50% charge.
I guess I shouldn't be surprised, city buses are pretty much an ideal use case for regenerative braking. Most heavy vehicles are used for local or regional service, so it seems really hard to make a case for building out hydrogen production and fueling infrastructure anything along the lines of petroleum distribution and marketing since its customer base would be limited solely to long haul trucks. That limited market leaves many fewer liters on which to make back your investment.
There's a lot of money building battery capacity right now, and BEVs can handle everything else right now. Hydrogen is simply too late to see much use in ground transportation absent government mandates without some breakthrough that radically changes the economics. The BEVs are already as good or better on lifecycle cost (to the owner/operator), so it's too late for hydrogen to matter for road vehicles, unless maybe they get to actually building the vehicles and infrastructure like right now before local haulage starts to go electric in significant numbers.
Now that BEVs have reached the point that they cost less to own than ICVs the window is closing for alternatives. We are pretty much at the tipping point right now. The only barrier is the capital cost, but consolidation and easy money reduce that barrier, so I wouldn't at all be surprised to see large delivery fleets buying all the BEV trucks they can get their hands on starting sometime in the next few years once they get comfortable with them through the many ongoing pilot programs.
posted by wierdo at 3:21 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
I guess I shouldn't be surprised, city buses are pretty much an ideal use case for regenerative braking. Most heavy vehicles are used for local or regional service, so it seems really hard to make a case for building out hydrogen production and fueling infrastructure anything along the lines of petroleum distribution and marketing since its customer base would be limited solely to long haul trucks. That limited market leaves many fewer liters on which to make back your investment.
There's a lot of money building battery capacity right now, and BEVs can handle everything else right now. Hydrogen is simply too late to see much use in ground transportation absent government mandates without some breakthrough that radically changes the economics. The BEVs are already as good or better on lifecycle cost (to the owner/operator), so it's too late for hydrogen to matter for road vehicles, unless maybe they get to actually building the vehicles and infrastructure like right now before local haulage starts to go electric in significant numbers.
Now that BEVs have reached the point that they cost less to own than ICVs the window is closing for alternatives. We are pretty much at the tipping point right now. The only barrier is the capital cost, but consolidation and easy money reduce that barrier, so I wouldn't at all be surprised to see large delivery fleets buying all the BEV trucks they can get their hands on starting sometime in the next few years once they get comfortable with them through the many ongoing pilot programs.
posted by wierdo at 3:21 PM on October 19, 2020 [2 favorites]
Having checked, Sweden's emissions per capita are less than France's but Denmark's are higher.
Yeah, my issue was more with the "mostly gas" characterisation, when we're mostly coal and literal trash fires, aside from the renewables (which is mostly burning biomass, which is not entirely unproblematic for emissions...)
posted by Dysk at 8:50 PM on October 19, 2020
Yeah, my issue was more with the "mostly gas" characterisation, when we're mostly coal and literal trash fires, aside from the renewables (which is mostly burning biomass, which is not entirely unproblematic for emissions...)
posted by Dysk at 8:50 PM on October 19, 2020
When building around humans, things that can be induced to go kaboom have been and remain a huge liability.
This includes batteries BTW. Airlines would really, really prefer that no one take a battery on an airplane, ever. Obviously passengers get special treatment, but we're finding it increasingly difficult to ship even lead-acid gel cells by air cargo anymore (scientific instruments and safety equipment mostly), let alone any lithium chemistry cells. Batteries (and big capacitors) are a lot more dangerous than many credit them for.
posted by bonehead at 9:12 AM on October 20, 2020
This includes batteries BTW. Airlines would really, really prefer that no one take a battery on an airplane, ever. Obviously passengers get special treatment, but we're finding it increasingly difficult to ship even lead-acid gel cells by air cargo anymore (scientific instruments and safety equipment mostly), let alone any lithium chemistry cells. Batteries (and big capacitors) are a lot more dangerous than many credit them for.
posted by bonehead at 9:12 AM on October 20, 2020
If you want to drive a heavy lorry 16 hours almost continuously
You can't legally in the EU.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:01 PM on October 20, 2020
You can't legally in the EU.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:01 PM on October 20, 2020
Team driving is illegal in the EU?
That surprises me, though I think it's a perfectly fine way to push freight onto rail, which is far less polluting, less dangerous, and more economical in terms of infrastructure maintenance. BEV trucks only address one of the many issues with long distance road freight, sadly.
posted by wierdo at 6:52 PM on October 21, 2020 [1 favorite]
That surprises me, though I think it's a perfectly fine way to push freight onto rail, which is far less polluting, less dangerous, and more economical in terms of infrastructure maintenance. BEV trucks only address one of the many issues with long distance road freight, sadly.
posted by wierdo at 6:52 PM on October 21, 2020 [1 favorite]
Team driving is illegal in the EU?
No, but the driver still has to take a 20min break every 3 or 4 hours. And trucks cannot legally drive faster than 100 Km/h (roughly 65mph) (and in some places not at all on Sundays)- it could well be less economical to have team driving than to adjust your scheduling.
posted by From Bklyn at 10:37 PM on October 21, 2020
No, but the driver still has to take a 20min break every 3 or 4 hours. And trucks cannot legally drive faster than 100 Km/h (roughly 65mph) (and in some places not at all on Sundays)- it could well be less economical to have team driving than to adjust your scheduling.
posted by From Bklyn at 10:37 PM on October 21, 2020
It's not that team driving is illegal, but there is a balance between:
-Labour costs
-Capital costs of vehicle
-Vehicle utilisation
-Vehicle operating costs
-Time to deliver freight
EU labour costs are high so only for very time-sensitive cargo would you do this rather than have one driver and take breaks.
Incidentally, almost everywhere has mandated rest breaks. In the US they're every 8 hours federally although some operators may have insurance-mandated more frequent rest breaks.
I imagine this would make the optimisation slightly different in the US than in the EU but in both cases it is not a foregone conclusion that there would be a role for H2 in trucking.
posted by atrazine at 2:01 AM on October 22, 2020
-Labour costs
-Capital costs of vehicle
-Vehicle utilisation
-Vehicle operating costs
-Time to deliver freight
EU labour costs are high so only for very time-sensitive cargo would you do this rather than have one driver and take breaks.
Incidentally, almost everywhere has mandated rest breaks. In the US they're every 8 hours federally although some operators may have insurance-mandated more frequent rest breaks.
I imagine this would make the optimisation slightly different in the US than in the EU but in both cases it is not a foregone conclusion that there would be a role for H2 in trucking.
posted by atrazine at 2:01 AM on October 22, 2020
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Pushing back against the will of the networks is not going to be straightforward though. The UK has banned new homes from going on the gas network from 2023 and others will be going down the same path. If this move helps to bring new tech forward, heat pumps being the obvious choice for low carbon, then they could spread to displace gas boilers in existing homes and market share isn't just fixed then it might even decline. They are keen for that not to happen, and for hydrogen to happen, not just in niches but more widely so they can keep making money the way they make money now.
posted by biffa at 2:01 PM on October 18, 2020 [3 favorites]