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this post was submitted on 01 Mar 2024
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Agreed, but 2 important things in my eyes.
1 - renewable surpluses. As wind and solar keep ramping , hydrogen is a fantastic way to store that energy. Sure, there are efficiency losses but it's transportable, able to be stored long term, and able to be used from small scale to grid scale applications.
2 - total life cycle cost. There is an incredible amount of emissions embodied in evs. Haven't seen a comprehensive analysis of a h2 vehicle but I would imagine a few hundred kilos of missing lithium is a good thing.
Creating hydrogen is incredibly inefficient if you look at all the steps involved. It will be significantly more inefficient if you don't create hydrogen 24/7. Meaning, it'll cost significantly more to rely on a surplus of electricity. Meaning, it is way more expensive per mile or km driven.
The tank in an hydrogen car is only good for 8 to 10 years. You're replacing one bit that might fail with loads of other bits that might fail.
I think people aren't understanding how inefficient hydrogen is. Especially with the suggestion that hydrogen somehow is better than EVs, despite hydrogen cars often still having all the EV tech in a car.
But the hydrogen also has to be transported, which produces CO2, you need containers for that that also produce CO2 when getting manufactured. I'm not saying it's more than with a battery but it could be. We'd need actual numbers to really know tho.
I've seen plans for hydrogen fuel stations to create the hydrogen there on site.
Grid storage is a genuine problem that needs solving, but there's no particular reason to believe hydrogen is going to be the technology to fill that niche. There are much simpler and more efficient competitors, not least of which being pumped hydroelectricity, but also including exotic technologies like molten salt thermal plants or compressed air mineshafts. And batteries, for that matter; once portability stops being a concern, other battery chemistries start to be an option which don't include lithium at all, like sodium-sulfur.
And even if hydrogen electrolysis does make sense as a grid storage medium, there's no particular reason to think it's a good idea to package up this hydrogen, transport it, and stick it in vehicles to convert into electricity through their own mini power plants. The alternative, where hydrogen is simply stored and converted back into grid electricity on site to meet demand leveling requirements seems far more likely.