The problem with H2, ammonia, biofuels and other synthetic fuels is not that they have some limitations, it's that they are not accepted by the green energy dogma. Some green energy activists would like to see the gas stations go away, for example, and that is not going to happen if you keep needing to go somewhere to re-fuel, with any fuel.
If there were no alternative long-term storage plans this might be acceptable, but that's simply not the case.
If you're using hydrogen to smelt steel or make ammonia fertilizer, then there's no energy loss (beyond what's needed to decarbonize petrochemicals anyway). The article aptly refers to these as "no regrets" uses.
Gas stations (ie ground vehicles) are fighting a losing battle. BEVs will eat the sector. They're simply so much less expensive [than hydrogen]: for the vehicles themselves, for the infrastructure, and then of course for the wasteful energy use in operation.
Looking at efficiency alone is not enough.
> They're simply so much less expensive
Not yet they aren't. The upfront cost of an EV still makes it more expensive than an ICE vehicle. Also, they batteries are guaranteed to degrade, so the used market has very bad prices for EVs. At some point, they will probably be less expensive for most automobiles, but hydrogen can still play a part in trucking, trains, planes, boats and specialty operations.
Only about 64% of oil is used for transportation [1] and out of that, only about 50% for automobiles and light trucks [2] (even though for light trucks, motorcycles and other applications, EVs are not going to win probably). So BEVs could replace about 30% of all oil usage. The rest of 70% is up for grabs, so why not pursue hydrogen investment as a possible alternative?
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-produc...
https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/use-of-energy/transporta...
Fossil fuel comes out of the ground with the energy already in it, hydrogen doesn't exist in a free form and the energy must be put into it coming from somewhere else.
Most hydrogen now comes from natural gas at maybe 75-80% efficiency through reforming, then it must be compressed, then it must be burned at similar efficiencies to fossil fuel or used in a fuel cell with slightly better efficiency than ICE.
It's way worse in efficiency than fossil fuels, you could just use the natural gas directly in a combustion engine and be way ahead. Solar/wind/nuclear to electrolysis is even worse, just charge a battery.
Hydrogen is a energy storage mechanism like a battery not a source of energy like fossil fuel.
Look at well to wheel efficiency BEV are far ahead of hydrogen.
The (relevant) comparison was H2 versus BEVs — ie comparing decarbonized solutions apples-to-apples. I have edited to make that more clear.
> why not pursue hydrogen investment as a possible alternative?
Because hydrogen, for all its marketing, doesn't solve the problems people have with BEVs. Better BEVs do.
I see a variety of BEV motorcycles and light trucks available. The same can't be said for hydrogen.
In general I would say I actually agree with this. It can be perfectly feasible to use an energy source that's terribly inefficient in some intuitive sense, but as long as it's economical to do so, poses no environmental harm, and you're getting significantly more energy out than you're putting in, you can be as inefficient as you want.
Now that said, I don't think that this kind of general truism is terribly responsive in this particular case, because it's nevertheless going to be true that inefficiency, and whatever sense you construe it, can indeed be a deal breaker and I think that's what GP is intending to communicate with respect to h2, biofuels, etc.
Energy to plants to biofuels throws away nearly all the energy. More than all of it, by some accountings.
What are the alternatives for those use cases in which batteries are infeasible?
There's also battery systems outside of Lithium Ion formulations which have other use cases. Thermal batteries are an interesting alternative in some use cases, particularly where fast access to heat in addition to electricy is handy (such as in collaboration with building HVAC and water heaters).
But also in general as we keep finding new density scales in the Lithium Ion formulations (and as we have hope to potentially discover even more formulations beside that) the number of use cases where batteries are infeasible keeps shrinking.
The alternatives are mostly
* better batteries
* heat pumps to replace oil burners
* methane or ammonia for the remaining uses (eg trans-oceanic); globally shipping and aviation together account for only 8% of petroleum use
With a universal carbon tax everything would automatically self-organize into the most efficient solution, but of course we can't do that.
Why would long-term storage matter if wind and solar can produce so much energy that we cannot feasibly consume it all? What other long-term energy storage plans are there right now?
I would not write off fuel stations just yet. There may well be a future where some renewable fuel powers vehicles.
No.
You're thinking of "too cheap to meter," which never came to pass, and (as it turns out) was just a marketing line.
>What other long-term energy storage plans are there right now?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34429623
There was a great article a few days ago about "factories as batteries" (pointing out that aluminum smelting is uneconomic but hydrogen works) but sadly I can't find it.
The current process needs 55kWh of electricity to produce 15kWh of electricity on the other end. Not very efficient at all.
Talking about efficiency is a losing battle, people don't care about that, they care about total cost, safety and convenience.
