Yves here. This is a useful, non-technical description of the blue and green hydrogen schemes and why their effect is to extend rather than end the use of fossil fuel. While much of the information in this post may be old hat to readers who keep close tabs on various “energy transition,” carbon capture, and geoengineering proposals, the very fact that there are so many, with Madison Avenue catchy branding, that dint of repetition about the dodgy ones is useful. And as we have also pointed out, the better-sounding ones have fatal flaws in time and resource costs to implement at scale, including infrastructure re-dos.
The fact is we all need to go on a very big, sustained energy diet, but the need of many of use to earn a living, and as a result, to use modern conveniences, makes individual action of insufficient benefit and creates a seemingly insoluble collective action problem. Real leadership could make a difference, but that falls in the “assume a can opener” category.
By Jane Patton, the campaign manager on the U.S. fossil economy at the Center for International Environmental Law. Originally published at Common Dreams
As our planet’s temperature rises, so does the hype around hydrogen. But hydrogen isn’t the climate savior it’s made out to be. Hydrogen is a dangerous distraction, and we should not fall for it.
Technological fixes to climate change are tempting, and the Biden administration has not resisted the lure of hydrogen: The Department of Energy recently announced a massive $7 billion buildout of seven hydrogen hubs nationwide, the first of several such investments.
Hydrogen is dangerous, partly because it distracts from the real climate solutions we so desperately need. The world’s best climate scientists have been clear that to maintain a livable planet, we must phase out fossil fuels and transition to truly renewable energy now. Hydrogen hubs take us in the opposite direction by further embedding us in the fossil fuel economy.
A staggering 99% of hydrogen production relies on fossil fuels, primarily methane, or “natural,” gas. Notably, oil, gas, and petrochemical companies produce the lion’s share of the U.S. hydrogen supply: approximately 10 million metric tons. Once produced, more than two-thirds of hydrogen is used for petroleum refining.
A cursory examination of the partners across all seven proposed hydrogen hubs reveals who actually stands to benefit from them. Key recipients of this first $7 billion of public money are oil, gas, and chemical corporations, including Exxon, Chevron, Dupont, and Air Products. Air Liquide, a French gas company, is a named partner in at least six of the seven hubs chosen for the next phase of public funding. Fossil fuel and petrochemical companies are pushing for this hydrogen buildout because it is their ticket to greenwash their products as ‘climate solutions’ on the public’s dime.
Making hydrogen is highly energy intensive, whether using large quantities of renewable power to make ‘green hydrogen’ through electrolysis or pulling in large quantities of methane gas coupled with energy-intensive and unreliable carbon capture systems to produce “blue hydrogen.” At least two of the seven hydrogen hubs are associated with blue hydrogen production, which scientists say “may be worse than gas or coal.”
Hydrogen production is not only very energy intensive, it also requires considerable amounts of water, a resource that is becoming increasingly more precarious due to the climate crisis. Louisiana this year faced never-before-seen wildfire threats, predicted to continue, largely due to drought. California has had some of the worst wildfire seasons on record. Both states are targeted for the proposed hydrogen buildout.
Calls for “hydrogen-ready” infrastructure are code for doubling down on building new gas production and pipelines, with the vague hope that this infrastructure might one day carry hydrogen. This is the opposite of what we should do, which is to take urgent action to phase out fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy to avoid climate catastrophe.
Hydrogen projects, especially blue hydrogen, put communities in harm’s way. To produce blue hydrogen, CO2 must be scrubbed and captured, a process whose effectiveness is questionable at best. This process requires the buildout of additional infrastructure, thousands of miles of new pipelines, and injection wells to store the CO2 underground. This means more hazardous air and water pollution in our communities. People living near this new infrastructure for hydrogen and CO2 stand to face additional risks like pipeline leaks and injection well failures, which can be catastrophic.
Confusingly, funding for these hydrogen hubs is partially allocated under the “Justice40” initiative, which aims to address decades of underinvestment in disadvantaged communities. Yet many communities targeted for the hydrogen buildout—the same low-income and/or Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities supposed to benefit from the administration’s environmental justice promises—are organizing against proposed hydrogen projects, because of the dangers they present.
I have had to become an expert on climate solutions out of sheer necessity. I am the fifth generation of my family to call South Louisiana home, and the climate crisis is coming for us in Louisiana faster than anywhere else in the country. At the same time, we’re a target for the nationwide buildout of hydrogen, carbon capture, and other technological false solutions to the climate crisis.
Communities like mine understand all too well that these projects take a toll on our drinkable water, breathable air, bodies, and livelihoods. The projects come with often elusive promises of jobs, but those poised to truly benefit from these projects are fossil fuel and chemical companies.
Impacted communities deserve better. They deserve to be at the table when it comes to finding solutions that work for people and the climate. Just as importantly, they deserve justice for the harms wrought upon them by the fossil fuel industry. We all deserve a livable, breathable, drinkable future. And that future is not found in a hydrogen hub.
Beyond the fossil fuel industry’s expensive hydrogen distraction, there are community-centered solutions that provide jobs and improve lives without jeopardizing communities. There are safe, scalable, proven, and affordable solutions like solar and wind energy, energy efficiency, local and regenerative agriculture, and zero waste programs that empower communities and make the most of limited and dwindling resources.
We need to stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry, stop harming communities with false hype for hydrogen, and direct funding to real solutions to the climate crisis.
We have no time to waste.
40 comments
Comments are closed.
But what’s this? Just in the nick of time, geologic hydrogen to the rescue?
https://oxsci.org/geologic-hydrogen-the-future-of-green-energy/
A new hope? Or just another feint by the Empire?
I’m skeptical. At present, over 95% of the world’s production of hydrogen gas is (to quote Wikipedia) “by steam reforming of natural gas and other light hydrocarbons, partial oxidation of heavier hydrocarbons, and coal gasification.” These are energy intensive processes that consume significant amounts of fuel that could otherwise be sold directly to customers.
If we could obtain all of the hydrogen we need simply by drilling holes in the ground, nobody would bother with these energy- and resource-intensive approaches. And yet we do. This is probably because underground deposits of easily-accessed hydrogen gas don’t exist in the quantities required.
And this posted it today’s Links:
They went hunting for fossil fuels. What they found could help save the world
https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/29/climate/white-hydrogen-fossil-fuels-climate/index.html
So we have green, blue and white hydrogen. This starts to look like Goethes Theory of Colour applied to hydrogen.
I believe that what Goethe was really seeking was not a physiological but a psychological theory of colours.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, MS 112 255:26.11.1931
“There are safe, scalable, proven, and affordable solutions like solar and wind energy…”
Sigh… If only that were true. Solar and wind energy only work when weather conditions permit, and if you’re exclusively relying on those to keep your grid up 24 hours per day, you need vast amounts of energy storage capability. Current worldwide battery manufacturing capability falls short of the requirement by at least two orders of magnitude, and based on arguments I’ve seen about mining for battery minerals, I honestly don’t think we’ll ever get there with batteries.
Because of this, the fallback solution is to create liquid or gaseous fuels (like hydrogen or ammonia) during periods of renewable power surplus so that they can be burned when the renewable power resources are inadequate. The round-trip efficiency is lower and you’ll need to deploy more wind and solar installations to make it viable, but it could be scaled up much more readily than batteries.
Of course, there are significant downsides to this approach. New pipelines (with hydrogen embrittlement and a wider range of combustible fuel-air ratios potentially making things more dangerous), CO2 injection sites if you’re creating “blue” rather than “green” hydrogen, large amounts of water consumption, etc. But without some means of storing massive amounts of energy, the whole idea of “transitioning to renewables” becomes non-viable.
The USA is lucky in that it is a large country and so wind is always blowing somewhere. All you need is lots of windmills and a extensive electrical grid. The width of the country also helps spread the availability of solar power. This will mitigate the requirement of storage.
“This will mitigate the requirement of storage.”
Yes, but not enough. The most credible analysis I’ve seen for energy storage requirements for the US put the requirement at ~100 TWh for a 100% renewable grid, and that analysis accounted for the ability to move power from regions with surpluses to regions with shortfalls. And that’s just for today’s grid. Not the larger grid that would be required to reliably charge tens of millions of EVs and to operate tens of millions of heat pumps that would replace the oil- and gas-fired furnaces that currently heat homes throughout the northern US.
And worldwide battery manufacturing is about 0.6 TWh per year. Even if we somehow convinced all other countries to abandon their own grid-storage and EV plans so that we could claim 100% of worldwide battery manufacturing for US grid-storage purposes alone, we’d still need over 150 years to reach the goal. Using wind and solar with battery backup is not a viable plan.
I realize that a large portion of cooking processes have gone electric, but don’t forget that added pressure on the grid. And then there is this compulsion we have to make everything battery operated, rechargeable battery operated. So it isn’t just vehicles along with HVAC and water heating systems putting increasing pressure on our electrical grids. God forbid someone want to go into bit coin mining or hydroponics farming or…
I fully admit I have a weird fascination with tiny homes and RVs. I find the articles and videos fascinating. And while some at first glance appear to be able to go entirely off grid most of those have propane and/or gas back up. And many only go off grid for short periods. They also have smaller kitchens with small apartment size refrigerators at most, limited lighting, and due to their size much smaller spaces to heat and cool. I’m not saying that it isn’t possible, but just that even with a passion for it and severe lifestyle restrictions, it is very hard to go entirely renewable. And I haven’t seen any try it with an EV…yet.
You are all missing the brontosaurus in the room (I say that with a flash of remembering my five year old grandson informing me that they aren’t called brontosauruses anymore). There is an assumption behind both sides of this argument that is false, and incredibly destructive–the assumption that we MUST at all costs, supply every watt of desired power immediately, everywhere; we can only argue about how to do it. Let me remind you that every human until about four generations ago lived with no electricity at all; go back a few more generations and they didn’t have liquid fuels either, or even coal. Yet they presumably thought life was worth living. We have many conveniences now, and a longer life expectancy. But are we happier? No, and our conveniences are now threatening our survival. The good news is we don’t have to go back to no modern energy to regain sustainability. If we used the energy we used when I was a kid, we’d have a hell of a lot more breathing room.
I’ll also mention that I lived without electricity for 20 years in my youth, the first five without gas either (then they put a well on our property and we had free gas, so we had gas refrigerators and lights and a heater. I never minded living without electricity. Now I live with an off-grid solar system. We have a comfortable lifestyle, using 2 to 3 kwh a day. No we don’t live entirely without fossil fuels, as we have a car and truck–no public transport around here and it isn’t safe to ride a bike on twisty, hilly, narrow roads full of big vehicles, We also have a chainsaw, a lawnmower and a log splitter. And we use maybe 150 pounds of propane a year for our cook stove.Plus, of course, we buy things that have embodied energy; I grow half our food and we spend less than most Americans, but we do have a footprint. But my point is, we could use a whole lot LESS energy, accept limits, use high-power appliances when the sun is shining or wind blowing, and then a renewable energy system would be feasible.
This is simply not true. Europe repeatedly suffers continent-wide high pressure calms in winter, when temperatures drop in clear and windless skies and there is zero wind generation, at times for days. There is no reason to assume North America does not experience these and certainly no reason to assume that its distribution of wind generation hours matches the timing and geography of energy demand. Plus wind is not despatchable so it cannot fill in for other sources that go offline, it cannot be used to restart the power grid (a black start) and it cannot be relied upon (variable wind speed) to maintain grid frequency.
Wind is a very expensive duplication of other more controllable/predictable sources and will require storage, either in batteries or liquid fuels or other means (heat stores, compressed air etc).
Perhaps there is an obvious answer to this but…why are we not taking an approach like the one used in Regenitec’s bioreactors? They take co2 from combustion (they use lumber yard waste but I think one could design a similar system for any co2 producing combustion) and pump it into tanks where they grow algae. Then they turn the algae into biodiesel, which they burn (and they collect the co2 from that combustion as well).
They also produce biochar, which is a useful sort of natural prebiotic for soil bacteria. But I don’t think that is necessary for the CO2 recycling loop I mentioned above.
I’m sure it is not 100% efficient at recycling CO2 but it seems like a better approach than blue hydrogen which relies on the carbon capture and storage fairy.
Also I’ll just throw out there that in some climates solar thermal remains a viable solution for home heating. I recently saw a design for panels utilizing low-e coatings over aluminum panels (no glass). Because these panels don’t use copper or glass they should be fairly inexpensive. Because they don’t use copper or other rare elements in large quantities their production shouldn’t be limited by the availability of raw materials. They wouldn’t work well in cold climates and would only be of limited use in climates with no heating season but should work well in many temperate climates. Alas, the company that developed them appears to have died in its infancy. But if a government ever felt inclined to reduce electricity use in winter at a scale where raw materials limitations on photovoltaic production became a concern, this would be where I would look.
It takes ~20 kWh of electricity to make a single kilogram of aluminum ingot out of alumina, plus the energy cost of extracting alumina from bauxite ore. Rare, no. But also extraordinarily energy intensive.
Once the aluminum is mined and refined and made into the panel described just above, how long would that panel last before it wore out? Or rather, how long would a whole set of such panels last before needing replacement? And how much coal, gas and oil would they prevent from being burned to make the heat which these panels themselves are making for the house they are a part of? Would it be enough coal, gas and oil displaced from being burned to add up to “more” energy than what was used to make the aluminum which went into the panels?
My impression was the panels would last for 40+ years, though that is a bit imprecise and based mostly on the fact that aluminum roofs–probably using thinner aluminum than the panels would have–last 30 years or more, while other solar thermal panels with aluminum frames easily last 40+ years, and the first part to break appears to be the copper pipes rather than the aluminum housing. Admittedly I don’t know what the expected lifespan of aluminum pipes are, but I see that aluminum coated steel pipes used in culverts boast a 3-8x increase in lifespan over standard galvanized steel (see Service Life Of Culverts from National Academies Press) so it seems likely to me that 40 years would be a fairly low estimate for the lifespan of the aluminum, provided the other components remained useful as well (I’m less sure about that…his long does a “hard” low e coating last?)
Phind tells me that an aluminum roof might weigh as much as 0.0055 kg per square meter. Let’s assume the aluminum used to make these panels is 10x as thick (I think that is being generous but eh, that is a guess). So 0.055 kg per square meter of panel. Or 1.1 kW of electricity per square meter of panel.
The panel operates very similarly to the current flat plate solar thermal collectors, with the one uncertainty I have being how quickly the output drops off in cold weather. The website claimed it would work similarly to a standard flat plate collector though, so for the sake of discussion I’ll go with that.
Let’s say that the output of these panels is at least in the ballpark of the TitanPower ALDH29-v3. One of these panels, with surface area of 2.74 square meters, produces about 1.8 kW of heat on a sunny day where it is 30 degrees C colder outside than inside. As with electricity there are some additional losses–in this case mostly due to heat leaving the heat bank–but nothing catastrophic. So I feel fairly confident that after a few sunny days a panel like this would be “carbon neural”. Or perhaps after a few weeks, depending on how much additional fossil fuels are required to mine the aluminum. But as far as I can tell, this looks like a carbon and pollution reduction strategy that actually pencils out, both from a carbon cost perspective and a financial perspective, at least in many climates.
Sorry, that should be 2.2 kW…or possibly 2.3 kW of power required to heat the aluminum required for one square meter of panel. The panels do, after all, have two big sides, each requiring an aluminum sheet.
But the math still pencils out, I would say.
If that is so, then perhaps countries with a vast surplus of intermitent solar power ( Saudi Arabia and other such) could dump that surplus into refining aluminum with those vast amounts of electricity and then sell the aluminum . . . . in essence selling something which electricity does rather than selling the electricity itself.
Thus end-running-around the problem of storing all the surplus power for when the sun don’t shine.
I have another answer, for heating homes in winter. Rather than burning anything, or using electricity from sunlight (or direct heating from the sun –trouble is, many places don’t get much sun in winter–the first step should be super-insulating homes, which is often helpful in summer as well. Passivhauses in Germany may need no heat source beyond warmth from the people, pets and appliances and don’t cost much more to build than conventional construction, in part because not needing a HVAC system offsets some of the extra construction cost.
There is an issue with insulation–most types are energy intensive to produce, and toxic to discard or burned. But there is a promising alternative, which if adopted on a wider scale, could also create a lot of the kind of jobs we need–not necessarily well-paid but local, low-impact, small business jobs. Insulation can be made from mycelium–what we think of as mushrooms are the fruiting bodies, mycelium is the network of strands below ground. At end of use it can be composted in an ordinary backyard compost pile, it’s entirely non-toxic, and a company producing structural insulated panels in the UK, Biohm, says their tests show it to be equal in R value and fire resistance to fiberglass.
I recently spent a few hours discussing environmental problems with an electrical engineer friend who spent his working life with a utility company in the northeastern US.
Per his view, not only must electric distribution networks be rebuilt to accommodate electric vehicles, but very little consideration has been given to the types of rebuilding that is needed.
One problem he identified is that batteries store DC (Direct Current) while the electricity generated and transmitted is AC (Alternating Current).
He argued that the functional loss rate of converting from stored electricity (DC) to usable electricity (AC) is 40% – 60%.
He explained that the loss estimates used by those promoting electric vehicles is 5% – 10%, and this is closer to the math I found for estimating loss.
But he argued back that the technology that is available on the retail end has the higher loss ratio.
Related to this is that retail gas stations that are putting in charging stations must be rewired with much heavier wire all the way back to the utility because the existing secondary and tertiary transmission lines can’t carry enough electricity without doing so.
His argument was that between the costs to build / rebuild the infrastructure needed to serve electric vehicles and the true loss ratios that currently apply to the storage and conversion back of stored electricity, EVs are a fantasy that will prove unworkable unless many multiples of current cost estimates are spent.
And more to the point, the environmental destruction unleashed in that effort will exacerbate the problems that EVs are intended to solve.
Engineers, does what my friend is saying make sense?
https://energyclime.com/why-ac-cant-be-stored-in-batteries-but-dc-can/
“He argued that the functional loss rate of converting from stored electricity (DC) to usable electricity (AC) is 40% – 60%”
This isn’t quite right. Per the NREL (at https://atb.nrel.gov/electricity/2022/utility-scale_battery_storage), “round-trip” efficiency for a utility-scale battery storage system is typically 86%, which means that only 14% of the energy is lost during the AC-to-DC-to-AC conversion process. And this jives with what I’ve seen with high-power IGBT-based power converters in industry. 5 or 6% converter losses in each direction, plus some losses in the batteries themselves. And the numbers you’d see inside the car when you convert AC-to-DC-to-AC during charging and drive train operation would only be a little worse, perhaps adding up to a 20% total loss.
But aside from that one point, I agree with your friend’s criticisms of our politicians’ overly-optimistic plans for transitioning to EVs. It will require major upgrades to all three levels of power lines (high-voltage transmission lines, medium-voltage distribution lines, and low-voltage domestic lines) to be able to charge millions of EVs simultaneously. Total electrical energy production will need to go up by at least 30%, which means more power stations as well. And the mining impacts from all those EV batteries? Hoo boy.
A saner approach would be plug-in hybrids with one-tenth the battery, but too many of our politicians have jumped on the EV bandwagon without understanding the real trade-offs.
Not a sparky here but I have wondered would it be possible to take two solar panel out puts, one positive and one negative and switch between them to produce AC current?
He has been reding too much fossil fuel propaganda.
The California Energy Commission has rated major solar grid tie inverters at 94-98 percent efficient.
I am not sure that solar tie inverter efficiency is the same thing as the efficiency of converting battery-stored DC into AC. The battery electrochemistry losses are in addition to the DC/AC conversion.
I am in complete agreement with Yves that radical conservation is completely necessary and gives us the best return on our efforts. It needn’t reduce the quality of our lives either. I would rather ride a high speed train for a 500 mile trip than drive, for example, and well insulated houses are more comfortable than badly insulated ones. That being said, hydrogen does have a lot of plusses. For a start it can replace coal in steel production and in silicon production and it is pretty decent way of storing energy. The current methods of producing elemental hydrogen are a hoax, but, in principle, electrolytic production using wind, solar or nuclear power hold some promise.
I live in Houston. Tell me about public transportation lol. You’re dead if you don’t have a car here. Tell me about well insulated houses. I have single pane windows in a house built in 1979. Do you think govvie is interested in helping me changing my windows? I did the math: since my electricity prices here are cheap, no way in hell it’s worth paying for new windows. But govvie is interested in subsidizing Teslas for the rich and the elite. Well done!
NatGas isn’t going to be cheap forever.
Do you know TX has the biggest share of renewable power in the nation? As a side note: in the long term we’ll be all dead lol. My horizon was 10 years when I bought the house, it’s shorter now. There’s such a thing as the economicus man, which you guys tend to forget about.
most of Texas wind power is in the Permian basin and is used to power rigs and fracking equipment…the Permian oil fields are also planning dedicated nuclear power plants…
Tell me if I’m wrong here, but isn’t it the case that every step added to a process will constitute a further reduction in efficiency? The Rube Golberg machines being constructed to maintain Happy Motoring are becoming comical. My carbon was removed from the air before it was added to it.
It was humanity’s little century of insanity, dreaming we were gods riding our fossil-fueled chariots, writing our names in the sky. Or just picking up some groceries.
The way we have organized our societies is what you get when the system’s goal is maximizing the billionaires’ return on their capital. Look at the numbers. The system performed superbly once you understand its goal. It wrecked the hell out of everything else, including “human nature” as embodied in 21st century global money culture. But as a wealth pump, you can’t beat it.
These flailing attempts to keep from admitting that the American middle class lifestyle can cease to exist in the fairly near future are merely delaying a reacquainting with the reality of Overshoot. What is worthy of contemplation is considering how we ever thought this whole crazy idea of filling up roadways with cars could be good for anything. Can you imagine if all the squirrels decided they were tired of braving dogs to run from tree to tree? Instead, they all began driving little ATVs everywhere? They would be quite a nuisance. We are quite deadly to them. And the deer. We have sucked, especially lately, as fellow creatures. Hyenas are no prize, but we’re worse. Like did anybody ever think before putting up skyscrapers in the middle of migratory flyways? If you’re out to create some temple to capitalism, couldn’t you move it a few miles this way or that?
Thought: is the constantly increasing proliferation of deer the response of ecosystems to the proliferation of cars. “Throw some deer at ’em. That’ll slow ’em down.” (The armadillos all cheer.) Who knows? Maybe if we didn’t drive so much, the deer wouldn’t eat our gardens and flowers so often?
Since radical conservation, e.g. the end of the private automobile, mass air travel, oversized houses, etc, etc, are anti-profit solutions our overlords won’t allow them. Various pointless and profitable distractions like hydrogen are fine.
In fact the solution to climate change is pretty obvious but unacceptable to our overlords: allow the population of the wealthy countries to drop by, say, 90%. It would happen on its own since westerners aren’t reproducing much but it would mean greatly reducing immigration. Oops! I must be a racist or a sexual predator or homophobic or some other nasty thing.
Guess what, the immigrants flock to this country because they want to possess the lifestyle the West promises them lol. “Stay in your country, use less energy, American lifestyle not allowed to you”. Hahaha.
What elegant words to use as a quote, thanks, HMP.
‘It was humanity’s little century of insanity, dreaming we were gods riding our fossil-fueled chariots, writing our names in the sky. Or just picking up some groceries.”
I’d add : And now we are living in the Death Throes of that monster.
What this leaves out is economics. Simple math to keep in mind whenever someone raises H2. To determine the cost of a KG of H2 multiple the cost of power per kWh by 100. H2 generally sells for $6/kg, which implies $0.06/kWh power. When the DoE said the target is $1/KG hydrogen this implies the power is 1-cent per kWh unless the laws of physics have been repealed.
All this ignores that H2 is challenging molecule to store. It is expensive to compress to liquid, etc.
Listen closely, the sound you will hear shortly is green ammonia, made from green hydrogen.
Keep adding energy to get less energy.
I am a bit bothered by the tone of this article. To me it seems like a rant against blue hydrogen because of its link to fossil fuels. In passing, it takes a stab at green hydrogen, as if this were part and parcel of the same “bad thing”.
Perhaps I have completely misunderstood, but I am under the impression that green hydrogen made by electrolysis can be an elegant solution to process the surplus of electricity produced by solar panels during periods with lots of sunshine and low demand. For example, in the Netherlands we already see electricity grids having to disconnect solar panel inputs during such periods. Wouldn’t it be more useful to direct this surplus electricity to electrolysis plants to produce green hydrogen? Would that be a bad thing? A “dirty secret”?
Viewed in this light I find the title of the article needlessly derogatory.
Yeah, building the infrastructure to capture, convert and store this energy for our current lifestyle won’t cut it. The infrastructure build out would be gigantic and the scale to deploy this technology would need to be a government mobilization sized to make sense. Consider the 120+ years it took to build the current kludge of our electricity system and attempt to revamp it within 20 years? It a wicked hard problem, given the constraints of our society and the lifestyle maintenance that it required.
Thx Hombre, well said
I think we SHOULD switch to all-electric vehicles–but some should be e-bikes, and the rest should be microcars, not the behemoths we drive today only electric. Microcars could still carry elderly or disabled people, go uphill, protect inhabitants from rain, but perhaps their top speed would be 20 mph. I would think their demand for resources, including those for the battery, would be much smaller than today’s monstrosities. But for pedestrians, bikes, e-bikes and microcars to be safe, we’d have to ban the behemoths from roads used by the others.
Two years ago about 8% of US F-35 had no jet engine, because the engines broke more than planned, and the supply chain/maintenance process was not up to the repairs demanded.
Wind turbines have similar stresses to F-35 engines, and complex and low priority sustainment programs. With the moving parts 100s of feet above ground/surface and some farms are miles off shore.
Wind farms will cost a lot to maintain available high rate of turning out advertised watts, if anyone develops a “product support strategy” for a twenty or thirty year operating life.
The operating costs for 20 years is likely twice the install and checkout price.
And they kill the largest number of birds. Amazing he doesn’t even touch on that.
I know there can be a lot of bad science where profits and existential threats cross paths but I admit, I am (with no particular expertise in the subject) inclined to agree with MIT, that while wind farms kill birds, they do not kill nearly as many as, say, housecats or power lines. Or for that matter the fossil fuels they replace. https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/do-wind-turbines-kill-birds
Green public hydorgen
It’s a great way for lobbyists, think tank types and the climate chaos creators in the fossil fuel sector to ripoff the state.
“A green hydrogen bus consumes three times as much electricity as an electric bus”
https://en.ara.cat/society/green-hydrogen-bus-consumes-three-times-as-much-electricity-as-an-electric-bus_128_4412024.html
More information on evidence based approaches to hydrogen can be found at the link below
The Hydrogen Science Coalition
https://h2sciencecoalition.com
“A coalition of academics & engineers bringing an evidence-based view on hydrogen’s role in the energy transition.”