See the update at the bottom. 1-29-24 1803 hrs ET
Fossil fuels, which are based on carbon compounds, are driving global warming because burning them to extract energy releases greenhouse gases into the air, like CO2 (carbon dioxide). There’s also all of the ancillary damage from extraction, refining, transportation, air pollution, and spills and leaks.
Hydrogen is being considered as a replacement for fossil fuels because burning it for energy produces H2O — AKA water — and not CO2. (While water vapor can have some indirect greenhouse gas warming effects, they are much less so.) There is a new development that could be a real game changer — but I’ll save that for the bottom of this post.
Hydrogen has its drawbacks.
- It’s a slippery substance, difficult to keep from leaking or causing other issues.
- It’s not as energy dense as carbon compounds, and unless liquified, can be bulky to store.
- It can be explosive if not managed properly.
- It is energy-intensive to produce, especially if fossil fuels are used to power the process of splitting it from water. (Electrolysis).
- It can be ‘cracked’ from fossil fuels — but that also releases greenhouse gases. Ditto for producing it from biomass.
- As a means of storing/supplying energy, batteries offer comparable or better performance although with different complications.
- It lacks the infrastructure that’s there for fossil fuels and electricity.
- The trick is to produce ‘green’ hydrogen, produced without creating greenhouse gases at a practical price.
That seems like a problematic list for hydrogen — but it still has advantages. For vehicles, it’s not subject to the range and charging issue battery vehicles are experiencing in cold weather. Vehicles can be fueled about as quickly as with gasoline or diesel, unlike the charging time for batteries. It’s not as heavy as lugging batteries around (the weight penalty), and doesn’t require mining minerals the way batteries do. It can be sent through pipelines. It can be stored in tanks. It is useful in a number of industrial applications. It’s getting attention in a number of ways, where the proper niches are turning up.
GM and Honda are planning to build fuel cells to power vehicles.
...Hydrogen will likely remain a niche technology among cars, pickups, and SUVs, but like diesel has been an alternative to gas, Hydrogen still stands a decent chance of becoming the fuel of choice for long-distance trucking, heavy-duty work, and power generation in a zero-carbon-emissions future. Fuel cells offer longer range and quicker refueling than battery-electric vehicles, giving them an advantage in industries where every minute of downtime has an impact on the bottom line. Advocates believe a relatively small, strategically spaced network of hydrogen filling stations could make fuel cells a viable alternative to the diesel engines that drive so much of the modern economy.
Hydrogen is being explored as a fuel for aircraft. A number of companies are working on it, including Airbus.
Airbus’ ambition is to bring to market the world’s first hydrogen-powered commercial aircraft by 2035. To get there, our ZEROe project is exploring a variety of configurations and technologies, as well as preparing the ecosystem that will produce and supply the hydrogen.
Hydrogen propulsion to power future aircraft
All four ZEROe concepts are powered by hydrogen.
In the case of hydrogen combustion, gas turbines with modified fuel injectors and fuel systems are powered with hydrogen in a similar manner to how aircraft are powered today.
A second method, hydrogen fuel cells, creates electrical energy which in turn powers electric motors that turn a propeller or fan. This is a fully electric propulsion system, quite different to the propulsion system on aircraft currently in service.
These technologies are complementary, and the benefits are additive.
There are railroads putting hydrogen power to use. Alstom already has train sets in service. CPRail (Now CPKC) is evaluating hydrogen powered locomotives. Other railroads are investigating the switch to H2. There’s a project by Talgo to develop a hybrid HSR trainset with a module using hydrogen and battery power as well as overhead electrification where available.
Plug Power has been offering hydrogen solutions for some time now.
The National Renewable Energy Lab is looking at using hydrogen to store power generated by wind turbines, to better match demand with supply. The Netherlands are planning to connect an offshore wind farm with a hydrogen electrolyzer plant.
The White House has announced plans to create hydrogen hubs, regional centers that will spur development of green hydrogen technologies and applications.
...Collectively, the hubs aim to produce more than three million metric tons of clean hydrogen per year, thereby achieving nearly one third of the 2030 U.S. clean hydrogen production goal. Together, the seven Hydrogen Hubs will eliminate 25 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions from end uses each year—an amount roughly equivalent to combined annual emissions of over 5.5 million gasoline-powered cars. The nearly $50 billion investment is one of the largest investments in clean manufacturing and jobs in history.
Clean hydrogen can reduce emissions in many sectors of the economy and is especially important for hard-to-decarbonize sectors and industrial processes, such as heavy-duty transportation and chemical, steel, and cement manufacturing. Targeted investments in these areas can help reduce costs, make new breakthroughs, and create jobs for American engineers, manufacturing workers, construction workers, and others.
The question is, how much of this is going to happen without government incentives — and just how urgent getting off fossil fuels is for policy makers and tax payers. There’s no question that we are now seeing the effects of global warming that were predicted, and that the costs are ramping up as it seems to be accelerating faster than predicted. There may be some good news though.
The potential breakthrough for green hydrogen
Yale Environment 360 recently reported on a finding that could completely change the picture for hydrogen.
Natural Hydrogen: A Potential Clean Energy Source Beneath Our Feet
As studies show far more natural hydrogen underground than believed, well-funded efforts to drill for the gas are underway around the globe. Boosters see a plentiful green replacement for fossil fuels, but skeptics say its large-scale use may not be practical or cost-effective.
It turns out there are natural geologic processes that produce hydrogen, and under the right conditions it can accumulate in deposits in the ground that can be tapped using technologies much like those developed for extracting oil and natural gas.
How much is there? No one knows — because until recently no one had been looking for it. But it turns out it’s been there all along.
A remote community of mud huts and corrugated iron roofs in the arid savannah of West Africa could be a trailblazer for a new form of carbon-free energy. The residents of Bourakebougou in Mali are the only people in the world who get their electricity by burning natural hydrogen. First identified bubbling from the depths through a village water well in 1987, the gas contains no carbon and, when burned, produces only water.
This is getting some serious attention now;
But the Malian pioneers could soon lose their unique status. Geologists who once dismissed out of hand the idea that the Earth’s crust was widely impregnated with stores of hydrogen, now say there could be trillions of tons of it lying unnoticed beneath the planet’s surface, with more being generated all the time.
In recent months, prospectors have been rushing to find it — drilling for hydrogen in northeast France, Australia, Spain, Morocco, Brazil, and, in the United States, in Nebraska, Arizona, and Kansas. Even Bill Gates has joined the hydrogen rush, making a major investment in a company that is exploring for hydrogen in the Midwest.
Questions remain over how much hydrogen is located in deposits large enough to make tapping them practical, and how much of it is mixed with other gases, but there’s a lot of optimism. For one thing, the chemical reactions producing hydrogen in the first place mean that the supply is not like a finite amount of oil — the reactions can keep producing more H2 as long as the water it comes from is available.
For another, the problems of H2 exploitation leading to greenhouse gas effects has to be taken into account with the fact that H2 is being released naturally all the time. Tapping it may actually reduce warming effects. It will remain to be seen how it works out.
One of the things searchers are looking at are “Fairy Rings” — elliptical depressions hundreds of yards across with bleached vegetation, which are natural hydrogen seepage sites. The hunt is on, as the demand for green hydrogen is predicted to increase fivefold by 2050. If it can be extracted from the ground for less than $1,000 a ton, as the article suggests, it will be far cheaper than manufactured hydrogen.
So, IF there is a plentiful supply of hydrogen and IF it can be extracted with cost effective means, we could be looking at a radically different energy and climate picture in a few years. Not everyone is convinced, but millions are being invested around the world to check out the possibilities. If it proves out, we are going to see a lot of applications that aren’t practical at current costs for green hydrogen.
This could be a big deal.
UPDATE:
I’m posting an update because a number of commenters seem to be missing several points. I recognize that a number of people have already made up their minds that hydrogen is a bad idea, will never work, batteries are the answer, etc. etc.
Yes- there are some inherent drawbacks to using hydrogen for power. TANSTAAFL — every technology has drawbacks and particular characteristics. Would anyone build an economy based on petroleum today knowing what we know about it now and all the problems that come with it?
Why would anyone want to invest in automobiles when there were few filling stations, the roads were terrible, and we had an extensive network of railroads and streetcars? Granted it was nice not having to clean up after horses in the streets, but really!
Well, petroleum was cheap and abundant back then. Cars offered more flexibility for personal transportation as needed. Ford broke the price barrier. (The parallel with Musk and electric cars is a little too close when you reflect on what a racist loon Henry Ford proved to be, but I digress.) Railroads couldn’t compete because we spent billions building highways and suburbs everywhere, and poured money into the airline industry.
But none of this would have happened if we hadn't had a lot of petroleum way back when, and it was relatively cheap and convenient.
So, Point One here is that IF the geology proves out, we may have trillions of tons of naturally green hydrogen sitting in the ground waiting to be tapped. IF it’s there, it will take some years for the supply to be developed and put to use, but if the cost is low enough to keep the price down but still allow reasonable profits, that will provide huge incentives to make use of it. I listed a number of examples of hydrogen already being put to use. What will happen to those efforts if green hydrogen becomes readily available and relatively inexpensive? They should take off.
Point 2 is getting off carbon ASAP. Hydrogen is one way to do that. It will require adaptation and developing the appropriate tools, techniques, and materials to handle it — but that’s also the case with everything else we are doing to get off carbon. We don’t have the luxury of waiting to find the One Single Perfect Answer. There are many ways to get off carbon. The only question about hydrogen is how big a role it will end up playing, and like the alternatives, that’s going to involve things like cost, convenience, and how well they can replace our current carbon-based energy systems.
Maybe hydrogen isn’t the most efficient way to store energy. Maybe hydrogen isn’t the easiest resource to tap. But — if it turns out there’s lots of it and it hits the right price points, AND it helps us get off carbon, we’d be crazy not to see what we can do with it.