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Science & Technology

As projects fail and studies conclude green hydrogen is unaffordable, critics are being vindicated

2024-10-21

[JustTheNews] The Biden-Harris administration laid out a clean hydrogen roadmap in June 2023, which included $9.5 billion in funding from the 2021 infrastructure law. Critics say it's another example of taxpayer dollars wasted on the administration's failed climate agenda.

So much for the Green New Deal.

Proponents of a transition away from fossil fuels have pinned their hopes on green hydrogen to address the challenge of “clean” energy for industry, but critics have long argued the staggering costs would make the plan go up in smoke. With projects here in the U.S. and across the globe failing, and research confirming the costs are too high, critics’ predictions are turning out to be true.

“You tell people it can’t work. You write about it. And then two years later, it fails. And then people act surprised,” energy analyst David Blackmon, who publishes his work on his “Energy Absurdities” Substack, told Just the News.

The Biden-Harris administration laid out a clean hydrogen roadmap in June 2023, which included $9.5 billion in funding from the 2021 infrastructure law. “Given its potential to help address the climate crisis, enhance energy security and resilience, and create economic value, interest in producing and using clean hydrogen is intensifying both in the United States and abroad,” the roadmap declared.

"GREEN HYDROGEN"
While wind and solar can at certain times produce electricity, that’s only about 20% of the energy people consume. Industry and transportation make up the rest. Using wind and solar to power heavy industries — such as steel, ammonia and concrete — is a challenge. The energy demand is enormous. Steel production, for example, requires temperatures in excess of 2,900 degrees Fahrenheit.

Proponents of net zero hoped to address the challenge with hydrogen-based technologies. Hydrogen can be produced in a number of ways, but it’s not an energy source. It’s an energy carrier, meaning you have to use energy to make the product, which can then be converted back into energy. And you lose about 50% to 80% of the energy used in the process.

Almost all hydrogen production today comes from processes using natural gas. "Green hydrogen," however, splits water into hydrogen and oxygen using a process called electrolysis powered by electricity that’s most often produced with wind and solar.

Water use is one of the big challenges of green hydrogen. On his Substack, energy expert Robert Bryce reported on a project in Texas that plans to suck 433,000 gallons of water per day — enough to fill more than four Olympic-size swimming pools each week — from an aquifer. A local group is fighting to stop it.

In “Green Breakdown,” energy researcher Steve Goreham explains there are other challenges. The gas degrades metal through a process called hydrogen embrittlement, which means transporting the gas by pipeline risks explosions.

The other problem is the amount of electricity that would be needed. Citing figures from the International Energy Agency, Goreham estimates that producing all the requisite primary chemicals would require between 12,000 and 17,500 terawatt hours of renewable electricity. This is between three and more than four times the total amount of electricity produced in 2023 by all wind and solar farms across the globe.

Even if that much wind and solar could be used to produce enough hydrogen to replace fossil fuels in industry, the cost would be prohibitive, according to a Harvard study published in Joule last week.

Posted by:Skidmark

#5 The real life version of hydrogen production cracks methane (CH4), trapping the resultant H2, leaving whole lotta carbon to be dealt with. Also, they burn a bunch of methane to power the whole thing.
Don't let them tell you hydrogen tech is clean.
It's just dirty somewhere else.

Posted by: ed in texas 2024-10-21 12:33

#4 ^ They can read?

Posted by: Frank G 2024-10-21 08:28

#3 Thirty years ago, Scientific American investigated the hydrogen energy 'source' and concluded the only way it was practicable was if you use cheap nuclear power to make it.

I guess the clowns in DC now were too young to read then.

Posted by: Bobby 2024-10-21 08:25

#2 Carter Lake and others here us hyro electric process to make electricy then use electric pumps to pump water back into the lake and begin the process over.

Posted by: Besoeker 2024-10-21 08:12

#1 Forget that the thermodynamics and chemistry of splitting water to H2 and O consumes more energy than it produces and focus on how the process makes you feel about yourself.

Dolts...

Posted by: Warthog 2024-10-21 07:35

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