Why the next energy race is for underground hydrogen

Of course it is a path to clean energy. It's basically a perfect solution if you consider the whole cycle.

We have increasingly longer periods of surplus electricity from solar and wind. So much so that getting rid of the surplus is a growing problem!

Splitting water to hydrogen using this surplus electricity would basically be "free energy" that can be stored for years. And when you consume it, the emissions are clean water!

Sunshine becomes free energy and clean water. What could possibly compete with that?

I believe the main problem is that it will disrupt the current revenue structures in the energy industry, which makes it hard to get the ball rolling. Anyone currently making money from selling electricity will lose if it gets cheaper, and hydrogen can only make it cheaper.

The Hydrogen Ladder by Michael Liebreich is a good take on it. For must use cases Hydrogen is overhyped by the fossil industry.

But for some use cases like fertilizer and fuel for jet aviation and ocean going shipping it is the only realistic pathway we see today.

Now that renewables deliver cheap energy it is time to spend the big bucks to enabling the decarbonization of the use cases not solved by batteries.

https://mliebreich.substack.com/p/hydrogen-ladder-version-50

>Hydrogen is not a path to clean energy

I agree for blue hydrogen, but for green I think that depends on what/how you use it. WE have two current problems that lend themselves to green hydrogen. The problem of de-carbonizing heavy transport and the problem of energy storage as more energy is coming from variable renewable sources. Creating green hydrogen at times of excess power generation, instead of load shedding or attempting large scale battery storage, and using it to fuel long haul trucking or trains would help solve both issues. Hydrogen powered vehicles don’t work for personal vehicles, since there is no infrastructure for convenient refilling, but the logistics of heavy transport already have central hubs where hydrogen stations could be installed.

It could be part of incremental steps, rather than trying to speed run from Oil and Natural Gas to Solar and Wind before it is ready.

OK so where is the path? Electrification of everything requires at least 2x more copper than we have in circulation (official IEA estimate), while all existing/planned mines only produce very low grade ore. So the mining will result in environmental destruction either, or won't happen at all due to local resistance. If this can be alleviated by reusing some oil infra for hydrogen, is that really so evil?

Whether it is actually possible and not just gaslighting like promises of plastics recycling, that's another question. Hydrogen has different properties, requires different materials and lower energy density than gas.

Splitting water molecules is too energy intensive generally, but that is not the problem this solves. The problem this solves is that splitting water molecules is a process as old as chemistry, for which there are no private excludable rights like patents, which means no incentive to create an initial investment with the expectation of future returns on a monopoly / market-leading position. If the hydrogen is in the ground, then somebody can own that ground. Without a huge, irrational investment in hydrogen, nobody has any incentive to build hydrogen infrastructure.

As for "applications" - basically the only application for hydrogen that has big engineering advantages with current tech is in longrange aviation, where it grants a bit more than double the range, and we're going to have to wait for China to launch a liquid hydrogen combustion scramjet bomber for anyone in the industry to actually care about that capacity enough to overcome the logistical hurdles of airports supplying a deep cryogenic gas and the innate conservatism of aerospace design. I believe we'll have standardized regional lithium ion aviation long before we build antipodal liquid hydrogen planes.

And I reveal my scepticism: The current energy race is for more and cheaper solar, and for ways to store it. Since solar energy is intermittent, battery storage technology is growing to match. But also, splitting water molecules is one way to use that intermittent energy.

As solar gets cheaper, splitting water molecules gets cheaper. I don't see any strong reason why the current energy race won't continue for the foreseeable short-term future, so there's no other "next energy race" coming soon.

this is ~2 year old info from a presentation I can't dig up quick, but iirc the numbers were roughly $4 - 5 per kg of green hydrogen from western PEM systems, and about $1 even for grey hydrogen (steam reformed nat gas).

at the time rumor had it that the chinese alkaline systems were producing green hydrogen for $2 - 3/kg

the inflation reduction act put some monster subsidies in place that added up to something like $3 or $4 per kg, so effectively they were trying to force the economies of scale by moving the price drops forward several iterations.

of course the new administration is already ripping apart that legislation, so its doubtful much of that will pan out now (if you ever thought it would).

in the meantime, the price of a kwh of wind/solar has continued to decline rapidly, so the original $4-5 estimates can be reasonably eyeballed down to $3 - $4 now. still not enough, but in a decade it might be.

of course as with all of climate change economic math, so long as pollution is free its difficult to cost compete with.

It works. It's just that there's so much easier to extract energy, both renewable and non-renewable, that no one seems to bother. We can fairly see it as a hedge in case "something goes badly wrong with all other renewable energy sources", same as methane hydrates are for non-renewable fuels - also plentiful and technically exploitable, just unable to stand competition with cheap fracked gas.

Whole "energy crisis" is made-up. There is no energy crisis. We have oceans of energy of all sorts available, it's just that the memory of 1973 oil embargo permits both sides of political spectrum to manipulate people by, as usually happens, fear (right wing), or guilt (left wing).

Quite the opposite, a hydrogen power plant would generate clean water as a byproduct.

You just burn the hydrogen and receive h2o in return.