EU's renewable hydrogen plan needs a 'reality check' The European Court of Auditors (ECA) has found the European Union's program to develop a renewable hydrogen program needs a reality check due to use of "overly ambitious" benchmarks and numerous other issues. Hydrogen can be used to make electricity without producing carbon dioxide when expended. It can also be used in the …
No amount of EU or other laws will prevent that 1) hydrogen is no energy source, it's an energy vector, and 2) a very bad one because it leaks through the smallest of holes or cracks and is highly explosive in the atmosphere's oxygen. There might be some niche use-cases but it will never be used in large quantities because of physics.
Batteries are an energy vector too. Yet they are ubiquitous. Hydrogen leaks and is unstable - but hydrogen can be combined with carbon and some other additives to create green natural gas or green light fuel, including aircraft worthy fuel. There already exists vast infrastructure and methods for moving and storing natural gas and petroleum which could be usable by their green-hydrogen related replacements.
You can't cheat costs though - and green hydrogen products are still too expensive. Not unlike wind energy used to be. It's certainly worth continuing R&D and modest scale usage experiments to progress the tech. Maybe the problems mentioned in this article are exactly due to the fact that its still too expensive to go big, and the money would better be spent on R&D.
No, as Zolko says, the physics are dead against it.
Hydrocarbons produced from renewable energy, preferably without electrolysis, are possible and with a bit more R&D can probably be produced in Europe at costs close enough to world market prices plus a risk premium. Better still would be closed-loop systems that produce in the summer and burn in the winter where the nominal price wouldn't matter at all.
I’m greatly in favour of manufacturing hydrocarbons for long term energy storage, however It’s unlikely that hydrocarbons produced in Europe will ever come close to world market prices. Round trip efficiency is liable to be less than 25% so the initial energy cost is critical. Sunny low latitude locations such as the Middle East have a huge advantage as solar power there can be produced for a fraction of the cost of European renewables. They also have lots of existing infrastructure to export the hydrocarbons too just as we already have the infrastructure to import and use them.
I am dead set against synthetic hydrocarbons because aside from being the most expensive option they also have all the conventional pollution of fossil fuels. Sure those are carbon neutral but cause about 8 million deaths per year, https://ourworldindata.org/outdoor-air-pollution. Anthropogenic climate change has yet to make itself felt but worst case predictions put the death toll at 0.5 million per year. The only moral alternatives for storage are electric batteries and compressed air.
Additionally biofuels are just as harmful with the added cost of using taking arable land away from food production. If you think about it biofuels are an inefficient and messy form of solar power.
No species functions without risk and the resultant body count, and humans are just another species. There is no perfect, viable solution. We will muddle through as best we can. As for batteries being 'moral', quite a few homes and people have recently been taken out by recharging batteries going pop. Few communities are volunteering to host cell farms.
Like medics during Covid, many of the climate change scientist positions entirely ignore the social and political consequences of just manipulating/enforcing change, however many nudge units you have. Progressive Democrats pushed hard, and they created the opportunity for Trump to become President, possibly twice, whilst losing Roe v Wade. Actions have consequences, and the unintended ones can be incredibly destructive. Simple solutions usually aren't simple and consequently may not be solutions.
Regarding green hydrogen, you cannot plan for something until it exists and you have enough data on all aspects of it, and we do not yet. Politicians set a target X years ahead, so they can forget about awkward stuff for the duration of their term.
Hydrogen costs a LOT more than batteries - like at least double, if not more and no you CAN'T just burn it in an ICE thanks to the massive NOX levels you'll end up with
The only use case where it can be justified is aircraft and the poor energy density means you're probably better off making synthetic hydrocarbons & using those (the extra cost of manufactire is more than made up by lower costs of handling)
Anyone pushing reticulated hydrogen can safely be ignored. People use natural gas because it's 1/5-1/3 the price per joule of electricity and there's no way they'll pay double the price of electricity for those joules - meaning there's no market for piped hydrogen
Might want to send Toyota management a note to inform them that those Mirai that they've been selling for a decade (albeit in small volume) can't possibly work. You're sort of correct though, they're hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, not internal combustion. However if what you want is rotary motion, Hydrogen really can do that reasonably well.
Let me quickly add that there are lots of other things wrong with hydrogen as a fuel -- starting with it being incredibly bulky unless liquefied (boiling point 20K = -253C) or stored under really high pressure. Bulky is handy if you're building an airship. For most other applications it's likely to be quite inconvenient.
That would be the Toyota that is being sued by it's customers who bought a Mirai because Toyota said they were as easy to use as a combustion vehicle but it turns out there's very little hydrogen available and in fact filling stations are being closed so people are left with a car they can't use. That Toyota?
The explosive bit is solvable….see Toyota’s Mirai hydrogen car which works, is basically fine (no more than “adequate” though), and road-safe certified by the usual authorities.
The leaky issue is worse. The hydrogen embrittlement issue is still worse again.
But worst of all, is that fundamental thermodynamics says you lose 13% of primary energy compressing and liquefying the hydrogen for transport. In the 50th millennium, we would *still* throw away 13% of primary energy. It’s literally the maximally inefficient hydrocarbon for transporting energy, containing zero carbons.
As a working fluid, it doesn’t matter how much carbon it has; put them in synthetically on one side, absorbing CO2, release it on the other.
Hydrogen is the classic “Silicon Valley reinventing the train”. If you want a technology like this, we literally already have the thermodynamically-optimal version for decades: biofuel. I’m not even a biofuel supporter. But biofuel is the technology that hydrogen would grow up to be, after fifty years and trillions of dollars of R&D. Hydrogen is *mental*.
"But worst of all, is that fundamental thermodynamics says you lose 13% of primary energy compressing and liquefying the hydrogen for transport."
You do not get liquefied hydrogen through compression (at pressures safely handled with today's materials). This is not LPG /LNG.
You get liquefied hydrogen through cryogenic cooling (added compression is optional but it does elevate the boiling point) , and if I recall correctly, the loss in primary energy is much higher than 13%, which makes LH2 only useful for niche applications where the increase in density is worth the cost.
However, 700 Bar technology is mature / maturing and it does reprecent a decent solution with today's material science. It is all ma matter of picking the correct application.
Fuel cell powered trucks with 700 bar technology are coming. Private cars remain covered nicely with battery technology.
Solid Oxide fuel cells promise to work nicely with easier to handle synthetic (and fossil) hydrocarbons like ethanol, methanol, dme and methane. However this technology is not available yet.
The 13% of energy that's thrown away doesn't matter to its use as a fuel for vehicles. What matters is how much usable energy can be extracted from it by that vehicle for a given weight and/or volume of fuel, storage, and energy-extraction equipment.
The liquid hydrogen you referred to is around an order of magnitude more energy dense than the best lithium batteries. And can be burned or put through a fuel cell to extract power. That makes it a VERY good fuel.
Forehead smacks keyboard multiple times.
“The liquid hydrogen you referred to is around an order of magnitude more energy dense than the best lithium batteries.” If only…..if only there were an even *more* optimal liquid than hydrogen though. We could spend hundreds of billions researching it. But as a time-traveller from the 25th century, I’m going to give you a fast-track to the answer. Why not just add 6 carbon atoms? And capture these from atmospheric CO2? That way you get all the energy density you need, but without paying the cryogenics costs, and it’s safer to transport.
Now obviously, you might think the technology to synthesise hydrocarbon will be complex. Well, I’m going to give you another present from the 25th Century. We’ve been working on some nanotechnology that converts solar energy straight to hydrocarbon. And this is magic part, once you have the blueprint *the machinery literally builds itself and reproduces*, and the raw material lies all around you in fields called “soil”.
/s
Yes, I am fully aware of the fertiliser problem. My point is, although biofuel has disadvantages, it’s literally the *best possible theoretic development* of H2. H2 does not score over biofuel in any way. If you think biofuel has issues, then H2 is *always worse*.
> H2 does not score over biofuel in any way.
1) It can be converted into electricity by present technology fuel cells. Via fuel cells and electric motors, it is far more efficient that the renewable power-> hydrocarbon-> combustion route.
2) It is lighter. It remains to be seen if fuel+tank is actually lighter in planes, but for aircraft it's a factor.
3) Biofuel reduces the supply of some other essential material. These include: water, agricultural land, cellulose fibre, food, plant derived plastics. There is no source of Bio-something that could not be used another way for something else that we need. It is a poor use of agricultural wastes, and a worse use of specially grown crops.
Whereas solar power + electrolysis can be done on non-agricultural land and use very little water and no nutrients/fertiliser.
Hydrogen fuel is (arguably) a poor idea, but biofuels are a worse idea, bordering on disastrous at large scale.
Methanol can be converted into electricity by *current* fuel cells, with extremely high efficiency. None of this is new.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_methanol_fuel_cell
“It is lighter. It remains to be seen if fuel+tank is actually lighter in planes”. I’ll save you the trouble of guessing. It isn’t.
“Biofuel reduces the supply of some other essential material”. In its current form, without genetic engineering, yes. You don’t get anything for free. We should work on that to optimise. But H2 produced from renewable solar or wind-power *by definition* is worse in land-use, even if you just assume raw biofuel technology from thirty years ago.
“solar power + electrolysis can be done on non-agricultural land and use very little water and no nutrients/fertiliser.” Aah, ok, so this is your core misconception. No, it can’t. The materials required to build the solar cells are precisely the equivalent of nutrients/fertiliser. The resource cost of a kilo of highly processed silicon, including the mining cost of non-silicon elements + factories + circuitry of inverters…..strongly exceeds the cost of a kilo of sheep-shit.
some nanotechnology that converts solar energy straight to hydrocarbon [...] the machinery literally builds itself and reproduces
yes but it's not patentable because there seems to be quite some prior art to it. So one cannot make billions with it. It's much better to lobby clueless politicians into multi-billion research investment for some future technology with fancy names. And when it turns out that it didn't work it will be forgotten anyway and one can lobby for another futuristic technology.
The Mirai has a range record of 845 miles on a single 6kg fill-up. The range record is at a low speed, but it's just as valid as the tests that give Teslas their best range figures. In normal use they're more than competitive with ICE and BEV vehicles.
That needs a filling time roughly about the same as an ICE car. And there are a few filling stations close to my house- though admittedly we're in an area that's more accepting of the technology than most.
Hydrogen powers some local cars, local busses, and local refuse trucks. The busses and trucks didn't need special weight-limit increases as their BEV equivalents did.
Anyone who thinks it can't be done, and can't be done practically, you're years behind the times. They're here, in the real world, in multiple classes of vehicle, commercially available.
"see Toyota’s Mirai hydrogen car which works, is basically fine (no more than “adequate” though), and road-safe certified by the usual authorities."
Caution, contains byproducts.
Yes, all is good until you have to periodically replace the tanks in the car and possibly some of the high pressure gas kit. Every 3-5 year. CNG vehicles do a bit better with a replacement regime in the 7-8 year range. Both of those make fitting a new battery pack every 10 years or so a dawdle.
Yeah, but that’s what I call “basically fine”. It’s not just a PowerPoint presentation, or an EU Horizon pretendo-concept-car. From the point-of-view of the car-owner (ie ignoring required back-end infrastructure), society would still function unchanged if that were the only option and you’d never seen anything better. It is, for sure, not as good as the ICE you can drive today. Nor is a battery car. They are both “a bit shit”. But those are the options on the table.
"see Toyota’s Mirai hydrogen car which works"
For some values of "works" - the hydrogen tankage is so bulky that cabin interior room is badly compromised. You need to be a midget to use the rear seats and there's virtually no trunk space
Regarding "safety", those tanks may be "safe" but in the event of being hit by a truck the resulting tank burst is likely to be spectacular. CNG tanks are bad enough when they let go
"A lack of robust analyses before setting production and import targets, which were not realistic and therefore likely won't be achieved"
Likely won't be achieved.
Likely.
The initial analysis is flawed and unrealistic, but achieving unrealistic targets just might still be possible, maybe, in an alternate universe.
I understand that you need to not ruffle any feathers too much, but if initial analysis is wrong, the chance that results will not be achieved is a bit stronger than likely.
As in won't happen.
"The element is usually isolated using electrolysis – passing an electric current through water – which separates hydrogen and oxygen."
Oh, no it isn't! Extracting hydrogen through electrolysis is incredibly inefficient, which is why most hydrogen is manufactured through the steam reforming of oil refinery off gases. In a bid to extract the most from their huge investment in oil extraction and refining, the oil industry is putting significant money and effort into lobbying for hydrogen over electricity and batteries.
Another problem with hydrogen is that however it is manufactured, it has to be stored and transported to the point of use - and this uses a lot more energy (and costs more) than simply putting electricity into a cable distribution network and/or batteries.
Than there's the safety issues. The explosion at the Sandvika hydrogen filling station in Norway prompted the company operating this station to close all it's hydrogen filling stations in Norway and Germany. Toyota subsequently withdrew their hydrogen vehicles from the Norwegian market.
TL;DR
Electricity -> Hydrogen -> Transport -> Electricity -> Use
is incredibly inefficient and expensive, compared with
Electricity -> Cables & batteries -> Use
Obviously the author implied statement in the context of green hydrogen, which by definition is not made from oil and gas.
Regardless of the existence of green hydrogen - Hydrogen is used in industrial processes. Nearly all hydrogen consumed in the United States is used by industry for refining petroleum, treating metals, producing fertilizer and other chemicals, and processing foods. U.S. petroleum refineries use hydrogen to lower the sulfur content of fuels.
Does it make sense to claim that modest scale green hydrogen R&D, including mixing into present hydrogen uses is a lie or immoral? Green electricity is mixed with electricity from coal and natural gas - is that a lie or immoral? What other way is there to do practical R&D?
Surely there are crazy stupid government in pushing for change. For example enough 7500 dollar EV subsides which doesn't expand the EV usage as much as encouraging a few people to buy EV SUVs instead of EV sedans. Did you know only 5% of EV batteries are being recycled? The rest are landfilled or stockpiled indefinitely. There is some cost to that and its not being counted.
The Good vs Evil stereotyping is not helpful.
"Hydrogen is used in industrial processes"
Yes, and it is VIRTUALLY ALWAYS produced "as needed", NOT stored for any length of time
There have been too many hydrogen incidents in industry for production to be allowed any other way, and yet this is considered "safe" for consumer use?
Electricity -> Hydrogen -> Transport -> Electricity -> Use
is incredibly inefficient and expensive, compared with
Electricity -> Cables & batteries -> Use
It is, but that might portray that the grid and batteries don't have much in the way of losses. In the UK there's about 13.9% losses on electricity across transmission and distribution networks. And batteries then lose around a further 10% between energy supplied and energy abstracted.
Indeed. And since Hydrogen can't in reality be dyed a colour (unlike red diesel which is literally red), I have no doubt that lesser "colours" of Hydrogen (Black/Brown/Grey/Blue/Turquoise ...) will be passed off as "green" in a similar way as ROCs are used to greenwash electricity. See also: "Sustainable Palm Oil" etc.
Electricity -> Hydrogen -> Transport -> Electricity -> Use
Where you can't connect cables, like boats and aeroplanes.
Or more likely
Electricity -> Hydrogen -> Synthetic Fuel -> Transport -> Use
Since energy density of batteries and hydrogen is not good enough, and that lets all the aircraft carry on regardless.
There's more than enough desert to make all the electricity we want, and no need for PV, we "just" need a politically stable Middle East and North Africa!
"[hydrogen] can also be used in the steel production process, replacing coal"
To heat furnaces, possibly. But we'll still need carbon to create carbon steel. And there's a condition known as "hydrogen embrittlement" that seriously compromises steel. So we'll need at least strict segregation between the heating mechanism and the melt. So there'll have to be a compete redesign and replacement of all blast furnaces and associated equipment, which will be both expensive and disruptive to achieve. And BTW, if the hydrogen is created by electrolysis, why not instead use the electricity directly to heat the furnaces?
are that it is a scam put out by the Oil/Gas lobbyists. They don't want 'Green H2' or 'Green anything'. In their eyes, the only true H2 is Their H2.
As a fuel for road vehicles, it is a failure. It might work for rail or shipping but nowt else. It is just too expensive and too hard to store without losses.
Nowhere else? Air travel. Air travel needs Hydrogen- batteries do not, by a wide margin, have the energy density needed to run passenger jets as we know them.
The 'failure' of a fuel with road vehicles has produced the Mirai, with a significantly longer range from 6kg of Hydrogen than the best hypermiled Tesla with 600kg of batteries.
If there's a scam, it's Oil and Gas pushing you to stick to Wind and Batteries. These physically cannot replace fossil fuels in a lot of use cases, and their comparatively high price keeps them out of reach for a lot of markets compared to just burning the black stuff
Small scale nuclear isn't especially complicated - it's been around for a good five decades, and safely used within a few feet of the operators. Technology here isn't cutting edge, it's early 1960s stuff. See the various Western nuclear powered submarines. The problem is that government won't get out of the way of the people who want to do it. And I don't mean letting them do stuff without proper controls, I simply mean cutting the Gordian know of civil nuclear regulation, because that's the bit that is too complicated - and too cautious.
That's probably an insurmountable problem with uranium-cycle nuclear (1960s stuff,still being promoted). The actual cost is higher than alternatives. And it uses more energy than it generates, once you add together the inputs for building the plant, mining and refining the uranium, and disposing of it. As a cover story for nuclear weapons programs and submarines (which need it), it was popularized in the 1960s. But it's not a practical solution today. Maybe a thorium cycle, which uses cheaper fuel, might become usable.
"Small scale nuclear isn't especially complicated - it's been around for a good five decades"
Fuel management is bit harder (neutron loss at the interfaces) and the anti-nukes aren't filing court cases over the size of a nuclear power plant, but any NPP at all so more smaller ones is just more being held hostage while the attorneys fight. The cost structure changes as well so it can be better to take the transmission loses as a cost of doing business and going with a larger plant. It's naive to think that a smaller plant will automatically be less expensive.
That statement needs a lot of qualification
The OECD says coal plants are $1000-4000/KW IOW $1-4/Watt.
The dominant designs for large nuclear power a)Generate poor quality steam (several % water in the first stage of the turbine. That's higher levels of erosion. Tighter water quality. b)Their thermal efficiency has not risen since the late 50's and they couldn't compete with the coal fired power station then c)They are mostly used in baseload when if they were held at (say) 90% and ramped up (UK AGR' were ramped 30%-90% in the mid 70's without any problems. The French do it with their PWRs as well) to 100% when the electricity price was highest this could kill the link between electricity and world gas prices in the UK. d)the 4 feet thick walls mostly due to containing the flash boiled steam if the pressure fails. Not to handle an airliner being crashed into the building (3 mile island containment is 3 feet thick, modern PWR's are 4 feet. That's the "9/11 Premium) :-( )
TL:DR All water moderated designs are s**t. Expensive and slow-to-build machines for making very poor quality steam that needs built-to-order steam turbines to use it.
We can do better but no one has produced a new reactor design since (at latest) the 1950s.. All of the "new" ideas (molten salt, thorium) were already in the literature by then :-(.
The biggest cost drivers on a design are the "Architectural" choices. IE Fuel cycle + implementation choices. PWR's don't have to be sealed for 18 months and 1/3 refuelled. That's just to demonstrate some sort of pedigree with the submarine reactors they are descended from.
Running a cost analysis based on cycle parameters (IE temperature, pressure, enrichment, fuel and moderator-if-used) will show that what is needed is higher temperature/lower pressure (about +250c and about -170bar). You can comfortably lose 75% of all the concrete and rebar (which, incredible as it may seem are actually the biggest material costs in a PWR).
The biggest innovation in reactor design (although it's full benefit has never been exploited by anyone, anywhere) is the introduction of nuclear grade Zirconium, as a structural material inside the core, not just as fuel pellet cladding. Using Zircaloy structure could allow the running on natural uranium IE No enrichment needed.
"You can think of it as an energy store. Electrolyse when the wind is blowing."
Producing Ammonia might be much better alternative. Ammonia is used as a precursor in all sorts of chemical synthesis. The power from turbines might also be used to produce heat locally for agricultural or industrial processes. So many things are much better than connecting wind turbine to the grid and relying on them for anything until dynamic pricing is available and there is better supply/demand pricing.
Correct.
Hydrogen is the Physicists choice.
So simple. So "pure."
But Chemical Engineers know what a massive PITA it is. Liquid at -250c, significant volumes only stored at c5000psi* (what that Japanese car uses IIRC).
CE's know a)Ammonia can be liquefied at much milder temperature and pressure conditions. Not quite as low as a Butane lighter but easy enough the UK is running a major Ammonia powered aircraft project. b)There is an electrochemical process to make Ammonia (and IIRC up to C5 hydrocarbons from CO2). c) Fuel cell work on cousins of Ammonia (the Hydrazines) was done in the 60's. In fact Phillips built an electric bike powered by it. Ammonia is tougher, OTOH there is a further 6 decades of research in what does (and does not) make a working catalyst.
The ideal replacement is a room temperature liquid that's non flammable and runs in a fuel cell at high efficiency. It needs minimal additional energy inputs to prepare it
A candidate does exist. Sort of. It's called sugar solution. But the fuel cell needs something like 13 different catalysts to make it work. At least it does for now. :-(
*The USAF, who run the major US launch sites assess any pressure tank with 1000s of psi in terms of "lbs of TNT equivalent" regardless of the gas concerned. That pressure alone is a significant hazard in its own right.
"CE's know a)Ammonia can be liquefied at much milder temperature and pressure conditions."
A quick search on how much energy is consumed worldwide every year to produce Ammonia is an eye-opener. With a bit of engineering, it could be a process with some intermittency. Some battery backup to allow for graceful shut down and some load augmentation will mitigate a bunch of issues. In the US, there's a network of Ammonia piplines primarily throughout the major agricultural areas. Site some wind turbines next to those underground pipes and plonk down some Haber-Bosch cells in a shipping container units with a metered feed-in. The plant and the battery storage wind up at the base of the turbine or very nearby cutting down on transmission losses. Just add water.
With the exception of a handful of organisations that are trying to continue to exist by pushing hydrogen; most analysts that actually KNOW the technology know that it's an atrocious idea to put it into existing domestic serving systems.
Most Natural Gas networks go to great pains to ensure hydrogen is NOT an input into the mix because it is highly reactive with all manner of materials. Elemental sulphur is also similarly refined out before inputting natural gas into a domestic network. The reason is that the combination of the two, especially, if there is any trace water present - which there is - is that it is an instant recipe for sulphuric acid to form inside your system.
This is nothing but disastrous to pipelines, domestic pipework, boilers, for all rather self explanatory reasons if you paid attention in GCSE Chemistry. As a former gas system designer, the push for hydrogen is utter nonsense and I want nothing to do with it, because physics. I jumped ship to the electricity sector over a decade ago, and yeah, we have our own agenda to push too, but physics does not say no.
There is a reason that big utility groups have disposed of their gas businesses. See also Ofgem, who, in their recent SSMD decision (published 18-07-24) are minded to set the rate of return on gas assets to a VERY short window compared to what they have set historically. Regulators think gas is dead and setting up those companies to wind down.
Now, I don't agree with the timescales they are pushing myself; but the concepts... Yes.
Has the EU started looking into white hydrogen? It's naturally occurring and apparently there is quite a lot of it, we've never really looked for it before now.
It also has the advantage of being renewable, at least to a point, as it's created by natural reactions with groundwater.
"Has the EU started looking into white hydrogen? It's naturally occurring and apparently there is quite a lot of it"
It's rather rare (granted, not a lot of exploration for it) and the energy density at STP is dismal. So while there could be a "lot" of it, a giant reservoir with millions of cubic meters worth would only last a year or so and take a few lifetimes to refill if the act of extracting the gas doesn't cause the reservoir to settle and compact the cracks it collects in.
>The element is usually isolated using electrolysis
Not really, that loses a ton of energy unless you separately capture and transport the oxygen and then recombine them. Good, renewable way to power some rocket engines!
As many have already said, combining the H with C makes hydrocarbons, call them green hydrocarbons if you like, and they're not as cheap as fossil hydrocarbons but they may be the best available renewable option anyway, so what they cost, they cost. Meanwhile the fossil fuels are probably good for another few centuries of millennia, especially if they're stretched out with the much more expensive renewables.
“Meanwhile the fossil fuels are probably good for another few centuries of millennia”
They aren’t though. They *would* be, if we continued using them as normal, but they’re completely uneconomic as a dribble.
For example, if you build a gas-fired turbine, you have to pay the construction cost, but it’s amortised over 50 year operating life. But if the wind turbines elbow you out the way when wind blows, generating at £60/MWh when it suits *them*. Then when there’s no wind for 20 days a year they shrug their shoulders and say “not our problem guv”. You can’t run a business where you *might* get 20 days revenue per year…or maybe it’s 15, or 25, depends on whether the wind blows or not. You just can’t run a business like that *at all*, no matter the price. This is what has happened to coal. The generators are retiring coal, *even the government wants to pay them not to*, because it’s not a business.
Similar problems all the way along the supply chain. You can’t run a refinery for 20 days a year. You can’t run a port designed for half million ton supertankers, for just 20 days a year. And even if you did, it takes the fuel forty days to cross the globe. By the time you know you need it, you’re screwed. The whole economic system is designed to run continuously.
Remember when Covid stopped supply chains for a couple weeks? Nothing worked. Well this is Covid, forever, with the opposite 95% off/ 5% on duty-cycle. You want the entire global fossil fuel economy to hibernate for 330 days a year, and then on *random unpredictable days* fire up to run 98% of our current energy demand….well, no, it can’t be done.
You can’t run a port designed for half million ton supertankers, for just 20 days a year
actually, from what I read, this is exactly how AWS (Amazon Web Services) came into existence: Amazon designed their computer infrastructure for the 20 days before Chrismas, which was mostly iddle for the rest of the year. Then they decided to rent out that spare capacity and it became an industrial branch of its own
Remember when Covid stopped supply chains for a couple weeks? Nothing worked. Well this is Covid, forever, with the opposite 95% off/ 5% on duty-cycle. You want the entire global fossil fuel economy to hibernate for 330 days a year, and then on *random unpredictable days* fire up to run 98% of our current energy demand….well, no, it can’t be done.
Of course it can be done. Ed Milliband* says it can be done, and he's back in charge of energy policy. The problem is simple. Administrative Strike Prices for this year’s CfD auction were £100.27/MWh for offshore wind, £87.91/MWh for onshore wind and £83.79/MWh for solar power. There were no bids for offshore wind because the subsidies weren't high enough to cover costs, and the 'renewables' lobby wants more money. Gas costs around £54/MWh, so is a lot cheaper than 'renewables'.
The problem is the way the market is rigged. If CfDs were instead based on firm delivery of X MWh, bidders would have to include all the costs, so the costs of providing that stand-by capacity for when it's dark, or the wind isn't blowing. Which is this problem-
https://gridwatch.co.uk/Wind
minimum: 0.236 GW maximum: 13.886 GW average: 5.443 GW for the month to date. This is from an installed capacity of around 32GW (from memory) making an average capacity factor of 16%. So a fairer 'renewables' cost would include the cost of CCGT, or even batteries. Which then obviously makes it even less economic when compared to alternatives like coal, gas or nuclear that don't have the intermittency problem.
This is also hydrogen's problem. It assumes there will be enough 'renewable' energy to produce meaningful quantities at a reasonable price. If it costs > £80-100/MWh, it'll produce very expensive hydrogen. There's also competiton for energy, so there's an assumption that 'surplus' energy can be diverted to hydrogen production. But currently 'surplus' energy is rare given 'renewables' priority access. So basically only when there's too much wind. Then subsidy farmers get paid constraint payments to not despatch electricity to the grid. But assuming grid-scale batteries, electricity will also be needed to keep those charged, which means less electricity to make hydrogen.
But this is also where nuclear is better. They do baseload and are happiest running 24x7x365. Demand is variable, hence why the UK came up with ideas like Economy 7 tariffs to sink off-peak energy. So a more practical hydrogen production would be using nuclear electricity when supply exceeds demand... But thanks to 'decarbonisation', we're massively increasing demand, but not reliable supply..
*The combination of Ed Milliband and Ed Davey having set energy policy is pretty conclusive proof that two Eds aren't better than one..
"Gas costs around £54/MWh, so is a lot cheaper than 'renewables'."
The better approach is to find applications that have a higher return than feeding the grid. If there is a way to use the output of a wind turbine right at where it's installed to power a process to produce something and eliminate the cost of buying power at retail, it would have a better ROI and ideally, be able to use all of the turbine's output whenever the wind is blowing. Selling power on the grid earns a wholesale price and only when there is enough demand. If the grid is already saturated, turbines are often shut down to prevent oversupply.
Read David Mackays book and revise your hydrocarbon estimate accordingly. Natural gas has maybe 300 years reserve at current usage rates (much less if you account for the billions in Asia that are seeing increase in energy use per capita). coal and oil, much much less.
There is still quite a bit out there, with Iran and Russia the majority physical stockholders.
I fear debating whether one should use is a good idea here, because the subject of climate change is a recipe for disaster in this forum. But economics, stopping our very real and present enemies cornering the global economy IS a good thing and probably a better argument to develop alternatives.
Indeed, it is rare to see backup commenting in support of the arguments to move away from burning everything in sight.
There are certain well known posters round here that get all uppity about alternatives threatening their status quo.
There's a great talk by Dr Al Barlett where he pokes the hole in the "at current usage rates". Population is continuing to rise and so it energy usage. The example he used was for coal, but it's all the same and the shortages are coming faster all of the time. There needs to be a fresh look at energy generation. Low emissions is not even a choice since it's hydrocarbon fuels that are running out and growing trees as a fuel isn't viable anymore. The one thing to avoid is waiting around for a drop-in replacement for gas or coal and go about generation as it's been done for the last 100 years.
Who loves most renewables?
Gas producers of course.
Because when the sun don't shine, the wind don't blow and the dams are empty (the only forms that operate on a large enough scale to appear on a UN pie chart) who you gonna start up?
A gas turbine of course.
And BTW the UK has some of the lowest gas storage capacity in the world. Days, while most of Europe has months.
They also have one of 2 entirely privately owned gas distribution networks in the world (Portugal is the other), who pass on the gas price + markup. 5% of a small gas price --> small absolute profit. 5% of big gas price --> Big absolute profit. IOW zero incentive to expand storage.
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