Are you ready for ... greenie hydrogen?

[IsailedawayfromFR]

Green hydrogen is the latest “energy” fad from the global warming warriors.

Today’s hydrogen hype proposes using wind and solar energy to produce “green” hydrogen by electrolysis of water.

It is mainly hot air.

Hydrogen will NEVER be a source of energy. Unlike coal, oil or natural gas, hydrogen rarely occurs naturally – it must be manufactured, and that process consumes far more energy than the hydrogen “fuel” can recover.

It's actually an idea that is quite old and discredited. “Hydro-gen” means “born of water,” but there has been a commercial fuel containing hydrogen that was born of coal. (Maybe it should be called “carbo-gen”?) In the past it was called “town gas.” It was manufactured by heating coal to produce hydrogen, methane and oxides of carbon. The resultant mixture of flammable gases was used for street lighting and domestic heating and cooking.


It was replaced by “clean coal by wire” (electricity), which was less costly and more energy-efficient.

The reality is that all green generators are unreliable and intermittent – they seldom produce rated capacity for more than a few hours. “Green hydrogen” would create a messy scatter of expensive equipment for panels, turbines, roads, power lines, electrolytic cells and specialised storage tanks and freighters - all to produce stop-start supplies of a tricky, dangerous new fuel. Risking capital in such ventures is best suited to unsubsidized and well-insured speculators.

There are other problems.

Australia, where I am, is a huge dry continent. Burning hydro-carbons like coal, oil and gas releases plant-friendly CO2 and water into the atmosphere. (Every tonne of hydrogen in coal produces 9 tonnes of new water as it burns.)  However every tonne of green hydrogen extracted using electrolysis will remove more than 9 tonnes of fresh surface water from the local environment. That water may be released to the atmosphere far away, wherever the hydrogen is consumed (maybe in another hemisphere). The tonnage of water thus removed (often from sunny dry outback areas) would be substantial. Farmers will wake up one morning to see their hills covered in wind turbines and power lines, their flats smothered in solar panels, and a huge hydrogen generator draining their water supply. Not green at all.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/07/are_you_ready_for__greenie_hydrogen.html

As the wackos fail on one failed green endeavor to replace hydrocarbons, they embrace another expensive and unlikely-to-succeed idea.

These types of ideas should always be undertaken in the private industry, never in the public.

[Joe Wooten]

Like a dog eating it's puke, the greenies keep circling back to their previously failed ideas

[rustynail]

"Oh, the Humanity!"