The DEFR Follies -- Cost Of Hydrogen Storage
October 18, 2024/ Francis Menton
Here in New York we have our own unique and special acronym for how we think we are going to make our future emissions-free electrical grid work with predominantly wind and solar generation. The acronym is DEFR — the “Dispatchable Emissions-Free Resource.” When the sun goes down and the wind stops blowing in the dead of winter, we will crank up the DEFR to keep us all warm and cozy. There will of course be zero carbon emissions, because by definition the DEFR is “emissions-free.”
Unfortunately nobody is quite sure what this DEFR might be. There are only a few options. Nuclear could work, but in New York it is completely blocked by regulatory obstruction and the certainty of decades of litigation. Batteries are wildly too expensive and physically not up to the job. That leaves many green energy advocates grasping at hydrogen as the last remaining option. Granted, we don’t yet have any meaningful production of hydrogen from carbon-free sources. But it seems so simple: just use wind and solar generators to run electrolyzers to make hydrogen from water; then store the hydrogen in some big caverns, and burn it when you need it. No carbon is involved. Problem solved!
I’ve had a few posts over the past couple of years commenting on some of the many issues that make this “green” hydrogen fantasy infeasible. This post from June 2022 noted that the cost of making hydrogen from water is unlikely ever to fall below, or even close to, the cost of getting new natural gas out of the ground; this post from August 2024 discussed numerous other problems with hydrogen, like its lower energy density compared to natural gas, and the prospective need for a whole new infrastructure of pipelines, power plants, delivery trucks and consumer appliances.
https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2024-10-18-the-defr-follies-cost-of-hydrogen-storage
