<
https://cleantechnica.com/2021/10/13/hydrogen-is-as-broadly-useful-as-hemp-and-will-be-used-just-as-much/>
"Hemp can do a lot of things adequately, but most of the things it could do are
done better and more cheaply by something else that’s less versatile.
Which brings us to hydrogen. Right now about 120 million tons of hydrogen are
used annually for things that hydrogen is actually good for. It’s all made from
fossil fuels with zero attention to pollution and CO2 emissions, and as a
result, it’s cheap. Per S&P Platts hydrogen spot price index, a kilogram of
pure hydrogen costs $1.25 to $2.00 USD in the USA today. As I’ve written about
extensively, a large majority of it is used for things it’s good for at that
price point, which includes stripping the sulphur out of fossil fuels — a
market which has to go away — and making fertilizer — another market which has
to go away. Why do they have to go away? Climate change. They are both massive
contributors to climate change, and as a result have to be fixed, not just
replaced with low-carbon hydrogen. We have to stop turning crude oil into
fossil fuels, and we have to stop spreading lots of fertilizer onto fields,
were it turns into 6x the CO2e of its mass in nitrous oxide, a major greenhouse
gas in its own right.
But we can’t make hydrogen that cheaply if we want to do without massive
pollution and global warming impacts. That’s just reality. The price of
hydrogen is going to increase. Whether we bolt on carbon capture and
sequestration — incredibly wasteful, silly and unworkable — or run renewable
electricity through sophisticated electrolysers, it’s going to be more
expensive than gray or black hydrogen. Even at $20/MWh — my projected stable
end price for electricity decades from now after the transition in 2021 dollars
— and 90% electrolyzer utilization, energy costs alone per Lazard’s hydrogen
LCOE are far above the current spot price, from $2.56 to $2.96 USD.
The laws of thermodynamics aren’t going to allow that to get vastly cheaper.
We’ll take 10% off of it for sure, maybe 20%, and that’s excellent, but we
aren’t going to halve it."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
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mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
