The world's largest green hydrogen project, which generates hydrogen from solar and wind renewables without emitting carbon dioxide, produced its first batch of "green hydrogen" on Thursday in Ordos, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in north China.
Or there is a middle ground where you’ll actually get a nuanced take?
I’m mostly curious about what they’re going to do with the hydrogen. Fuel cells? No hydrogen tech I know off has really proven scalable, reliable and cost effective. And while hydrogen generation was part of the issue it wasn’t the biggest one. I’m also keen to understand if they use fresh water or salt water. The latter then there is potential for a energy neutral or positive even desalination process which would be massive for large swaths of Africa.
Well from reading the article like a big boy I’ve learned that it’s pure freshwater they use which is expected but lame.
As for what they’re going to use it for that remains mostly a mystery. The world total for hydrogen fuel cell cars is 67,000 which is virtually nil and China aims for 50,000 of their own by 2025 which is also virtually nil. For reference they had estimated around 300 million cars 2021 and that number is on a rapid growth. 50,000 is less than 0,02%…
Further a hydrogen pipeline is not something I’d like to live near, I get it must exist for hydrogen tech to work but china + hydrogen pipeline is just a headline waiting to be written.
Personally I think they’re betting on the wrong horse
Another good use is in combination with wind and solar where you can produce hydrogen when there’s energy available, and then use it to provide a steady energy supply. This addresses one of the main issues with renewables.
They don’t have many buses like that yet and buses are always near population centers where using food waste to make biogas is simply much better in almost every way.
As for storing excess energy sure if we’re talking solar generation but they use a lot of hydrogen too for this project and in that case pumping water up to the dam is a much easier and probably more efficient than generating hydrogen and either using it to run an engine or store in fuel cells. Fuel cells aren’t all that efficient. Overall a lot of money spent that will not at all pay for itself for that use case.
I really struggle with why they’ve gone so heavily into generating hydrogen when there is a big lack of viable use cases. Though they’re far from alone in overestimating hydrogen, BMW and Toyota both invested heavily in fuel cell research (and BMW experimented with direct hydrogen use) and neither came out the other end a winner.
China is pursuing lots of different energy alternatives to fossil fuels. That’s the correct approach in my opinion. We don’t know what particular approach or combination of thereof will be most efficient in the long term, the only way to find out is to try different things and see where you get. Thinking of it purely in terms of profits is a bit myopic.
It’s also just a good idea to try out a lot of things and see what sticks. We never know what might turn out to have an unexpected application in one niche. Global warming requires “all of the above” strategy. That will mean some efforts fail to produce results, but that’s okay. We don’t have the time to dawdle.
Or there is a middle ground where you’ll actually get a nuanced take?
I’m mostly curious about what they’re going to do with the hydrogen. Fuel cells? No hydrogen tech I know off has really proven scalable, reliable and cost effective. And while hydrogen generation was part of the issue it wasn’t the biggest one. I’m also keen to understand if they use fresh water or salt water. The latter then there is potential for a energy neutral or positive even desalination process which would be massive for large swaths of Africa.
Well from reading the article like a big boy I’ve learned that it’s pure freshwater they use which is expected but lame.
As for what they’re going to use it for that remains mostly a mystery. The world total for hydrogen fuel cell cars is 67,000 which is virtually nil and China aims for 50,000 of their own by 2025 which is also virtually nil. For reference they had estimated around 300 million cars 2021 and that number is on a rapid growth. 50,000 is less than 0,02%…
Further a hydrogen pipeline is not something I’d like to live near, I get it must exist for hydrogen tech to work but china + hydrogen pipeline is just a headline waiting to be written.
Personally I think they’re betting on the wrong horse
They’ve been using it for stuff like buses increasingly https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1132385/beijing-2022-hydrogen-buses
Another good use is in combination with wind and solar where you can produce hydrogen when there’s energy available, and then use it to provide a steady energy supply. This addresses one of the main issues with renewables.
They don’t have many buses like that yet and buses are always near population centers where using food waste to make biogas is simply much better in almost every way.
As for storing excess energy sure if we’re talking solar generation but they use a lot of hydrogen too for this project and in that case pumping water up to the dam is a much easier and probably more efficient than generating hydrogen and either using it to run an engine or store in fuel cells. Fuel cells aren’t all that efficient. Overall a lot of money spent that will not at all pay for itself for that use case.
I really struggle with why they’ve gone so heavily into generating hydrogen when there is a big lack of viable use cases. Though they’re far from alone in overestimating hydrogen, BMW and Toyota both invested heavily in fuel cell research (and BMW experimented with direct hydrogen use) and neither came out the other end a winner.
China is pursuing lots of different energy alternatives to fossil fuels. That’s the correct approach in my opinion. We don’t know what particular approach or combination of thereof will be most efficient in the long term, the only way to find out is to try different things and see where you get. Thinking of it purely in terms of profits is a bit myopic.
The irony of your myopia, lol
Quite the counterpoint there.
It’s also just a good idea to try out a lot of things and see what sticks. We never know what might turn out to have an unexpected application in one niche. Global warming requires “all of the above” strategy. That will mean some efforts fail to produce results, but that’s okay. We don’t have the time to dawdle.