- cross-posted to:
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- [email protected]
terraformindustries.wordpress.com
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Short version: cheap electricity + water
terraformindustries.wordpress.com
Short version: cheap electricity + water
I go to my Dad’s by train as often as possible but prices have doubled since the pandemic and there are usually two of us. It’s become impossibly expensive, which is why we bought a car last year after ten years without one. It does not get used for short journeys because the bus and the tram still work well enough, as do our feet and our bikes.
We cannot electrify our bus routes, unless we make them entirely useless for most people. Come on. I live where I do because it’s close to the tram station. But most people need a bus to get them to a tram station. And I usually need one when I get off the tram.
And I agree that a lot of plane travel is entirely unnecessary. But I’m not about to tell people that they can’t move to another country without waving goodbye forever to everyone they left back home. It’s an obscene proposition.
We have got to have solutions that actually work. Green hydrogen ticks a lot of vital boxes. We just need to be very clear that the only acceptable hydrogen is Green. I know a lot of the hatred for it comes from Big Carbon trying to hijack it. But the baby should not be thrown out with the bathwater,
You are right in regards to very rural bus routes not being viable for electric buses but inside suburbs, cities and rural regions where the electric grid is already connected and in place, it is very cost effective to convert to pure electric.
But for rural bus routes away from a connected electrical grid, hydrogen is not a solution either as it is only 30% efficient (assuming only ideal conditions) and would be better served by liquid hydrocarbons. (I see no reason to deprive developing communities from the most efficient options)
I am in no way suggesting one would need to leave their family but one needs to understand up until the invention of the airplane, such relocation had to mean saying good bye and corresponding via mail or very rare train rides to visit with the whole family.
Green hydrogen outside of chemical processes (where it is actually useful) is a myth designed to keep the automotive industry alive past its expiration date.
The function of green hydrogen as an energy storage medium is better serviced by more custom chemistries as we are taking external energy to produce it (literally it would be the same as us taking CO2 + H2O + energy to produce gasoline [which we could do at the cost of $3.75/gal (if one ignores the CO2 collection costs)] using the Fischer-Tropsch process)
So skip the dream and accept the reality that if we are needing stored energy for transportation, it is more efficient to store it as liquid hydrocarbons. But if we need to store for transient demands, batteries and flywheels are better solutions.
Green hydrogen is used to store renewable electricity that cannot feasibly be stored any other way. There are some small Scottish islands producing so much wind power that the UK national grid cannot take it all. There are no battery packs or hydroelectric facilities that can store it. [So they’ve been producing hydrogen instead.]((https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190327-the-tiny-islands-leading-the-way-in-hydrogen-power)
It might not be the best solution anyone could ever wish for. But it is the only currently available solution for some storage problems and for a lot of heavy transport. And a better solution for cars than batteries. If you could wave a wand and abolish private vehicles, you should do so. But you can’t. You can make electric vehicles a lot lighter and a lot less polluting while you work on getting rid of them in this real world that we live in.
Sounds like they didn’t consider appealing to UK government to get subsidized liquid CO2 and use the produced hydrogen to synthetically create hydrocarbons (which are much easier/cheaper to store) and win political points doing so.
Where is the supposed 12 hour non-stop bus route that can’t be served by a current-gen battery bus?
Also how is $3-5million per 100km for filling stations supposed to be trivial, but overhead wire on 5km per 100km route is impossible?