“The biggest challenge facing low-emission hydrogen is that it is expensive to produce, expensive to transport, expensive to store, expensive to distribute and expensive to use." Before you buy in to any of the grandiose national or international 2030 targets for clean hydrogen, you need to listen to this. TLDR, a realistic outcome will be somewhere around 10% of the figures being bandied around.
I wake up, open my computer, and I get a message that you replied to my message from last night. But then my internet cuts out for an hour, and when it's back, I see you have deleted the video, and reposted it. What happened? What was your reply?
Hi Scubongo, we spotted an error in the video, so we corrected and reposted it before thousands of people had watched it. I had penned a long answer to your post, sadly that disappeared too. TLDR yes I'm excited about Hysata, they could point the way to 30% cheaper hydrogen, but a) that's not enough to make hydrogen competitive in most use cases (it's 10x too expensive, and listen from 10'04" for why that's going to be slow to change); and b) certainly won't help for 2030. Geologic hydrogen - if its exists and can be extracted might serve local power production or fertilisers, doesn't deal with the fact that hydrogen is expensive to transport, store, distribute and use. And I love tech and innovation but nothing about Hiiroc makes me change my long-term or 2030 view of the sector. Look, you can't build a steam-powered car that wins a Formula 1 race. Hydrogen's economics and therefore its role in the global economy is going to be decided by its challenging physics, not by wishful thinking.
@@MLiebreich I guess that means the high efficiency [90%+] electrolysers, I was also going to ask about them. And white hydrogen too, but you've been banging on long enough that I know you say use H2 where produced and don't attempt to transport it!
@@MLiebreich Thank you for resending your reply! I'm very excited about the natural hydrogen find in France. That's only around 300 km from Antwerp, and about 400 from Rotterdam, where we have the largest petrochemical cluster in the world. If we could replace our grey hydrogen with natural hydrogen, that would be a big win for the climate. And we also have a dedicated hydrogen network here already for that petrochemical cluster. All that needs to happen is to connect it to the find in France, which could be more than 300 million tons. If that's true, it would be a godsend for Antwerp. Even if it's only 50 million tons. And 300 Km is not too far to transport hydrogen through a pipe at a reasonable price. About HIIROC: I really would love to learn more about their technology. I keep hoping you would invite them for your webcast. From what I know, it sounds amazing technology. Especially if they would use biogas instead of natural gas. Carbon negative hydrogen sounds too good to be true. That's why I hope you can invite them for a sit down one day. Really looking forward to next year when the Hysata electrolyzer comes on the market. Kind regards.
I think we should be quickly (years not decades) transitioning to a world-wide mandate that all hydrogen production must be green (zero-carbon). This would simultaneously create a thriving very well defined market for green hydrogen for our current uses where there is no clean alternative (fertilisers, chemical processes, etc) and end any of the hype/speculation for uses that are looking likely never to be viable (light vehicle transport, energy storage, etc). The technology of making and using hydrogen would be developed and improved very quickly and in the meantime at least it would be achieving very real reductions in our CO2 emissions. If it ever improved enough to be viable for other uses then naturally that would follow as soon as economics allowed. Indulging the other colours of hydrogen is just a distraction and actually slows down progress and emissions reductions.
Hi Michael, Yeah it’s tough. My contention is that decarbonising has a cost and if we, as societies think we need to follow that path, we need to bear the cost. Just focusing on the hard-to-abate sectors, where you need molecules, as electrons won't do the job: How much does switching to green hydrogen in refining increase the cost of petrol and diesel ?. Same for SAF. How much more on the air ticket ? Idem for green steel. What is the increase in the cost of the square foot of building, or the shipping cost of one TEU with a green-steel newbuild ship, or our next green steel-made car ?. Ditto for fertilizer. how much does switching to green fertilizer increase the cost of a ton of rice, soy, or other crops ?. Are these cost increases unaffordable ?. I don’t think so. But if we want to transition on the cheap, we better just forget it. Just a thought.
You're missing the point. Of course we have to be prepared to foot the bill is we want to clean up the economy. The point is that if you choose hydrogen, rather than the cheapest clean alternative, the bill runs to trillions of dollars.
“The biggest challenge facing low-emission hydrogen is that it is expensive to produce, expensive to transport, expensive to store, expensive to distribute and expensive to use."
Before you buy in to any of the grandiose national or international 2030 targets for clean hydrogen, you need to listen to this.
TLDR, a realistic outcome will be somewhere around 10% of the figures being bandied around.
I wake up, open my computer, and I get a message that you replied to my message from last night. But then my internet cuts out for an hour, and when it's back, I see you have deleted the video, and reposted it. What happened? What was your reply?
Hi Scubongo, we spotted an error in the video, so we corrected and reposted it before thousands of people had watched it. I had penned a long answer to your post, sadly that disappeared too.
TLDR yes I'm excited about Hysata, they could point the way to 30% cheaper hydrogen, but a) that's not enough to make hydrogen competitive in most use cases (it's 10x too expensive, and listen from 10'04" for why that's going to be slow to change); and b) certainly won't help for 2030. Geologic hydrogen - if its exists and can be extracted might serve local power production or fertilisers, doesn't deal with the fact that hydrogen is expensive to transport, store, distribute and use. And I love tech and innovation but nothing about Hiiroc makes me change my long-term or 2030 view of the sector.
Look, you can't build a steam-powered car that wins a Formula 1 race. Hydrogen's economics and therefore its role in the global economy is going to be decided by its challenging physics, not by wishful thinking.
@@MLiebreich I guess that means the high efficiency [90%+] electrolysers, I was also going to ask about them. And white hydrogen too, but you've been banging on long enough that I know you say use H2 where produced and don't attempt to transport it!
@@MLiebreich Thank you for resending your reply!
I'm very excited about the natural hydrogen find in France. That's only around 300 km from Antwerp, and about 400 from Rotterdam, where we have the largest petrochemical cluster in the world. If we could replace our grey hydrogen with natural hydrogen, that would be a big win for the climate.
And we also have a dedicated hydrogen network here already for that petrochemical cluster. All that needs to happen is to connect it to the find in France, which could be more than 300 million tons. If that's true, it would be a godsend for Antwerp. Even if it's only 50 million tons.
And 300 Km is not too far to transport hydrogen through a pipe at a reasonable price.
About HIIROC: I really would love to learn more about their technology. I keep hoping you would invite them for your webcast. From what I know, it sounds amazing technology. Especially if they would use biogas instead of natural gas. Carbon negative hydrogen sounds too good to be true. That's why I hope you can invite them for a sit down one day.
Really looking forward to next year when the Hysata electrolyzer comes on the market.
Kind regards.
But a true german green party girl, without formation at all will not care for such facts.
Thank you for your real world perspective on the hydrogen hype.
Thank you very much Michael for your great summary!
I think we should be quickly (years not decades) transitioning to a world-wide mandate that all hydrogen production must be green (zero-carbon). This would simultaneously create a thriving very well defined market for green hydrogen for our current uses where there is no clean alternative (fertilisers, chemical processes, etc) and end any of the hype/speculation for uses that are looking likely never to be viable (light vehicle transport, energy storage, etc). The technology of making and using hydrogen would be developed and improved very quickly and in the meantime at least it would be achieving very real reductions in our CO2 emissions. If it ever improved enough to be viable for other uses then naturally that would follow as soon as economics allowed. Indulging the other colours of hydrogen is just a distraction and actually slows down progress and emissions reductions.
Thank you for those realistic numbers on hydrogen economy very interesting insights!
Hi Michael,
Yeah it’s tough.
My contention is that decarbonising has a cost and if we, as societies think we need to follow that path, we need to bear the cost.
Just focusing on the hard-to-abate sectors, where you need molecules, as electrons won't do the job:
How much does switching to green hydrogen in refining increase the cost of petrol and diesel ?.
Same for SAF. How much more on the air ticket ?
Idem for green steel. What is the increase in the cost of the square foot of building, or the shipping cost of one TEU with a green-steel newbuild ship, or our next green steel-made car ?.
Ditto for fertilizer. how much does switching to green fertilizer increase the cost of a ton of rice, soy, or other crops ?.
Are these cost increases unaffordable ?. I don’t think so. But if we want to transition on the cheap, we better just forget it.
Just a thought.
You're missing the point. Of course we have to be prepared to foot the bill is we want to clean up the economy. The point is that if you choose hydrogen, rather than the cheapest clean alternative, the bill runs to trillions of dollars.
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