this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2023
195 points (90.5% liked)
Technology
59207 readers
3134 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Even if the current technology for producing zero-emission hydrogen is relatively inefficient, that's not really such a problem since it's a zero-emission process.
Especially when the bulk of your hydrogen production comes from excess energy generation
The issue isn't emissions, it's costs. Sadly we don't live in a dream world, and everything has a cost.
Even running excess production into hydrogen production has costs (transport, storage, infrastructure...).
The current (not taking in consideration the new tech currently in testing) beeing highly ineficient creates many cost issues.
Less effieicnt means that more power needs to be used to get that amount of hydrogen, reducing the gains on electricity surplus.
The storage beeing ineficient means a higher running cost, more space used, less of that space...
The transport beeing ineficient also increases the running costs, but also the emissions if the transport uses fossil fuel. Of it uses hydrogen, well it increases the running cost even more. That expensive produced hydrogen is used for transport...
The electricity production from hydrogen being ineficient increases the used hydrogen to get the same energy amount, which then increases the costs because more of that expensive hydrogen has to be used.
So taking all this into account, being "clean" doesn't necessarily make it is viable compared to other storage or energy production tech.
The costs have to be taken in account because resources don't appear magically.
Mining Uranium has a cost. Buying it from abroad has a cost, paying people to maintain all that has a cost...
The relative costs are just a question of policy. Legislators could make fossil fuels prohibitively expensive tomorrow if they really wanted. Anyway, if Australia doesn't have a good source of fissile material (I have no idea), that is a fair point against nuclear power there. However, that just means other big, ambitious emission-free power projects should be considered instead, like deep-well geothermal, concentrated solar, and coerced rooftop solar. Seemingly cost effective half measures that keep fossil fuels in the mix are a mistake.