Posted on 04/13/2025 9:31:41 AM PDT by Signalman
European energy expert Samuel Furfari sums up green hydrogen (GH) perfectly; “It’s like burning Louis Vuitton handbags for heat.” He says this because it is so very expensive. Federal law allocated $9.5 billion for GH hubs, and the Orwellian-named Inflation Reduction Act (Inflation Causing Act) expanded tax subsidies. Even with massive taxpayer subsidies, GH is a money loser.
Leftists claim GH is a way to replace batteries for transportation. It is at least five times more expensive, which doesn’t include all the extra costs associated with the production of natural gas, such as purifying massive amounts of water, which takes about 13 times more water than the hydrogen it produces. Desalination is an additional cost. Putting these processes anywhere they’ll need to compete for water resources is just plain stupid.
Infrastructure costs are astounding because we currently have none, and hydrogen is not suitable for pipelines because it escapes easily, embrittles metal, and is prone to explode. It only takes a few massive hydrogen car or truck explosions to end hydrogen use for transportation, just like the Hindenburg disaster that ended hydrogen ballon travel.
GH is an excessive waste of money, and it hasn’t ever been made at scale—even after tens of billions spent by Europeans, Australians, and the United States.
All it takes is a little critical thinking to realize that something is amiss once one understands how GH is produced. First of all, we don’t have enough wind and solar to power the hydrogen plants. Second, wind and solar are part-time and weather dependent. The GH process is required to run at all times, not just the 30 percent of the time the wind blows and the 20 percent of the time the sun shines bright enough.
Making GH requires pure water to be heated to 2,000° F and is then electrocuted. This cracks the hydrogen and oxygen molecules. The hydrogen is then chilled to 420° F below zero, turning it into a liquid, and then it is finally compressed to 10,000 psi, comparable to three times the average scuba tank or compressed natural gas (CNG). Without this chilling and compression, hydrogen has one-tenth the energy per volume as natural gas. Under normal compressed circumstances, hydrogen has less energy than CNG. A kilogram of this liquid hydrogen has the energy of a gallon of gas.
When working with the liquid near zero, compressed hydrogen is tricky, as it is the smallest molecule, escaping normal pipelines and embrittling metals, causing them to crack sooner than later.
"Every time you involve hydrogen, you get not small losses, but large, substantial losses," an energy specialist tells us. “The main cause of the issue is that hydrogen is a molecule that is too small and volatile to be used, transported effectively using the gas pipelines, turbines, boilers, cooktops, or burner jets that are now in place.” Deep pocket oil companies are getting out of this boondoggle. BP cancelled 18 hydrogen projects because they were unprofitable, all in an effort to save $200 million a year. Shell cancelled a Norway hydrogen project and others for lack of demand, while a $750 million GH plant in Australia was cancelled because it was a money loser.
The first argument raised by climate hawks is the production of GH, which costs 40 percent more in energy than it produces. Some of the GH will leak, as it is stored in salt caverns.
When there isn't any wind or solar power, which is usually the case, they then say we can use this stored hydrogen to create second-generation GH. Using second-generation hydrogen alone will bear 80 percent of the cost of the energy that is actually produced—not including losses—which doesn’t even factor in all the other costs associated with the process.
And what about water needs?
It's just stupid to put hydrogen hubs in areas without enough water. Houston, Utah, and Southern California, to name a few, are recognized as government sponsored GH hotspots.
Particularly in Utah, on the edge of the desert, where solar and wind power barely account for 2 percent of total electricity generated. Or California, which suffers from droughts, and often sees water shortages.
Trump and Congressional Republicans must stop wasting billions on GH. Any money spent on GH adds to our $36.5 trillion national debt, driving up inflation. While it was reported that Trump is considering killing hydrogen hubs in blue states, Trump should kill all of them.
Green hydrogen is an expensive pipedream we simply cannot afford.
I didn’t know about hydrogen and its need to be super-chilled, which probably explains the brittleness of metal comment. I know in high school, I put an electric current on a copper plate and the bubbles where hydrogen that we captured and lit. The result was a “pop” and a small amount of pure water. I thought the idea was to put windmills out in the ocean, use the electricity to perform electrolysis, and pump the hydrogen to shore in pipelines for processing and distribution. Still, it does seem to be yet another waste of taxpayer money.
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If we could just find a way to pipe hydrogen from the Sun, that would make GH profitable.
If those people studied real science, they would easily get the facts.
1) There is no free hydrogen on Earth. All hydrogen is tied up in rocks, water or hydrocarbons.
2) To break these ties, you need an energy. At least, theoretically, as much energy as you get back. So making hydrogen from water cannot ever give you any net energy, if you burn hydrogen back to water!
3) They actually make hydrogen cheaper, by striping it from hydrocarbons, but then you waste the full hydrocarbon energy potential.
4) So, real, scientific, conclusion is, that using hydrogen at its best can be like some expensive battery. Make hydrogen when you have too much power and use it when you do not have that power.
If you just study your basic Physics and Chemistry, you would know that GH is a pipe dream.
Please, believe in Science!!!
Hydrogen is a very tricky element to deal with. It’s so small that it passes through just about anything. Hydrogen Embrittlement is caused when hydrogen is trapped in between the molecules in a metal. The hydrogen forms microscopic gas pockets that substantially weaken the metal part. Another problem with hydrogen is that it has a very wide upper and lower explosive limit. If I remember correctly, it’s something like 5-95 % fuel to air ratio. For example, gasoline is somewhere around 14-21 % fuel to air ratio.
Hydrogen embrittlement is not a low temperature thing. The H2 diffuses into the metal and screws up the vanderwals attraction.
GH is ‘green hydrogen’? Why do idiot reporters have to try to be cute and come up with their own acronyms? Anyone in industry is going to see GH and think gaseous hydrogen, as opposed to LH2.
Course the wife would just jump to General Hospital....
It was always obvious that “green” and/or “renewable” sources would never provide energy in sufficient density to be a major contributor to a 21st Century lifestyle.
Instead of wasting billions pursuing a green pipe dream, all that money should have gone to nuclear power production and fusion research. Fission power alone in its current state is sufficiently sophisticated to provide 100% of our electrical needs until such time as it can be supplanted by fusion.
Since 1955 there have been 13 deaths in the US related to nuclear production of electricity. Twelve were industrial accidents (electrocution, escaping steam, heavy falling objects). Only one was the result of radiation exposure and that was because a “technician” mistook a jug of liquid fissile material for cleaning solution.
The Three Mile Island accident was a “worst case” scenario because it involved multiple safety system failures. Yet not only were there ZERO resulting deaths, long-term studies of the people living withing five miles of the facility showed no significant additional cancers.
On the other hand, since 1955 more than 8500 people have been killed in coal mining mishaps.
1980s bumper sticker: More people died in Ted Kennedy’s Olds then died at 3 mile island.
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