Posted on 07/07/2023 6:02:59 AM PDT by Red Badger
The Biden administration announced plans Wednesday to invest up to $1 billion in “clean hydrogen,” an expensive fuel source that requires significant infrastructure to support it that would be unlikely to get significant private investment if not for government intervention in the energy sector, industry experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Department of Energy (DOE) announcement stated the administration’s intent to invest the funds into Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs for the widespread deployment of the technology, with a particular focus on providing “demand-side support” to encourage buyers to come forward and support hydrogen projects, according to the agency’s press release. These demand-side incentives are necessary in part because “clean” or “green” hydrogen must be manufactured using renewable energy sources, a much more expensive process than using fossil fuels, Dan Kish, a senior research fellow at the Institute for Energy Research told the DCNF.
“If these things made economic or common sense, people would be doing them,” Kish told the DCNF. “They don’t, so the government is mandating and subsidizing them while knee-capping energy sources they can afford.”
Even if the Biden administration is able to push the cost of green hydrogen down via subsidies, investors and buyers have expressed concern that there might not be enough supply of green hydrogen to make the transition away from fossil fuels worth it, E&E News reported. The process of manufacturing green hydrogen — known as electrolysis — converts water into hydrogen using renewable power, and the hydrogen it generates is nearly 14 times as expensive as natural gas to generate the same amount of power, Isaac Orr, a policy fellow at the Center of the American Experiment told the DCNF.
While proponents of green hydrogen “envision massive facilities” using electrolysis, such facilities are not cost-effective, Jonathan Lesser, an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute studying energy, told the DCNF. In addition, hydrogen is difficult to transport, because it can damage the steel used in existing oil and gas pipelines and has the potential to leak, creating an explosion risk, said Lesser.
Due to the high cost of manufacturing green hydrogen, “there are no large-scale plants that use this,” Lesser told the DCNF. He also noted that plants would need to have a steady supply of water and that hydrogen is less dense than traditional fuel sources and would take up more space.
The Biden administration in May proposed a set of regulations that would require large “baseload” natural gas and coal-fired power plants to either capture their carbon emissions or switch to burning mostly hydrogen by 2038.
“The administration likely favors hydrogen over [carbon capture] because it means more wind and solar will be deployed to create the hydrogen and provide fuel for peaking resources when the wind isn’t blowing, or the sun isn’t shining,” said Orr. “The Administration is keen to use carrots and sticks to force the grid to transition to less reliable energy sources.”
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said that the new funding would help clear up “market uncertainty” around clean hydrogen that “too often delays progress,” in the agency’s Wednesday press release.
The DOE did not immediately respond to a DCNF request for comment.
A lie in the first sentence.
When people who never worked a real job or built anything in their lives give money to other people who never successfully built anything you are guaranteed failure.
“Trudeau is building wind-farms to make hydrogen to sell to the EU ,how does he get it to the EU, magic ,LOL”
C’mon don’t you know ... it will be transported on Biden’s North Atlantic train tunnel in rail cars ... the “Nonnel”. /s
Hydrogen as a fuel for road vehicles only makes sense if electricity is cheap and very abundant. And the way to abundant, cheap electricity is by application of new and much more safe Small Modular Nuclear reactors, several designs of which are all ready for introduction and widespread use. These units could be built in a factory and moved to location by rail car or semi-trailer trucks, and assembled on site, within WEEKS, rather than years.
https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/energy-systems/ap300-smr
Green? It's a colorless gas. And none of its excitation states emit green light, either.
Hydrogen is not a green gas.
That would be chlorine.
Maybe these ecoweenies should breathe chlorine.
Not to worry, the CBO will be by shortly to say it's a great program and the Senate Republican leadership will join in glorious song about its benefits.
One of the purveyors of “clean technology” here in the Twilight Zone does research on hydrogen powered busses.. not a big success.
2(H2) + O2 ==> 2(H2O)
So, typical nonliberal, regressively ignorant, bunkum & balderdash.
Not to worry, It will be transported in carbon fiber tubes./s
Yup. That’s right. My Bad.
(First two sips of covfefe hadn’t kicked in yet.)
Burning hydrogen in plain air yields only some water vapor, as you said.
I hang my head in shame.
Generating hydrogen is a different matter ...
“Is there any other kind?”
The icky kind that they extract from methane. That is to say, most of it.
I’m all aboard. The only reason nuclear power was abandoned was out of fear generated by media sensationalism and environmental extremists after some meltdowns. Everyone was afraid and willing to throw the baby out with the freaking bathtub. Technology today makes nuclear generation safer, cheaper and producing plentiful energy. But, nooo, nuclear bad.
I think you’re wrong.
I believe that burning H with O produces H20 ... water.
Exactly what I was thinking.
After they produce it, they let it escape back into the atmosphere where the wind can then blow it to Europe. Europe then recaptures it and has to re-process it to remove any contaminates that it picked up in the atmosphere during the transfer process.
I think you’re confusing that with the production of hydrogen.
Its commonly produced from natural gas which is mostly methane - CH4. Break out the carbon you have your hydrogen.
Wonder what Biden’s kickback is on this one…
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