Europe's ludicrous hydrogen bet

Europe's betting big on hydrogen - despite a lot of drawbacks. Is the continent's hydrogen strategy overblown? And if so…why?
#planeta #hydrogen #europeanunion
We're destroying our environment at an alarming rate. But it doesn't need to be this way. Our new channel Planet A explores the shift towards an eco-friendly world - and challenges our ideas about what dealing with climate change means. We look at the big and the small: What we can do and how the system needs to change. Every Friday we'll take a truly global look at how to get us out of this mess.
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Credits:  
Reporter: Malte Rohwer-Kahlmann
Video Editor: Frederik Willmann
Supervising Editor: Michael Trobridge, Kiyo Dörrer
Factcheck: Alexander Paquet
Thumbnail: Em Chabridon
Special thanks to: Belén Balanyá, Thierry Bros and Robert Rozansky for insightful background interviews.
Read more: 
Hydrogen infrastructure buildout:
globalenergymonitor.org/wp-co...
Clean Hydrogen Monitor 2023:
hydrogeneurope.eu/wp-content/...
EU hydrogen strategy (2020):
eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-conte...
Hydrogen lobby:
corporateeurope.org/en/dirty-...
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:56 EU's hydrogen plans
03:16 Reality check
04:25 It isn't the best solution
06:19 It isn't so easy
08:40 It isn't available (yet)
10:30 Lobbying galore
12:33 Conclusion

[@DWPlanetA]

Do you think it's the right move to focus on hydrogen big time?

[@theunknownunknowns5168]

Norway have been taking out hydrogen refueling stations and replacing them with ev charging. California the only state in the US to try hydrogen refueling are getting rid of them. The environment and common sense need better b̶r̶i̶b̶e̶ lobbying skills.

[@Apollorion]

It just need medium attention. We should focus on natrium battery production (don't become dependent on lithium) & enlarging the capacity (both to transport & store) of the electricity grid.

[@albex8484]

Hydrogen is the best way to store energy at the moment. We'll need it for sure. There is more then enough energy(sun/wind/hydro), only storage is a problem. Hydrogen is like gas. The scheme's at 5:00 are also wrong. This is pressuming the grid can handle such loads. Imagine a whole street off EV's being charged at night.... no sun and no big powerlines.

[@DWPlanetA]

@@Apollorion Hey there! Thanks for sharing your view. We actually looked at lithium as a resource more in detail here 👉kzbin.info/www/bejne/nXK9h2SLqZt3etU and dove deeper into the challenges of the grid in this one 👉 kzbin.info/www/bejne/q16npHericiYitE Let us know what you think ✨

[@rasputozen]

NO

[@creedreaming]

Wait what?! A CDU-lead European Commission is prone to lobbying?! Never thought that was possible :o /s

[@_yonas]

Especially von der Leyen! Not like she was kicked out of German politics because of her lobby scandals! /s

[@dererik9070]

Und die sind sogar noch ok im Vergleich mit Friedrich Merz (Kanzlerkandidat in Deutschland)

[@Andreas-hh9yg]

CDU/CSU and FDP are for sure the most corrupt parties here in Germany. But they get elected in positions of power all the time by the voters. Embarrassing.

[@13Berzerker]

Nie mehr CDU !👎 Nico Semsrott : Brüssel sehen und sterben 👍 #NieWiederCDU

[@koljaleffek7290]

the mafia is silently giggeling in the corner.

[@LouisChen-wh4fi]

I am not European. I am actually an Australian. I also see a lot of parallels in this video. Fossil companies have a big say in energy strategy and often just end up serving its own interest. What a pity that bureaucrats just get pulled along for the ride.

[@DWPlanetA]

Hey Louis! We actually looked at Australia a while ago and also tackle the fossil fuel industry´s lobbying. Check it out and let us know what you think 👉kzbin.info/www/bejne/q3e5YYqXf7Gdm68

[@LouisChen-wh4fi]

​@@DWPlanetA Thank you. I've seen that previously and I should say, sadly as it may be, the Australian political system is quite different from European and hence Australia became such a climate change laggard......

[@martin_93]

yeah, Germany is sadly under huge influency by Russian KGB agents and also lobby connected with fossil fuel companys, like Linde and Gazprom. Working with Nordstream 2, after Putin anexed Crimea is prove, that they dont give a damm about anything else but money :(

[@nestserau]

Thinking that oil and gas companies can just be pushed aside for the energy transition is the biggest dilusion. They for one have the biggest infrastructure and capital to make it happen.

[@gzcwnk]

@@nestserau except a) they dont want it to happen and b) their infrastructure is mostly of no use, in fact it is a stranded asset. If we dont push them aside (if slowly and in a measured way) they wont let the transition occur willingly.

[@tommclean7410]

I like the champagne metaphor: expensive and only for special occasions. Michael Liebreich also has a good description: H2 is like a Swiss army knife but you only use a Swiss army knife when the tool you actually need is not available. His hydrogen ladder is handy too.

[@zapfanzapfan]

Hydrogen is important for fertilizer and explosives (today the ammonia used is made with natural gas), steel is another use (replacing coke made from coal). Using it for cars or home heating is just a waste of time. EVs, home batteries, heat pumps and thermal storage is much more efficient.

[@Jakob_DK]

Yes, and saying hydrogen should not be used for industrial purposes because EV are better than hydrogen cars is very strange.

[@MrToradragon]

Use of hydrogen in steel making can be problematic as it can cause the final product to be too brittle. IMHO It would be better to replace coke with charcoal, given already small energy consumption pert kg of steel it could be economically viable.

[@zapfanzapfan]

@@MrToradragon The switch from charcoal to coke more than 200 years ago was what really set off the industrial revolution. There is not enough forest to go back.

[@MrJuanmarin99]

​@@MrToradragon hydrogen is only used in the reduction phase of the ore to iron. Then it is remelted with other methods (arc furnace). Any remaining hydrogen outgas then. The same happens with the traditional method. Get reduced with coke and then is melted again. And in this phase is when carbon gets added. It's easier to remove the hydrogen due to his tendency to outgas than to fine-tune the carbon content.

[@capoeirastronaut]

You miss the biggest factors: steel production, & cement. Together 7% of emissions. And they need hydrogen to decarbonise.

[@adblocker276]

Nobody accused DW of being unbiased.

[@alanjenkins1508]

Actually Iron and Steel are 7% on their own. Cement is about 3%.

[@yo2trader539]

The long-distance heavy duty trucks and buses that currently use diesel will probably shift to hydrogen too.

[@armanrashid5356]

They should produce their in house hydrogen from the green electricity.

[@annemariesmith5459]

It's going to happen. They know it. Hydrogen is happening world-wide.

[@philiptaylor7902]

This is a well presented and objective review of this subject. I like the quote about hydrogen being the “champagne” of renewables, great but not for every day.

[@DWPlanetA]

Hey Philip! Glad to hear that you liked the video. We post videos like this one every Friday. Subscribe to be notified ✨

[@kylejohnson6775]

Exactly. It's super useful for certain thing, like fertilizer and steel making, but it absolute cannot replace methane as an electricity producer, because it's fundamentally a useful chemical and an energy storage medium. Not a fuel to replace oil or methane (natural gas). If you're burning hydrogen for pretty much anything, it's a giant waste and not practical.

[@nestserau]

Objective? They don’t even mention nuclear power is the best way to produce lots of cheap and climate-neutral hydrogen. Definitely the most skewed DW video I’ve watched.

[@philiptaylor7902]

@@nestserau Hi Nestserau, you might want to think that statement through. Nuclear is a very expensive way of making electricity. We already see times when there is so much renewables generated that grids have to pay to dispose of it or pay to turn off the wind/solar sites. This is the electricity that it would make sense to use for hydrogen hydrolysis.

[@nestserau]

@@philiptaylor7902 Nuclear is cheaper than wind. Only solar is even more cheap.

[@donnairn3419]

Hydrogen production uses too much electricity to be used as an energy source. Fertiliser or steel production may be sensible

[@capri4682]

And possibly aviation as well

[@piotrwojdelko1150]

Poland wants to build power plant but I'm not sure about long term startegy .They discovered Uranium in Poland and even deviced a program how to neutralize it .Poland is hesitating too long.Poland has been planning in for few dacades and our economy is based on carbon from Mozambique .We have never had power plants .I would prefer Hydrogen power plant

[@VayporWayve]

when ITER actually functions with net gain, we will not have an issue getting the energy needed to manufacture hydrogen.

[@denisk886]

@@capri4682 highly flamable hydrogen into airplane? cmon renewable fuels are better option to airplanes without need to change anything on them ...for example Neste finnish company

[@SmilingNinja]

Yup! 50 kWh to generate a kg of hydrogen through electrolysis which will only give you 33 kWh. If the electricity source isn't clean, it'll also make hydrogen a dirty fuel indirectly.

[@philipperapaccioli2868]

If only 0,2% of hydrogen currently being consumed in Europe is green hydrogen, that is because it is far more expensive to produce than grey hydrogen. Large industrial and energy groups and the EU are hiding behind green hydrogen so that no efforts are made to transition away from cheap fossil fuels. No one will use green hydrogen unless they are forced to. We currently do not tax kerosene for commercial aviation even for domestic or European flights. We do not tax heavy oil used in international commercial shipping. We have always favored the cheapest energy source (Russian gas, coal for electrical production) regardless of the environmental impact. Airlines are telling us, keep flying, tomorrow we'll be green, we will be flying on green hydrogen. Yet Boeing is not even studying the possibility of building a hydrogen plane and Airbus is only pretending to. The energy density of highly compressed, liquid cooled hydrogen is simply too low. According to IATA, ''Liquid hydrogen fuel has a lower volumetric density than kerosene. It is estimated that to complete a given mission, despite the aircraft requiring a lower mass of fuel, the space that this fuel would occupy would be around 4 times larger than that of kerosene''. Hydrogen also requires heavy pressurized tanks, and needs to be cooled to -280 degrees. Aviation was borne with kerosene, and will disappear when oil runs out. Car companies are telling us to keep buying combustion engines promising that soon enough they will be burning clean e-fuels, when these are very expensive to manufacture, so will only be used in Formula 1. So in 2030, we are to believe that our nice multi-national companies will have transitioned to expensive green hydrogen, but in the meantime, they'll keep using plenty of cheap fossil fuels if you don't mind. But it's a promise, at some point they will definitely transition to expensive green hydrogen, because capitalists care more about the environment than they care about their profits....

[@FabioCapela]

When thinking about hydrogen weight you need to think also about the weight of the hydrogen tank. A tank capable of storing hydrogen at the high compression rates needed for it to be useful as a vehicle fuel is very heavy, much more than a regular fuel tank holding the same energy of just about any liquid fuel, and the difference is large enough to not only nullify the advantage hydrogen should have in gravimetric energy density but even to make it lose, and by far, to fossil fuels. As for the cooling, that is only if you are storing liquid hydrogen. Essentially you can choose if you want to store hydrogen at temperatures close to absolute zero or at pressures that require extremely heavy tanks that would explode like a bomb if they were ever damaged; it's one or the other, you don't need both.

[@philipperapaccioli2868]

@@orionbetelgeuse1937 Aviation was born with kerosene and will die with kerosene. No other energy source is dense and light enough to replace it. e-fuels are and will remain very expensive. Ground transportation can largely be electrified. Shipping can transition to green hydrogen when oil runs out. Steel production can transition from coal to green hydrogen if there is the political will as green hydrogen will be far more expensive. Heating and cooling can be electrified. Fertilizers can be made from green hydrogen when oil and gas start to run out. Chemical industry can transition to green hydrogen, plant based chemicals provided we reduce our consumption of meat.

[@philipperapaccioli2868]

@@orionbetelgeuse1937 Yes German WWII synthetic fuels were made from coal. Very environmentally friendly. The production of agricultural methanol and ethanol are heavily subsidized and leads farmers to import agricultural waste from South America and Asia to make even more agricultural methane and ethanol. You can not feed a warming planet and produce agricultural methanol and ethanol in significant quantities at the same time. Two thirds of the world's electricity is currently made from gas and coal (including a fair share of German electricity). Iron ore reduction for steel making requires the use of large amounts of coal. If the world ever starts producing significant amounts of expensive green hydrogen, made from hydrolysis of water using solar and wind to produce the electricity, that green hydrogen should be used to replace coal in iron ore reduction for steel making, powering ships across the seas, and as a substitute for coal and gas as a source of always on electrical production. When gas runs out this century, green hydrogen will be needed to manufacture fertilizers. Giving a good conscience to holiday travelers flying thousands of miles or Porsche buyers is not a priority. And right now, non existent green hydrogen is being used by industry to give people a good conscience so that they change nothing in their consumption habits: flying, driving, heating with fossil fuels, and mass consumption.

[@philipperapaccioli2868]

​@@orionbetelgeuse1937 You obviously have a good understanding of the chemistry involved, but do not seem to have or pretend not to have a good understanding of the economics behind agricultural methane production in Germany. It is massively subsidized as the electricity that farmers produce from the methane is bought at 19 cents per kilowatt which is roughly five times the average sport price for electricity prior to the Ukraine war, The subsidy system had to be curtailed in 2011 because of the excesses it generated: - farmers were massively using imported corn. In new installations, this has been caped to ONLY 60% of the material feed, - 14% of farm land in Germany was being used for energy production. Since the subsidy regime has been reduced, agricultural methane production has stagnated in Germany. So in theory, agricultural methane is great, it could use as you state agricultural waste, but in practice it only works when heavily subsidized, and when it massively uses corn and other primary food stuffs. Despite all of that, agricultural methane accounts for only about 1% of German gas consumption, despite utilizing 14% of agricultural lands. The transport sector in Germany, cars, planes and trucks, account for roughly 40% of primary energy consumption. Agricultural methane accounts at most for 0,5% of primary energy supply in Germany. So yes, e-fuels are a green smokescreen to encourage people to keep flying, keep driving ice cars and keep consuming with abandon.

[@kierank01]

Hydrogen is the last piece of the puzzle We need to max out the electricity infrastructure, and create electric hydrogen only on demand, where current fossil hydrogen is manufactured/used Hydrogen transportation is one of the most ridiculous idea ever

[@auspiciouslywild]

It might make sense in transportation for some very niche cases. Like longer range ferries that travel between two fixed destinations, if hydrogen can be made economically on-site at one of those locations. Medium range airplanes might also be a possibility. But I’m also very sceptical. It’s not a good fuel. If you could efficiently capture some carbon and combine it with the hydrogen to make methane, or even a liquid hydrocarbon, that’d be better for fuel storage. Or combine with nitrogen to make ammonia. Easy to store but rather toxic so not ideal

[@bovo698]

That's what I thought, Hydrogen should be produced for surplus green energy to be used when this energy is not available. At night for solar panels for example. So use H2 only as a battery. For this we wouldn't need to transport it anywhere

[@Axolotroll]

While this obviously has shortcomings that were definitely witnessed in like 1937, hydrogen could still be moved around by just filling a large gas bag with it and putting propellers on it.

[@zen1647]

Australia hopes to export green Hydrogen to EU. That's a worthwhile transport scenario.

[@aenorist2431]

There are at least a dozen better energy storage systems that do not have abysmal rates of return. Heat storage in sand, rock, water or salt. Battery storage, both grid stabilizing lithium and load shifting flow batteries. Hydrogen wastes so much of the input energy, it cannot seriously be called energy storage. Its an energy wastage process.

[@richdobbs6595]

The realistic use of green hydrogen is for cases where it is directly useful - ammonia fertilizer production, desulfurization in oil refining, and non-coal based steel production. If you can't do it there, no point in considering it for transportation and heating usage.

[@annemariesmith5459]

Hyting in Germany for heating. It's going to happen.

[@richdobbs6595]

@@annemariesmith5459 Why? Batteries with heat pumps are more efficient for renewal energy.

[@enriquellopisegea3568]

I feel like doesn't represent the whole picture of Hydrogen vs electricity, first and foremost because it is not Hydrogen vs electricity; it is Hydrogen AND electricity: Electricity is easily transported but very inefficiently stored. Hydrogen is easily stored (relatively, pressurizing it is still a pain) but not very efficiently transported. Things that are fixed to the ground or can have a connective line are better off using electricity (heaters, trains, industry, etc.) Things that cannot be connected to ground and need to store energy on themselves are better off using hydrogen (cars, trucks and planes). This last statement is solely dependent on how easy it is to produce and recycle batteries. If we consider the entire lifecycle (manufacturing, usage and recycling of it) of an EV against a regular combustion car it is probably a match, since a ton more energy has to be put into the manufacturing and the recycling of it. A hydrogen car would have the advantage of same manufacturing and recycling cost of a regular combustion car with no emissions during its useful lifespan. Hopefully in a couple years time we'll achieve the solid state battery with non-hazardous, easily recyclable metals. That could make electric transportation on a mass scale possible. Up until then I won't support the EV transition.

[@auspiciouslywild]

I think you’re using the wrong words.. hydrogen isn’t *efficiently* stored. As in energy efficiency. You lose a huge portion of the energy in electrolysis, compression and in the fuel cell. It can be stored with very high gravimetric energy density. That’s a nice benefit. But the *volumetric* energy density is actually very bad. That’s why BEVs have more interior space, and often a drunk, when compared to hydrogen cars. BEVs are already use less resources than combustion cars within 2-5 years of operation. Recycling batteries is much more efficient than mining virgin materials, so when that’s a significant factor (in 20 years or so) BEVs will be a *lot* less resource intensive than combustion cars. Hydrogen cars use some very expensive and resource intensive materials in their fuel cells. There’s on-going research to improve that. And they also need some batteries anyway for regenerative breaking. It feels to me like making EV batteries less resource intensive is far ahead of improvements that make hydrogen cars viable. LFP batteries are already common, and Sodium-ion batteries are starting to enter the market. I guarantee you within 10 years, small BEVs for people that don’t need long range will be very cheap and use relatively few precious resources.

[@pin65371]

Also hydrogen is still needed for manufacturing. Electrifying everything doesnt work when you need high heat.

[@brushlessmotoring]

Battery swapping gets you both for transportation, efficient storage on the ground as backup or for renewable curtailment storage and energy trading, and quickly swapped into a class 8 during an inspection stop. Regular passenger cars spend most of their time parked, add a slow charger to parking.

[@FabioCapela]

@@pin65371 All low and medium temperature processes can be done using electric heating, as well as a number of high temperature processes, and research is underway to figure ways to convert the rest of the high temperature heating processes to electric with some promising results already. By the time we have enough renewable capacity to spare for making green hydrogen, we will likely have pure electric high temperature heating that should be cheaper than using hydrogen. And any other kind of hydrogen is utterly and completely useless for decarbonizing industrial heating. If you are converting natural gas or coal into hydrogen for use in heating, using the raw material directly actually emits less CO2 for the same amount of heat than first converting it to H2 and then using that for heat.

[@gerhardwesp3995]

Please elaborate on how modern grid-scale battery is 'inefficient' in storing electricity.

[@harmaanrajmadon7010]

Well done, @dwplanetA. I've always maintained that hydrogen was nothing more than a red herring by the fossil fuel industry. This issue needs to be highlighted more

[@DWPlanetA]

Thanks for your feedback. We posted several videos about hydrogen, check them out: 👉 kzbin.info/www/bejne/d3i3m36Afdpsb8U 👉 kzbin.info/www/bejne/aoWlpnlrh5lli8U 👉 kzbin.info/www/bejne/bXzOc3hmfcyBgLM And if you like our videos, subscribe to our channel, we post new ones every Friday ✨

[@JHawkins-jf6bs]

If hydrogen gas escapes it has a GWP which is 80 times greater than CO2 due to reactions with methane in the upper atmosphere. Professor Steven Chu, who was previously a U.S. Secretary of Energy to Barack Obama, in a recent lecture to the Royal Academy of Engineering in the UK stated that it was best to carry out H2 electrolysis very near to the point of use, with electricity taken from the national grid. No leaks should be tolerated?

[@tonglu3699]

It’s like watching a bunch of management consultants trying to manage the manhattan project.

[@waldenli9232]

Some comments want to say that hydrogen is good for energy storage. It’s not. Hydrogen is a horrible energy storage approach. It’s volumetric energy density is many times lower than hydrocarbon fuels, AFTER being liquified with super high pressure. Not to mention that you have to have strong vessels whenever you want to store and transport it. There are much better solutions on the way.

[@XGD5layer]

That is not WHY it's good for energy storage. Why it's good is because when combined with overproduction from renewable electricity sources (which are prone to wild swings in production), hydrogen can be used as an intermediary energy storage. Take steel production for example, the non-fossil-using production produces and consumes hydrogen at different parts of the process, so you can time the hydrogen creation stage to production peaks

[@waldenli9232]

@@XGD5layer You are not teaching me anything new. We all know the energy storage challenge. Hydrogen is not the solution. For short-term storage, we have batteries. For long-term energy storage or long distance transport, we have better solutions. It does not need to go through hydrogen. Steel production can use hydrogen for steel production, but that's not an argument for using hydrogen for energy storage.

[@martymcglame7781]

I'd like to see a video about how Hydrogen may be mined in the future.

[@ZrJiri]

Wasn't there some research going on that showed that "blue hydrogen" actually in reality produces enough emissions that, combined with the efficiency loss of the process, it's worse than just straight burning of natural gas without any capture? Dunno if I misremember this or not. EDIT: I was thinking of "How green is blue hydrogen", Howarth & Jacobson

[@ILSCDF]

Then why did you post this comment if you're so unsure? Surely you aren't expecting someone to reply with a genuine answer, are you?

[@ZrJiri]

@@ILSCDF Because someone might know what I'm talking about and provide better details? Yes, I actually expect people to respond with relevant information rather than childish stupidity. My faith in humanity tends to overestimate reality sometimes.

[@damianm-nordhorn116]

Maybe. But it might be grey hydrogen your talking about.

[@ZrJiri]

@@damianm-nordhorn116 Nah, for gray hydrogen it's just a physical fact that the emissions are worse. The problem with blue hydrogen is that all natural gas infrastructure involves certain amount of emissions and methane leaks as an unavoidable consequence of imperfect technology. And since converting to hydrogen requires much more methane for the same energy output at the point of use, it means more mining and more methane leaks than just using the methane directly. Not to mention the fact that sequestration technology is not there yet.

[@ZrJiri]

Found it. The paper's name is "How green is blue hydrogen?". Or just google "blue hydrogen fugitive emissions".

[@willeisinga2089]

I live in Groningen Nederland. EU. I have Rooftop Solar, 6000 kWh a year. Rent a house with Rooftop Solar Power 6000 kWh. That is 12.000 kWh Solar Power every year. I have close in boiler in the kitchen. 129 euro. Warm water powered by the Roof. I have bathroom Boiler 189 euro. DIY. Smart Induction Cooking, Airfryer, Microwave, Watercooker. Powered by Rooftop Solar. For Central Heating a LG Therma V Monoblock 60 degrees Heatpump. DIY. For 12 Years Now. No hydrogen. DIY Cheap and Easy.👍👍👍

[@johnnny777]

And what do you do in winter when the sun is not shining?

[@willeisinga2089]

@@johnnny777 what do you do in the winter? I have Greenchoice Solar Wind contract. All automatic. Summer and Winter. Works Perfect no Gas. Since 2012. That is 12 Years Now. DIY. Cheap and Easy.

[@Jakob_DK]

You read the meter one time a year? Summer production you get back in the winter? There is no magic storage in the grid. Part of the storage could be hydrogen. Here in Denmark we read the electricity meter every hour. Production is sold to the grid at current NordPool rate. The price is now, Saturday at noon, negative. It you deliver 1 kWh you pay 0,1 Euro

[@Jakob_DK]

@@johnnny777 One thing is government regulation done less good. Another is physics of energy storage.

[@willeisinga2089]

@@Jakob_DK Everything is possible. In Nederland 3 million Houses Rooftop Solar. 2 Million Heatpumps installed. Inductioncooking, Airfryer Microwave Watercooker. Close in boiler bathroom Boiler. No Gas. Contract with Greenchoice Solar Wind or ANWB variable contract per hour. Cheap EV from China, charge Point at home. Ride on the Power of the rooftop Solar. And I have the system 12 Years since 2012. Makes me 3000 a Year. I let a House same system. Again 3000 euro. Is a Profit of 6000 euro a year. Over a period of 12 year 72.000 euro. No problem Works perfect Automatically.

[@madcow3417]

Hydrogen is energy storage, like a battery. Its energy density is great, but every other thing about it is worse than existing battery technologies.

[@zen1647]

H2 is a bit of a combination as it can be used for storage and for transmission. And of course it has to be green. Many people here in Australia are hoping to export green hydrogen all the way to Europe.

[@kaasmeester5903]

Hydrogen allows for long term storage at vast scales. It can (and is) stored in geological formations, to be used for seasonal power balancing. Especially important in the colder regions up north. They could also be used locally to store surplus power from solar and wind farms. They are not as efficient as batteries (40-50% round trip) but they are way cheaper, and use far fewer precious resources. Using batteries as seasonal storage is simply not viable, the only other alternative we have is pumped hydro, of which the round trip efficiency isn’t great either, plus we lack the geology in Europe to make that happen at a sufficiently large scale.

[@waldenli9232]

Hydrogen is a horrible energy storage approach. It’s volumetric energy density is many times lower than hydrocarbon fuels, AFTER being liquified with super high pressure. Not to mention that you have to have strong vessels whenever you want to store and transport it. There are much better solutions on the way.

[@incognitotorpedo42]

The energy density of hydrogen is not that great when you count the containment vessel required to hold it, or when you consider the volumetric energy density, which is not that great. In the Toyota Mirai, the containment vessel is 17 times the mass of the hydrogen! The real world energy density of hydrogen sucks.

[@waldenli9232]

Hydrogen is a horrible energy storage approach. It’s volumetric energy density is many times lower than hydrocarbon fuels, AFTER being liquified with super high pressure. Not to mention that you have to have strong vessels whenever you want to store and transport it. There are much better solutions on the way.

[@markuslang1869]

Hydrogen is a must. Solar is a must. Wind on- and offshore is a must. Big batteries, heat pumps, electric cars, generally electrifying everything is a must. All pieces fit together. Nobody will drive with hydrogen, efuels are idiotic other than in planes. It will be alot of work.

[@kelzuya]

Hydrogen works great for things on fixed routes like trains, busses and cargo ships/ferries as once the destinations are piped it works fine. For cars that travel in ad-hoc directions to rural places etc. it is not great as getting the H there without pipes is inefficient.

[@_yonas]

For trains you are better of just electrifying the line.

[@Masterrunescapeer]

Trains doesn't make any sense as rail is electrified for most (probably all?) of Europe. Maybe in the US? Busses also seem to be doing fine with lithium batteries., same for cars (and where there's a petrol station now, there's an electricity connection). Ships/ferries seem the most likely to benefit from this approach.

[@brushlessmotoring]

Not if cost per mile is something you care about, a pre-purchased politician does not, they will be long gone with cash in an envelope before the taxpayer cost of their poor decision making is laid bare. Every single hydrogen bus and train project gets scrapped after a few years once the subsidies dry up and a commercial company has to foot the bill, especially infrastructure maintenance. Hydrogen for transport is the textbook definition of a boondoggle: noun work or activity that is wasteful or pointless but gives the appearance of having value. "writing off the cold fusion phenomenon as a boondoggle best buried in literature" verb waste money or time on unnecessary or questionable projects. "the only guarantees are higher taxes and bureaucratic boondoggling"

[@FabioCapela]

@@Masterrunescapeer The US, AFAIK, has one of the worst rates of rail electrification among all the developed nations, if not the single worst. It's why electric trucks now beat US trains in being low-carbon even when recharged using the US's carbon intensive electricity. Much of that seems to be due to US railways being private, meaning you need to convince the railway owner to invest in electrifying the rail, which is a big investment that would take a long time to pay off.

[@tonyflynn6308]

not to mention the driving factor of global climate change for those who believe in the science.

[@lamebubblesflysohigh]

It is ludicrous only if you think small and in absolutes... today when there is too much wind or not enough demand, wind turbines are switched off. Isn't that a waste? This unused capacity can be used to produce hydrogen. Same with solar. Spain has huge depopulated semi-desert areas where sun shines almost every day of the year. Great place for solar right? No... because there is no demand in that area.... but if we used it to make hydrogen it would suddenly become viable.

[@apollo7807]

We need a propper hydrogen infrastructure for ships and plains. Though there shouldnt be big hopes on implementing it in cars or home heating. Great Video

[@Menelvagorothar]

So, Hydrogen is hugely important, but there are a lot of false dilemmas in the debates. With a grid full of renewables, we will need seasonal and long-duration energy storage within our electric grids. Battery systems are turning out to be very good for leveling out the day-to-day fluctuations, however the winter-summer cycle has to be solved too in order to fully decarbonize. Most energy storage technology reviews I found cite just two possible technologies to achieve this: hydrogen and compressed air energy storage systems. The problem with hydrogen is its long duration storage, which is currently a topic of scientific reaserch, salt rock caverns and lined rock caverns being the main proposed solutions - both would allow to store hydrogen for long periods efficiently. The curent cryogenic refrigeration methods require just too much energy and make the whole process highy inefficient. Plus research is being led for the increase of efficicency of electrolisers, plus gas turbines soley used for hydrogen are being developed. Hydrogen is of course very inefficent for having a very widespread use (like for cars or heating), but is essential in order to achieve long-duration energy storage. Without that, Europe will have to continue to burn natural gas in the winters and full decarbonization will not be achieved. Also, hydrogen could be used to replace fossil fuels in some energy intensive industries that require very high temperatures, such that heat pumps just cannot provide - that's mostly concrete and steel manufacturing. All those resons are very good arguments to pour huge financial resources into hydrogen research, especially in order to achieve its efficient long duration storage in massive underground tanks or caverns, and to advance the efficency of electrolysers, fuel cells and hydrogen turbines.

[@anotherelvis]

So hydrogen research is fine, but there is no need to build pipelines?

[@FabioCapela]

Pumped hydro is better than hydrogen for energy storage, and there are more than enough places where it can be built to cover all of Europe's seasonal energy shifting needs. Integrating the power grids also help a lot. If it's cloudy in Spain but sunny in Italy you could just shift renewable energy from Italy to Spain. Brazil and China are two examples of very large interconnected grids where extra power generation can cover for a power deficit hundreds, or even thousands, of kilometers away, and if two developing countries could build it Europe certainly can too. You can also just build excess renewable generation. The seasonal issue with renewables isn't that generation stops, but rather that it gets reduced and/or consumption increases. If you build enough renewable generation to cover the worst case scenario you don't need seasonal storage, just intra-day load shifting, and even if you don't reach that any excess generation already cuts the storage requirements. And with solar panels and wind turbines steadily falling in price, building excess capacity is becoming increasingly feasible.

[@jaymacpherson8167]

Thanks DW for pointing out the limited applications of hydrogen.

[@jaymacpherson8167]

@Nimble-Au The introduction explicitly mentions the applications for automobile use, home heating, and electrical power. The story is aimed at use of hydrogen by the general public. Should they have mentioned hydrogen utility in industrial applications? Certainly. However, “limited applications” are not what the story is about. It’s about the widespread application of hydrogen as a power source for the many activities that humans, particularly individuals in day to day use of power, engage in. I believe that inherently excludes narrower applications, such as for industry. Maybe you’ve missed the media rage about hydrogen being the answer for all fossil fuel applications.

[@erikottema2620]

In the Netherlands, we already have converted most of our gas grid to support hydrogen transport by applying coatings in the pipes

[@Alexafinarul]

That was an awful initiative.

[@erikottema2620]

@@Alexafinarul elaborate

[@Alexafinarul]

@@erikottema2620 That was a totally unnecessary investment, having in view that hydrogen will most likely never be transported on a large scale similar to natural gas.

[@angelic8632002]

One tool in a large toolbox. Like with many technologies.

[@xexas3000]

The best idea is to move everything to electric AND THEN, if there is a surplus of it then make some hydrogen as back-up. And even so, a grid scale battery storage is way more cost effective than building all that H2 infrastructure. All those talks about H2 is just a way to keep fossil fuels in use a lot longer, because no way they will be using green hydrogen anythime soon, they will be using natural gas for the blue/grey h2! (most countries are not even close to 100% renewable electricity let alone have free capacity to make green h2).

[@nestserau]

The idea is to use nuclear energy to produce hydrogen. Everything to electric won’t cut it even in the most developed countries of the world, that’s why we can currently observe some countries implementing EV charging schedules.

[@unconventionalideas5683]

Here in the US, it looks like hydrogen is largely being ignored in most parts. It seems like people are open to the idea, but that they are skeptical that it will work quickly enough. It seems like most people are looking at other things first.

[@FlameofDemocracy]

Plug Power and Air Products are global leaders.

[@larryc1616]

No hydrogen cars and no hydrogen infrastructure

[@cardozodiego13]

Energy independence is something Europe needs to achieve as soon as possible. Right now I believe hydrogen is a good way to store big amounts of potential energy without the use of giga-batteries. Optimizing the production and reducing the energy waste would be my main focus right now.

[@brushlessmotoring]

Hydrogen is not a path to energy independence, it's a path to continued reliance on foreign natural gas, the Canada hydrogen to EU announcement was spectacularly dumb, but also showed the thinking of the EU is not around energy self reliance, they need put the same eminent domain muscle they put to oil and gas infrastructure to renewables too, stop letting nimby's kill wind projects because it 'spoils the view'.

[@FabioCapela]

You can't really reduce the energy wasted in making and using hydrogen. It's a physics limit, similar to how you can't make combustion engines much more efficient than the ones we have today. To put it another way, any time you use hydrogen for energy storage you are throwing away roughly two thirds of the energy, and future breakthroughs are very unlikely to change that meaningfully. If the energy has economic value many other ways of storing energy - like pumped hydro, compressed air, or big batteries - make more sense than hydrogen. Hydrogen only makes sense for storage if renewables get to the point where the energy for making the hydrogen becomes essentially free.

[@larryc1616]

There is no feasible way to make affordable green hydrogen and to store it. No hydrogen infrastructure at all anywhere.

[@Daniel-ot7hi]

Brazil is advancing in producing hydrogen from alcohol. It's a way of producing green hydrogen for a price comparable with gray hydrogen

[@FabioCapela]

It's far more effective, land-wise, to just have solar panels and use the electricity they generate to make green hydrogen. Plants - even sugar cane, the tropical plant Brazil uses for biofuels and that beats corn for this application hands down - are far less effective at storing usable energy than a solar panel is at generating it.

[@annemariesmith5459]

Japan and Germany as well. I think some people with a lot to lose are getting nervous.

[@Daniel-ot7hi]

@FabioCapela I see what you mean, but the thing is eletrolisis is way too expansive. In practical reality is way easier and cheaper to produce hydrogen from alcohol. Besides, it could be produced in local facilities, making logistics far more viable

[@Daniel-ot7hi]

@annemariesmith5459 didn't know about that, very interesting. I will look up for it. But what do you mean by someone getting nervous?

[@Alexafinarul]

​@@Daniel-ot7hiIt would be better to use that alcohol directly as a fuel. And it is much easier to store and transport and much less dangerous.

[@Architectofawesome]

You realise salt used to cost like 500x+ more before we made an effort of making progress in its mass production. Now its cheep and very affordable.

[@mv80401]

Your report states the key arguments very well. I'd emphasize that both business and the research community go to where the funds are - but only until they dry up. Academics and engineers love to exercise their minds, regardless of commercial viability. And the fossil fuel industry identified H2 as a fully paid way to protect their polluting core business.

[@georgemathieson6097]

if only those infrastructure efforts were focused entirely on renewables for BEVs 😔

[@koljaleffek7290]

i still think h2 is a great opportunity. for example to be used as energy storage when renewable energy produces more than currently used. and from there it can be used for transportation in lkw, ship, etc. instead of beeing shipped.

[@__Wanderer]

I think using H2 in houses/ cars isn't possible at all... If anything the industry has made this a green "failure" so that there is more reliance on fossil fuels. Where it however COULD help is in energy storage for electricity production. It could be stored in large quantities next to solar / wind parks and used as an energy buffer / battery when there is less wind / sunshine...

[@tkzsfen]

Fun fact: the first gas transmission lines from the 19th century were used to deliver cox gas from coal. It used to be more potent than natural gas. What was the main ingredient of cox gas? Hydrogen. It is not impossible, it is bothering and inefficient. I see it more as a secondary energy transmitter and storage cell option.

[@Petch85]

H2 was also a big idea with lots of potential when I started in University in 2006, together with Nano technology. Thus very little has happened over the last 20 years. Maybe it could be used as a battery when we are producing an excess amount of solar and wind power, when pumping water back up in hydro dams are not available, and then using it where it would be difficult to use electricity, like in planes, where energy density (specific energy) is important. What I don't understand is why oil companies, that are specialists in drilling, do not create geothermal heating and electric powerplants. There are lots of places on earth where the base load could be created with geothermal and then adding wind and solar on top of that. And you can always boost the effect of a heat pump if you can drill a few deep holes. This could be used to heat and cool buildings around the world. And who is better at drilling deep holes than the oil industry?

[@nescius2]

Let me explain this riddle to you.. how many times you can sell a hole? and now compare it to selling its content (being gas)

[@Petch85]

@@nescius2 you can drill a hole everywhere and you can bill every kWh.

[@FabioCapela]

I doubt hydrogen planes will ever become competitive; hydrogen has extremely low volumetric energy density, so it needs to be stored under very high pressures to be useful as a fuel, and those extremely high pressure fuel tanks are not just very heavy but also a pain to fit within an airplane without killing its useful passenger and cargo space. They couldn't go into the wings, for example, which is where current large airplanes store their fuel. For short flights we already have good enough batteries to cover those, it's mainly a matter of building the planes and certifying them (and China is already doing it; if the rest of the world doesn't step up their efforts it will be the whole "China dominating EVs" thing again, this time with local aviation). For long flights the most effective decarbonization strategy would likely be either synthetic fuels or biofuels, which while expensive compared with fossil fuels can be made carbon neutral and don't bring the design issues that hydrogen storage causes. And if, or when, we manage to double the energy density of the best batteries available nowadays, those would be good enough for long flights too. It should take some time yet, but it's within the realm of possibility.

[@Petch85]

@@FabioCapela Specific energy of hydrogen is 142 MJ/kg it is only ~43.1 MJ/kg for jet fuel, thus in a perfect world you only need 1/3 of the fuel making the plane lighter. I don't know if it is best to burn the hydrogen or use it to make electricity in a fuel cell. A fuel cell can have an efficiency of 60% while burning only has 30%. I assume burning jet fuel also is about 30%. Thus you might have a factor of 2 there too. Thus you might end op only needing 1/6 of the weight in fuel when using hydrogen. The energy density of jet fuel is ~34.7 MJ/L for hydrogen it deepens on the pressure but ~5.5 MJ/L should be possible (~700 bar). Thus a little over 6 time the volume. But if you need 1/6 of the fuel then it would take up about the same amount of space but only weigh 1/6. Thus I don't think it is impossible, it honestly looks very doable. On the other hand the specific energy for lithium ion battery probably won't beat ~950 kJ/kg, That is 150 times that of hydrogen, and a battery does not get much lighter when empty. To be fair a fuel cell do also take up some mass, and battery power can probably be 90% efficient. (vs hydrogen's 60%) But even at 50-100 times heavier it still sesames like hydrogen is the better fuel. And lithium ion battery at 2.5 MJ/L looks even worse than hydrogen, even when taking into account the better efficiency. But you can probably find videos on hydrogen planes on youtube that also talks about this. Airbus has a project called ZEROe, they look to use liquid hydrogen and also have one concept using a fuel cell. But that is the future. As you said, right now there are already lithium ion battery powered planes for short flights.

[@FabioCapela]

@@Petch85 You forgot to consider the fuel tank. A cylinder for storing 5Kg of hydrogen at 700 bar, similar to those used in hydrogen cars, weight around 100Kg; you need, thus, a tank that weights about 20x more than the hydrogen contained inside. And if you go for liquid hydrogen it's not any better, you then need a tank and cooling system capable of keeping the hydrogen under -240°C/-400°F (as liquid hydrogen simply doesn't exist above that), which would be quite heavy too. Taking the fuel tank into account, the weight of the fuel plus the tank containing it is lower for jet fuel than for hydrogen. This also further hinders hydrogen when it comes to volumetric energy density, as high pressure hydrogen tanks need to be cylindrical in shape, resulting in dead space around it, whereas liquid fuel tanks and batteries can be made in almost any shape you need. Also, you are way off in your lithium battery energy density. CATL is already testing a battery with an energy density of 500Wh/Kg (1.8MJ/Kg) in real airliner prototypes, and that's not even a solid state battery, so there's room to improve; besides, the battery not only is already the electricity "tank", it can also be made into part of the structure, further cutting weight. And given how cheaper to operate electric airplanes would be compared with hydrogen or even jet fuel ones, as soon as electric is viable (and certified) for a certain range, it will likely kill all competition for that range.

[@BobSmith-dk8nw]

Yeah. At one point in time like 40 years ago they built a vehicle that could run on water. It used electrolysis to create Hydrogen from the water and then burned that. The Batteries that powered the electrolysis had to be charged separately. The thing was - it was vastly better to just use the batteries that powered the electrolysis to provide electric power to move the vehicle - but - you had to charge the batteries somehow. .

[@hardware64]

Hydrogen can be decentralized, electricity depends on the grid, which is a much more vulnerable solution, and an easy target in the event of an armed conflict. The solution is both.

[@Sharukurusu]

Grid scale battery or compressed air storage can be just a decentralized or moreso because they don’t require a source of water to split. Unless the energy hydrogen is being produced with is on site hydrogen is also grid dependent, and transporting it is more complicated; it is much easier to run power lines than pipelines or drive trucks.

[@adrienforbu5165]

My (humble) opinion : Why not delaying the use of renewable energy to produce hydrogen ? I mean the first step of the energy transition is to decarbonize the electrical grid (it's the easiest) so those renewable should be used to do that (instead of producing hydrogene).

[@nestserau]

It’s not possible with renewables alone because of their volatile nature. That’s why a balancer is required be it a nuclear plant, a natural gas power plant, etc.

[@nathanbanks2354]

Learning to produce hydrogen through electrolysis is valuable even if we only use it for making fertilizer in the long run. Today, it's much cheaper to get hydrogen from natural gas. If we invest in technology and get the price close to parity, a little government tax incentives would be enough to nudge the industry into a green hydrogen. The world already consumes vast amounts of ammonia; I'd be more interested in switching this to green hydrogen than switching to hydrogen cars or trucks.

[@Jakob_DK]

Because we have times like today with wind and sun but the electricity price is 0 Euro/MWh in France, Germany, Benelux. To further on the grid, there is both a benefit of using the free power and more solar, wind power and storage will be built with higher electricity demand.

[@nestserau]

@@Jakob_DK You are incorrect. Current price is 15 cent per kWh in the Netherlands for this hour. In the evening it will go up.

[@Jakob_DK]

@@nestserau Time 12-13: price -2.12 Eur/MWh Time 13-14: price -10.66 Eur/MWh Time 14-15: price - 23 Eur/MWh Let us use the cheaper energy

[@Lifeskillsish]

It doesn't take much thinking to realize that burning hydrogen for energy is going to be less efficient than directly using energy. Hydrogen is obviously the middle man that is just in the way. Politicians are so beholden to money, corporate interests and always trying to remain in power. I hate that!

[@othmanehaffou4759]

We know that GH2 is not to be used for overall transports, but mostly for decarbonizing heavy industries / agricultural purposes. Thank for emphasizing that it is pretty much a waste of energy.

[@tHebUm18]

9:29 Climate Town YT channel had a good video on how carbon capture is a massive lie. Something like 27 pilot projects were done at US power plants, most gave up after feasibility studies said it wouldn't work and the couple that didn't spent billions and basically proved that it wouldn't work because there's no good way to sequester it.

[@tilenjeraj2684]

This is not a carbon capture project. It’s EU way to be self sufficient.

[@tHebUm18]

@@tilenjeraj2684 Did you watch the video? Blue hydrogen is carbon capture--a technique that has been proven will not work and is just the fossil fuel industry's latest lies to deceive gov'ts and keep the profiteering off our demise.

[@brushlessmotoring]

@@tilenjeraj2684 The EU has sunshine, wind, mountains and rain (hydro), plenty of self sufficient renewables opportunity, if they make hydrogen the carrier of that energy, rather than wires, they will need 3 to 4 times as much renewable buildout, but you never see a green hydrogen electrolyzer projects talk about how it's going to create additional renewable generation to power the green hydrogen creation, this is the "additionality" rule in the US Inflation Reduction Act that the Oil and Gas companies are lobbying so hard against, they don't want to actually build renewables - I don't know why, money is money, why do you have make it through pollution, why can't shell build a solar farm and power DC fast EV charging with it, why put hydrogen in the middle and waste so much of that limited energy?

[@DWPlanetA]

Hey there. Some years ago we also published this video "Can carbon capture ACTUALLY work?" 👉 kzbin.info/www/bejne/gHnWXpiNfcdkbMk

[@brushlessmotoring]

Nicely done, concise, accessible, not preachy, not too deep a dive, but accurate, and covers the basics very well, a perfect primer to that uncle at thanksgiving saying he won't touch an EV, heat pump or induction hob because he is waiting for a hydrogen.

[@DWPlanetA]

Glad you enjoyed it! Make sure also to subscribe to our channel for new videos every Friday. ✨

[@jensstubbestergaard6794]

Over 2023 green Hydrogen got 40% cheaper simply because that is the cost drop of both solar power and hydrogen generator. Since the average growth in solar power capacity is 37% and 2023 as a consequence saw 37.5% increase totalling 444GW we know there is zero risk of running out of renewables. Green Hydrogen generators are clearly growing faster than solar but only for a limited time.

[@user-ie4tt1xp7j]

Hydrogen may be a part of the solution, but not the solution itself. Yes, it definitely has some good use cases. But Europe should invest more in biomass RnD: alcohols, biogas, and biodiesel. Plus, common chemical elements batteries, like Sodium-ion ones. I still don't understand why it wasn't done a long time ago, despite the obvious understanding of how dependent Europe is on oil and gas.

[@johncompassion9054]

Silver bullet: Invest most money in finding a better battery that does not require extracting rare earth minerals and do not take up a lot of space.

[@FabioCapela]

You know that China's LFP batteries, which are already almost as good in energy density as traditional batteries and better than them in just about everything else (including cost), use no nickel or cobalt, replacing those rare-ish minerals with the very common iron and phosphate, right? Over 60% of the batteries made in China are already of that type, with production quickly converting to them (as they are more cost-effective), and most Chinese EVs use them. (Incidentally, I would never buy an EV with a traditional NMC or NCA battery. LFP batteries tend to last some 3x more, so they mostly eliminate the potential issue of needing a very expensive battery replacement down the line.) The main issue with using those seems to be a political issue in that we would need to either buy them from China, or license China's tech for use elsewhere (and, thus, pay royalties to China on every such battery we made).

[@larryc1616]

Sodium ion battery is being first implemented in a Chinese ev this year.

[@guru47pi]

Glad to see coverage is finally catching up to the reality of efficiency, distribution, cost, competition from other techs. Hydrogen is just impractical unless you use it immediately, like we currently do at oil refineries

[@trowawayacc]

The issue here is europe does not want to commit to hydrogen. Batteries where bad for a very long time till very recently. Hydrogen was not even considered till now bc of russian crissis. Money interest keeps limiting our capacity to innovate by opposing or delaying modernization.

[@martinbachle635]

the best reporting on hydrogen I have seen so far. I wish you would continue a feature on the role of green algae and how it was played by big oil

[@DWPlanetA]

Thanks a bunch! 🌿 We do have this video that you might want to check out 👇 "Why the world needs more algae, not less." kzbin.info/www/bejne/mJTcepWnaLObf5I

[@Banzai51]

The car industry in particular loves to do the EV/Hydrogen switch. They'll start with EVs get them going to the point they seem viable, then switch to Hydrogen. Just when you think hydrogen in viable, they switch back to electric. In fact, this is happened several times since the 90s. It keeps both technologies starved research results so they can keep chugging on with internal combustion engines.

[@flotsamike]

It's frustrating that the most space efficient way to transfer hydrogen is either as ammonia, methane or a paraffin.

[@martythemartian99]

(first an admission: I know very little) I tend to think the best use for green hydrogen would be for shipping to replace that black tar used in many vessels, and possibly for rail freight when line electrification is not easy to do.

[@wyvernlord23]

It's so frustrating that the solution has been known for decades (nuclear) but the planet is collectively pretending that it doesn't exist.

[@wyvernlord23]

You can have all the electricity needed for electrolysis with zero carbon emissions to get your green hydrogen by slapping a nuclear plant on the end of it

[@Ianmundo]

You only need hydrogen where you can’t get electricity, maybe works for some shipping but never makes sense for land-based use

[@pascoesabido6644]

Important to also look at the hydrogen the EU plans to import. Producing green hydrogen needs a lot of water, yet the EU wants to import it from water scarce regions like Morocco and Namibia. It's also leading to lots of land grabbing and impacts on local communities and their environments. It's the same old story we've seen with oil and gas, but now we're pretending it's green.

[@vrotslav]

In Poland we have a significant problem with PV over-production. Electrolysers could be a fast-track solution. It wouldn't make enough H2 to for mass usuage but should be sufficient for (part of) public transport in nearby agglomerations.

[@raimez2]

Not Bert from Geology saying hidrogen rocks😭😭

[@foolwise4703]

You are not discussing the key selling point though: We can store the stuff for a long winter and make it from excess electricity.

[@fanton2416]

it's a very simple, school level physics and math here: just take a number of 10M tonne of H2 from the "Reality check section" and try to convert it to the equivalent Li-ion storage, would give you billions of tonnes of Linthium needed to store that amount of energy. Its also a huge industry and environmental impact, yet being ignored here by the DW editors and their invited "experts" that represent very biased point of you.

[@gregvanpaassen]

Electrolysed hydrogen is needed to make steel and fertilizer and plastics. That's about it.

[@FlameofDemocracy]

Trains, buses, trucks, ships, heavy moving equipment, and 24 hour logistics, such as ports and airports, are the hot growth areas of the day. Airplanes are perhaps a decade out.

[@michaelmaravgakis9653]

Excellent presentation of the situation. There is although an Australian company named CER - Clean Energy Resources that has managed to produce hydrogen from coal in a zero emission process and owns the relevant patent. There's also it's subsidiary company responsible for implementing the technology in Europe, CEREuropa. Very interesting case! They are able to feed the produced hydrogen to air turbines and directly produce clean base load electric energy.

[@DrkCarbalt]

The problem with hydrogen is to hat it is really hard to process and transport and it consumes a lot of energy to be produced so it ends being more expensive than using oil. There was this project about using a hydrogen gel or paste to make it more accessible to manage and transport

[@fayebird1808]

Last October. France discovered a Geologic White Hydrogen source underground containing, "between 6 to 250 million metric tons of hydrogen" Why are you not discussing natural reservoirs of hydrogen?

[@brushlessmotoring]

Because it's just the next phase of distraction now the true cost and impracticality of green or fantasy of blue hydrogen has been revealed, it's yet more lobbying, obsfucation, distraction and delay from what we have right in front of us already: heat pumps, ev's, induction, "white" hydrogen does not exist at production scale and solves none of the transportation problems, even if the hydrogen was free out of the ground, it would still cost a fortune to capture, purify and transport, and would likely have fugitive emissions worse for global heating than methane. Try to stop falling for all these 'hydrogen buzz' articles you see everywhere, they never, ever, turn into anything real or useable, and methane is always subbed in instead, which was always the actual, real, unspoken plan. Hydrogen hype is an oil and gas play to keep methane in use and keep people on the fence about electrification, and it continues to be effective in both roles, ask anyone holding off on trying an EV because they are "waiting: for hydrogen cars.

[@FabioCapela]

Those are not believed to be even close to what would be needed to cover our energy needs. Also, the worst thing about hydrogen isn't making it, but transporting it. Thus, underground hydrogen reserves are a nice bit of free energy for whichever cities they are close to, but don't really solve the decarbonization needs.

[@fayebird1808]

It was my concern that it was not mentioned and discussed. There are miners in my Ontario looking for hydrogen with Investors money. Maybe they know something about profits? @@FabioCapela

[@Souchirouu]

Both the US and China are investing big and really big into hydrogen. So is Japan who has made some very noteworthy advances into producing the stuff. The EU is a massive market and has some of the worlds largest ports such as Rotterdam and Antwerp which. So having their own hydrogen to sell could be very lucrative. Imagine if Germany restarted all 10+ nuclear reactors and used them to use true green hydrogen on mass. Japan is already doing this. It could also use much of the unused green energy produced during peak hours where demand is low or the grid can't handle any more. I am not sure what processes specifically would benefit from the most. Right now large freight trucks seem to most common as big batteries are heavy and slow to charge and would require radical different infrastructure. It would be a lot cheaper to use existing systems for oil and modify them. Trucks generally run diesel which is way more polluting than the more refined fuels that go into consumer cars. There is also the material problem that solar panels and batteries in its current form have. Hydrogen has the potential advantage of requiring significantly less rare earth materials. It is generally also easier to transport and use in locations where the grid might not be available or unable to provide the amount of power required which would be useful construction projects in more rural areas. That would of course require them actually get stuff done... maybe less wars and more honest work?

[@sjf29]

Without Hydrogen, will be forced to give up global travel.

[@fredbloke3218]

Methane can be turned into hydrogen and black carbon which could be buried - but that would waste half its potential energy.

[@AndreLeRoux81]

With all the losses in producing hydrogen; hydrogen has a future, when electricity costs next to nothing.

[@armwrestlingprofessor]

I love the saying "hydrogen is like champaign, you use it for special occasions where water wouldn't suffice"

[@GranRey-0]

We could use hydrogen like an inertial "battery" for renewable energy sources that overproduced at peak times and then are lacking like solar. If you produce it on the same site as a hydrogen steam turbine the transport is also taken care of.

[@franciscocruz3088]

Well, the transportation problem can be fixed if the hydrogen production is decentralized. This means to place the elecrolysers where the consumption is. For exemple a gas station or a power station.

[@TimothyWhiteheadzm]

I still recall a Scientific American magazine in the 90s all about the coming 'hydrogen economy'. The funny part was that if you actually read the whole magazine you came away with the opinion that hydrogen was not the way to go and yet there it was, proclaiming that it would happen anyway (at the time it was the Bush administration pushing for it). Of course it never actually happened but because so much finding went towards research projects into it instead of into better alternatives it delayed the green energy revolution by decades (as was the intent of the oil companies pushing for it).

[@-Rishikesh]

Building hydrogen pipes is the most stupidest thing. There would be so much wastage in the tubes. Just improve the transmission lines between countries or the points and make h2 decentralised and near the consumption. Oh wait then the fossil fuel companies cannot mix in their allegedly* blue hydrogen in, who knew…

[@javastream5015]

Russia has even longer pipelines for natural gas.

[@-Rishikesh]

@@javastream5015 Yes but H2 is completely different from natural gas. There are more chances for h2 to leak out of the tubes because it is so light..

[@javastream5015]

@@-Rishikesh Now the question is: How much more? What is the resistance when pumping CH4 and H2?

[@-Rishikesh]

Some of it is mentioned at 6:47 Essentialy every existing pipe network is entirely different. If new pipes are being laid then there is a argument to be made, but even then it's just too costly and more research has to be done to pull it off correctly. Which requires time. Time being a resource we currently lack..

[@petesig93]

Hydrogen - the Great Distraction 🙄

[@WannesBekaert-mv9jt]

All the while China is happily racing ahead in all types of electric solutions. It's another lost decade for European industry and the climate... It's not certain we will ever be able to catch up. Thanks fossil fuel industry!

[@prohacker5086]

Using excess solar panel energy to generate hydrogen can be of good use for the steel industry and few others, but using hydrogen as battery for cars and homes is at all efficient and may never be.

[@Chalisque]

We have three choices: fossil, hydrogen, or battery. Battery is so expensive with rare earths and other stuff needed to make them, that a Tesla has the carbon footprint of years of a fossil fuel car before it's driven a single mile, and will take years until that carbon debt is paid off; fossil is fossil; and all we're left with is hydrogen. But that hydrogen needs to be made by electrolysis, rather than splitting hydrocarbons and dumping the carbon, but that is more expensive and hydrogen producing companies aren't forced to do that. Then it makes more business sense for fossil fuel companies to lobby and pay PR companies to talk down the opposition, and similarly for the battery lobby as hydrogen is a threat to their growing market.

[@DJPrince2032]

As an American, I see Hydrogen as a must. Of course it's not going to take over everywhere (nor should it). But there is no more obvious solution for steel production, planes, cross seas shipping, and long distance hauling than Hydrogen. Clearly batteries are not the solution when you think about the planes, ships, and semi-trucks, you can't just add more batteries or stop every so often and wait an hour or longer to charge up. Semi-trucks have a shot if you can make them lighter with a better range, and include a sort of station to change the batteries out to keep them going... but then we are talking about an equally insane investment into a sort of station like those. People say the sort of mega chargers for those, guess what they will still take 20+ minutes to charge, and you would have to have a major overall of the electrical grid system to carry that kind of electricity, especially if we are moving all our sem-trucks over electric, they would all need that mega charging. So it seems like building out hydrogen fuel pumps seems obvious to me, and if we are doing it for semi-trucks, might as well do it for cars. On top of that, we are already wasting a ton of energy. Take Solar, it makes most of the energy when the demand for electricity is not very high, and when it's not making any energy which is in the evening, that's our peak hours, so we use the natural gas power plants, but we can't just crank those up like the volume on a radio, so those have to be on throughout the day so we are just wasting energy like crazy, it's as if we should be using all these cheap solar panels to make hydrogen, and honestly be building nuclear for our grid needs, but that's another story for another day.

I am very happy to hear such an objective and rational explanation on this topic 👍🏼 thank you very much for creating these videos - I am excited for next friday

[@DWPlanetA]

Thanks for your feedback. 🌱 Please make sure to subscribe to our channel you won't miss any of the new stuff!

[@Julian_Wang-pai]

What about 'mineral' Hydrogen - extracted from underground..?

[@fayebird1808]

I find it telling that there was no a mention about France's discovery of white Hydrogen in the Eastern provinces last year.This is potentially a cheap source of Hydrogen . Flowing like natural gas out of the rockbed.

[@lorenkuhn3806]

You mean fossil fuel?

[@Julian_Wang-pai]

@@lorenkuhn3806 : no, accumulations from a chemical process involving serpentinization of iron-rich minerals: they react with oxygen from disassociated water molecules leaving hydrogen to accumulate underground. As such this requires these rocks (normally extremely deep below ground level) to be 'drawn' to the surface, usually in particular plate/continent tectonics contacts that are opening up/spreading apart such as the East African Rift Belt (check it out - very interesting story)

[@makemineapint]

Hopefully there will be enough to decarbonise high emission industrial processes and (possibly) produce synthetic fuels for aircraft, but given all the issue regarding storage and transmission I don't think it's going to be worth it for most transport and domestic heating uses.

[@Julian_Wang-pai]

@@lorenkuhn3806: I guess but H²O beats CO² hands down on this existential matter, if you can understand my slightly arry chemical nomenclature 🙂

[@PoweredbyRobots]

Hydrogen has a place in the energy transition but it's fast being supplanted by far cheaper tech like sodium, sand and iron batteries.

[@davdua1991]

the argument for hydrogen is that it can be stored, much like natural gas, and we are yet to find a way for massive storage of renewable energy, that's why the EU is investing in hidrogen, hidrogen will also have a role in heavy duty machinery, no fucking way we are going to have a battery combine... those things can't just stop to charge, they have to work sometimes day and night, so you can just put hidrogen asside because it's "less efficient", sometimes it's a tradeoff, hidrogen or even amonia is out we will be able to store electricity at the grid level, i'm talking about months and even years of storage

[@tom.jacobs]

H2 is a solution where batteries are getting to big: (some) industry, (some) transport and to store electricity for longer. It is no alternative to windparks, solarfields or other ways to produce it. It is a costly (low efficient) and challenging (technical) way to use, and therefor a last resort storage. Saying H2 is the solution implies we have an abundance (double of our needs) of (green) electricity, and with a percentage that still lays far under 50% that is maybe something for the future, but certainly not something where we should put all our money right now on. On sunny/windy hours (where our current needs are below the output) we could produce it, but those are scarce and after sunset/wind the needs are bigger again: so then short term storage (eg battery) is more profitable.

[@Jakob_DK]

The electricity price today is 0 Euro/kWh in Germany, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Denmark That indicates to me we have electricity available at lower cost than other energy sources and a business opportunity might be available.

[@tom.jacobs]

@@Jakob_DK yeah [sunny weekend]; free electricity between 12-16h [excl tax]. The rest of the day you have to pay.. so short term storage could be business model [some batteries can/do trade, but the cost per kwh is still high - cost to buy, install and degradation in their limited lifetime - to be very profitable]. Making H2 is costing a lot electricity [33kW/kg], and with 0 on that it cuts the production cost, but installation to do so is expensive, and storage is costing extra kWh, making it anything but profitable for now. The fact that big companies [with scale and funding benefits] are holding back on investing in using this surplus, makes me wonder if there actually is a business model [the ones that are, not choosing H2 but battery]. Maybe making electricity (sun/wind) is very cheap/profitable and the 0 [sometimes even negative] is calculated into the plan. But for now a part of Europe has free charging of car, laundry and airco at home: it looks wasteful, but if we/industry adapt in usage that might be something temporarily?

[@specialnet111]

Like all great changes in history, life itself will determine the best solution. I am 53 years old. Every time something new appears, everyone tries to predict the future. Be patient… The future will come sooner. some forms of energy will expand, some will remain constant and some will decrease. After 50 years, innovation, the development of science and the needs of the people will have determined the new reality

[@urbanstrencan]

Another great video keep up with great work 👏👏😂😂

[@DWPlanetA]

Great to hear you liked it. ✨ Stay tuned for this Friday!

[@GuidoHaverkort]

The fact that pretty much all fossil fuel companies are lobbying for hydrogen tells you enough. I'm not saying it's all bad, it definitely has use especially in industry, but hydrogen for everything come on that's idiotic

[@jamesstepp1925]

Sounds like the EU politicians are making a mistake that is common in the US too. They should only be funding research, then scaling up the most promising technologies, then rapidly changing the regulations so they are not an impediment to implementation on a large scale. THE MARKET should decide what to use, based on cost analysis to ensure that the EU gets the best possible efficiency and in that regard the government needs to stay out of the way. I personally would recommend partnering with the US government to expanding the new geothermal technologies coming onstream. They have all the benefits of nuclear without the nuclear. A partnership between the US and EU means friends with common interests can maximize our utility. If we could stop the Chinese from stealing intellectual property I would say include them, but.....

[@martin_93]

EU politicians are just corrupted by huge fossil fuel companies. It is as simple as that.

[@nestserau]

The market chooses fossil fuels. Obviously. But it’s not about the market anymore.

[@martin_93]

@@nestserau 'market' is sitting mext to Ursula xD

[@unconventionalideas5683]

The US government is expanding its foray into geothermal thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act and special programs in the State of California, among others.

[@Jakob_DK]

@@nestserauthe market (Nordpool) say electricity is free today. So why not use it?

[@---nt5mb]

What I fail to understand is why our politicians fall so easily prey to lobbying from industry? When I heard about 2 years ago that certain European countries were planning to pump hydrogen through old gas pipelines, that triggered a lot of questions in my small head. I googled and found a lot of information that seem to indicate that this wasn’t a very clever idea. So what do politicians do with their questions… possible answers A: they decide they are not intelligent enough to ask such questions, so they let it slide, B. they go down the corridor to the nearest big oil lobbyist and they tell them they are overthinking it, not to worry and the politician goes away happy, C. They ask them all the right questions, realise the lobbyists are playing loose and fast with the truth, the lobbyist realising they are on to them, offer to take them out for a very nice meal or some such and hey presto their worries about hydrogen melt away with a nice glass of wine and a steak….. obviously I am being flippant here. However we have wonderful educational institutions all over Europe, why don’t our politicians pay grants to these institutions (so they remain neutral) to research these topics and advise them, rather than always listening to very biased lobbyists. I don’t understand why we keep repeating the same mistakes, lobbying certainly in its current form is not compatible with democracy and seems to corrupt it. Would love if DW would do an investigation into why exactly our politicians fall so easily prey to lobbyists, what tactics they are using and why our politicians seem so unable to resist the stories they are being told.

[@matthewbriggs9414]

10(H2O) + 4(C2O) -> 2(C4H10) + 7(O2) Why volatile Hydrogen gas when Propane (cold climate) or Butane (warm climate) gas would be much more stable to handle and energy dense? The surplus oxygen can be sold as an industrial byproduct or released into the atmosphere and the production process could also accumulate carbon-capture credits.

[@user-tu8lu5ky4k]

Your approach to trading is truly impressive. Thank you for teaching me so much!

[@ANTheWhizkid]

Would be good if there was a good European infrastructure ready on around 20 years. I’m not an expert but the good results with tokamak and stellarator reactors seem very exponential. I think 20 years is sufficiently enough to reach the break even. This could lead to an over supply of energy from within Europe.

[@martin_93]

So we built all these pipelines, H2 tank stations, we put milions of euro into fuel cell technology research, but we dont even use green H2 in fertilizer production, where there is huge need for clean H2, which is now produced in following reaction: CH4 + H2O CO + 3 H2. Even using 100% green H2 in fertilizer factory will be huge success, so why bother with H2 planes, cars and all this bullshit.

[@ww07ff]

UHVDC transmission lines makes much more sense than Hidrogen pipelines. Even Green Ammonia maybe makes more sense than H2.

[@MorningNapalm]

The problem is that going full electrical isn't the right solution right now either. By the time we have all the infrastructure for either solution, decades will pass. The question is how to get from here to the future.

[@nach1113]

Europe investment on EV and Renewable energy scalable technology is severely lacking. It's a shame for Europe to be 20-30 years behind China, which by that time was not even a shade of what Europe was capable of. And even now, after all this time and wrong choices, it seems they are doubling down on this bet for Hydrogen. It just doesn't make sense...

[@alanjenkins1508]

The EU should focus on battery storage. Huge amounts of it will be required to turn intermittent wind and solar into a reliable baseload.

[@Simon-dm8zv]

Yes.

[@aarionsievo]

You forgot to mention the costs for cooling and heavy containers necessary to store the stuff in vehicles, making it even less efficient. I am always wondering, why we do not prevent 90% of these problems, by chemically conveting the hydrogen to methane. We have the infrastructure to transport and store it, we have engines, power plants and other systems to run with it We could even use carbon from atmospheric CO2 to convert the H2 to CH4. So if not efficiency, then what is the point of using hydrogen directly?

[@lewisj7559]

Why am I not surprised by these stupid politicians promising something they’ve no clue?