Biden Awards $7 Billion For 7 Hydrogen Hubs In Climate Fight Plan - Slashdot

Posted by BeauHD

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  by NFN_NLN ( 633283 ) on Friday October 13, 2023 @11:42PM (#63924117)

  From the article: Hydrogen is produced by electrolyzing water, and the fuel can be considered clean – or low-emission - if it is produced using renewable energy, nuclear energy or natural gas with carbon capture technology attached.

  So Nuclear and Natural Gas... the two things were were told are "bad" are the energy sources for the thing that is "good". Understood.

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  • • Re:

      LOL you MAGA gits vomit up your hate every chance you get. We're all laughing our butts off.

      • 4 hidden comments

      • • Re:

          "likes it here" instead of "lies it here"

        • Re: Alrighty then.

          ROFL "my uncle said" that post was a lot of wasted typing by a 12 year old.

        • Re:

          How can any business that relies so heavily on government subsidies be so influential among elected politicians? Here's my guess, a large portion of the government subsidies ends up as donations to the re-election campaigns of these politicians. This is a money laundering scheme, washing government funds through these "green" businesses to end up funding re-election advertisements and rallies. As implied in the parent comment this is not questioned because doing so brings accusations of being a "denier"

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      LOL "the left".

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    BBB contained some good stuff and some stupid stuff, and the hydrogen subsidies are one of the stupidest.

    But that's the way you get legislation passed. There has to be something for everyone, and that includes tossing some subsidies to legacy fossil fuel companies so they don't lobby against the bill.

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    • Re:

      2 Americas. One that benefits from these bills monetarily and legally, the the other that pays for it and are controlled like sheep.

    • Re:

      The subsidies are not for hydrogen.
      They are for infrastructure. Which happens to be relevant for the future hydrogen industry.

      What a fucked up country and world few that a government aka a society can not build up infrastructure which everyone later will need, depend on and benefit on: without waiting for the private sector. Which is usually to late and to expensive, trying to kill competition and rip off customers.

      You make fun about Germany having high electricity prices - for households - and forget that

      • Re:

        Cheap, reliable, and plentiful electricity is one of the great things about living in a first world society. Nobody really wants to pay four times as much, for anything. Besides, we are constantly told renewables are the cheapest form of energy there is. So what is your excuse again?

  • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Saturday October 14, 2023 @04:42AM (#63924369)

    So Nuclear and Natural Gas... the two things were were told are "bad" are the energy sources for the thing that is "good". Understood.

    I like how you left out the bit about carbon capture and are now trying to reframe history as someone backpeddling on natural gas.
    Mind you natural gas wasn't framed as bad. Quite the opposite, it has long been pitched as a transitional fuel with a far lower carbon intensity than what we were burning at the time.

    Also nuclear is bad or good depending on whom you ask. You are quoting one author from Reuters, not any official government declaration on good vs evil nature of power sources.

    Do you typically obey everything you are "told" by anyone who writes something on the internet?

    • > I like how you left out the bit about carbon capture

      Carbon capture doesn't exist, is the problem.

      Ref: https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao... [gao.gov]

      To date, there has been only ONE at-scale carbon capture attempt, which was still a dismal failure. The Petro Nova plant spent over a billion dollars to capture less than 10% of the emissions from a coal powerplant - the carbon capturing equipment itself being powered by an entirely separate, dedicated natural gas powerplant - and the captured carbon was only used to assist in extracting oil by injecting it into wells. Being hilariously expensive and obviously not worth the trouble, the project closed down in 2020.

      The reality is "Carbon capture" is just greenwashing and an excuse to delay transitioning away from fossil fuels.
      =Smidge=

      • Re:

        This entire article is talking about a future development. None of it exists. But this is completely irrelevant to my point in that you're being dishonest if you think that somehow this is reframing past discussions about natural gas.

        I'm sure buggy whip manufacturers laughed at the first car too. The issue is carbon capture works in theory. And by that I mean the chemistry of it is understood and has been demonstrated to work in pilots. Nothing works until it's built. Oil refineries used to be a dismal fail

      • Re:

        Greenwashing is pretending to have a solution without putting any effort or expense into the problem. Carbon capture, is a legitimate technical solution that companies are sinking a huge amount of expense into trying to get to work, which if it does will have a major positive benefit.

        It's the opposite of greenwashing, it's a direct investment in a solution.

  • Re:

    Yeah this is another green scam. Ignore the nuclear/natural gas behind the curtains actually powering the process. Hydrogen just acting as temporary storage like a battery. A very very expensive battery system. $16b from taxpayers, who had to work until April to pay all their state/local/federal taxes to support this BS. Anything not paid for with tax revenue, is borrowed from *future* generations, with interest. So spend wisely. This is yet another fraud under the guise of saving the world.

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      So what is your counter proposal?

      • Re:

        So what is your counter proposal?

        Why would you assume that he had one?

        You cannot note the flaws of a current hypothesis unless you can articulate a superior process? Should a flawed solution be continued, indefinitely, at any cost, until a better one is proposed? How many billions/trillions/whatever is reasonable to funnel into something that is failing, until you come up with a better idea?

        When you finally discover it, will you have any money left to funnel into the better idea?

        • Re:

          In general, no that would not be required but there is a particular debating style of pouring scorn on alternatives because someone supports the status quo only.

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    You know there were three things, not two, right? Surely you could have edited the "quote" so that it could lie better for your narrative.

  • Re:

    Straw man.

  • Solar storm

    In other news, a solar storm could damage electrical grid. Diversifying helps manage risks and offers alternatives in select use cases. Hydrogen has plenty of obstacles to be competitive but specific use cases could be useable as an alternative backup. Yes oil and gas better but trying to reduce due to emissions.

• • Banks have MUCH larger failure rates than that old Obama program.

    Solyndra was not a real scandal; those loan programs gamble on things that won't get much funding any other way but could do something with huge national benefits. They were doomed but success was possible unlike horse paste... (FYI, the initial report also indicated the level of success was at a fatal dose.)

    • Solyndra was not a real scandal; those loan programs gamble on things that won't get much funding any other way but could do something with huge national benefits.

      The whole program made a profit for the government.

    • Re:

      True, it was only $400M, which is, like, 30 minutes of federal spending, and a "scandal" means someone did something crooked, not just dumb.

      But many people tried to warn the Obama administration that it was a poorly run company using technology that wasn't gonna work.

      • Re:

        Deliberate stupidity is just as bad as dishonesty.

    • Re:

      its my understanding that solyndra failed due to deliberate actions by china to sell at a loss in order to bankrupt Americas attempt at getting a lead on the production of newer solar technologies, often obtained by corporate espionage. I think the anemic response by our elected officials for that crap says more about politicians wanting to save their own asses than anything. After scandal upon scandal of chinese employees stealing secrets and giving them to china, why have we not passed a law forbidding an

      • Re:

        Probably because those spies are often US citizens.

  • Holy shit man, it's been twelve years since they went bankrupt. C'mon get some fucking new material. The amount of fraud pulled with PPP is like untold amount of Solyndras, where's the outrage? Oh that's right, that was your team that did that one, so it's cool the public got ripped on that. We get it, this one failure is all you have. I mean, what's next, we need to ask for the long form again?

    Fucking 'eh, broke ass record is what your username should be. I mean shit, the airline industry got bailed out. C'mon you can't find something in that to bitch about? THE FUCKING CRUISE SHIP INDUSTRY GOT BAILED OUT!! And you're stuck on Solyndra? My dude. . . 2011 called, they said they wanted you to move on.

    Nothing but love for ya, but dang c'mon now grandpa. We got to get with the times.

    • Re:

      i think there is no 'team' guilty of the PPP scandal. Everyone in congress holds some level of responsibility. There was such a rush to get money into peoples pockets during the shutdowns that practically every mechanism of red tape, designed to discover fraud, was put on hold in order to get the money flowing as fast as possible. IMO the after-the-fact recover of this fraud should include a special cable network channel that does nothing but out and humiliate these people. Dox the shit out of them. For som

      • Re:

        Both sides!!!

        Of course, one side would only support it for the grift.

        "Everyone in congress holds some level of responsibility"

        Unlikely, but certainly not equal levels of responsibility. Did every member of congress personally exploit PPP? Some did.

        • Re:

          you know the old expression, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. I think that the reason it was such a colossal scam was due to an over abundance of good intention with zero oversight. The reason for zero oversight was oversight delays a process and they tried to streamline the flow of cash down to just 60 days. Before the PPP debacle, I think the UNs Oil-for-Food program was one of the biggest scandals in terms of dollars. The PPP scandal completely dwarfed that scandal by an exponential factor

          • Re:

            I agree. We had a big wind storm blow through here years ago and it knocked over a lot of power lines and communications infrastructure. This caused lengthy power outages as well as making it difficult to get fuel. There's more people with TV antennas on their roof now (both terrestrial TV as well as satellite), more people with generators (I heard them in the neighborhood in the last, far less lengthy, power outage), and likely more people keeping jerrycans of fuel on hand.

            When considering hydrogen as a

    • Re:

      btw your wrong about the bailout to the cruise ship industry. I have a small amount of stock in them (when the stocks tanked it seemed like a really good opportunity to buy). These companies ended up selling a LOT of ships to the scrap yards and they also had to secure a lot of loans. The latter is the reason CCL (the parent company for Carnival, P&O, Holland America, Princess Cruise, AIDA, Seaborn, Costa, and Cunard) has not recovered to their $53 pre-pandemic price. Between paying back their loans and
• OK, here's some info that speaks for itself:
  
  Hydrogen production = natural gas (48%), oil (30%), coal (18%), and electrolysis of water (4%)
  
  Cost of hydrogen production = $1–1.80/kg grey/blue hydrogen (96%), $2.50–6.80 green hydrogen (4%)
  
  Fossil fuels hydrogen carbon footprint (remember 96% of hydrogen production) = 20% > gas or coal, 60% > diesel
  
  So... what problem is this supposed to solve? Why do we want to emit more CO2 & methane?

  • Re:

    That green energy produced in one way can't be stored in a way that needs to be used without it. I mean in theory you could take 20 Teslas, charge them up, and then set it on fire inside an industrial furnace, but I don't think that's a better option than burning hydrogen.

    Non-sequitur. Hydrogen production is just hydrogen production. The primary energy mix behind it can vary. The hydrogen you build today won't necessarily emit CO2 and methane tomorrow.

    • Re:

      OK but back in the real world, what do you think will actually happen? Please re-read the above information if necessary.

      • Re:

        Why? You're asking about a future while your above information is about the present. In the real world we can see what will happen in terms of direct investment in industry, and there's one thing certain: any number you quote from today is irrelevant.

    • Re:

      This is false. What this is is forcing a loop through Hydrogen for a tax write-off. The problem is that this loop loses 3/4th its efficiency (50% for each transition). So nobody is going to do it because its both uneconomical and it doesn't go anything for CO2 emissions unless you get the H2 from nuclear (even solar and wind can't do that). It is our societies lack of scientific literacy that allows such boondoggles to happen. We know what the solutions are, but those aren't popular solution so we get

      • Re:

        "The problem is that this loop loses 3/4th its efficiency (50% for each transition)."
        This is lie, and is also irrelevant.

        First, electrolysis is 70-80% efficient, not 50%. Conversion back may be 50%, but what are you comparing it to? The problem is storage of electrical energy, so the hydrogen round trip needs to be compared to alternative round trip costs. Battery round trips will be more efficient, probably double hydrogen but, still, so what?

        Downstream efficiency matters when you are limited by what you c

        • Re:

          > First, electrolysis is 70-80% efficient, not 50%

          You also need to account for handling and distribution losses, as well as energy inputs for upstream processes (e.g. water treatment). The fact is the hydrogen storage cycle's round trip efficiency is about two thirds that of battery storage, so you'll need about 50% more input energy. It's a losing proposition that only makes sense if you really need the hydrogen as hydrogen for something other than energy transfer.

          > There's a reason the Japanese purs

        • Re:

          "... Battery round trips will be more efficient, probably double hydrogen but, still, so what?"
          
          You succinctly answered your own question then followed up with "so what".
          
          "... There's a reason the Japanese pursued hydrogen fuel cell rather than BEV, they believed it was more via {sic} to build out their national infrastructure with hydrogen than with BEV recharging stations. The Japanese are not stupid like/. posters so commonly are."
          
          The entire Japanese economy rests on the internal combustion eng

        • Re:

          This. I'd go one further and suggest going all in on synthetic gasoline would have been a better solution. Just change the fuel to be net zero emissions, not the entire transportation system at a cost of trillions. Yes, it is a very expensive and niche market right now, but adoption at scale would (and eventually will if you listen to some people) bring the price down to be competitive with oil based fuels.
          
          No question using electricity to power BEVs directly is more efficient, however vast savings com

      • Re:

        Are wind electrons somehow not capable of electrolysis?

        • Re:

          The most efficient means to produce hydrogen from water use high temperature heat, sometimes in addition to electricity but depending on the process it may be a thermal driven chemical process. We can get heat from electricity but with the intermittent nature of wind and solar getting consistent heat is a problem. We could use thermal mass to store the heat to cover over some of the intermittency but this can be applied to any energy source. By applying thermal energy storage to hydrogen production we co

          • Re:

            Not really the question, but some of what you say is correct - high temperature electrolysis is efficient if you have the waste heat. However, building thermal plants to facilitate this may not be efficient overall financially compared to less efficient processes. It's very much dependent on a variety of factors. Intermittency of supply is an issue as start stop processes for hydrogen generation would be problematic, although in electricity terms that's an economic issue more than total supply as even if yo

      • Re:

        The problem is that this loop loses 3/4th its efficiency (50% for each transition).
        That is wrong.
        Got pointed out several times to you.
        No idea why you keep repeating that "misconception".

        So nobody is going to do it because its both uneconomical
        It is uneconomical at the moment. So we start now to make it economical. Just like with every industry humans ever built up.

        and it doesn't go anything for CO2 emissions unless you get the H2 from nuclear
        Surprise surprise: that is the plan. Dee below.
        (even solar and

      • Re:

        Interesting assertion, one that is based on ignorance. People *are* doing it. Many projects are underway to change firing of industrial furnaces, it's the reason the likes of John Zink has such a huge frigging backlog on furnace burner production. The industry *is* doing it to the point where all electrolyser manufacturers are completely backlogged with production as are producers of products to consumer hydrogen (furnace manufacturers, refuelling manufacturers, etc.) And no nuclear isn't the only solution

    • Re:

      I agree that the primary energy behind the production of hydrogen can vary but I know that without reliable and low CO2 energy behind this hydrogen production it will fail to be affordable or reliable. The hydrogen produced can be no more reliable than the energy that is used to produce it. If there's to be reliable "green" hydrogen then it needs to come from hydro, geothermal, or nuclear fission. Given that we've about run out of rivers worth a dam there's not much growth potential for hydro power. Geo

  • Re:

    If we switch to hydrogen, it keeps the oil companies and oil services companies (pipelines, transportations, etc) in the loop for the future of energy.

    Oil companies have been lobbying for hydrogen for years with great success.

    • Re:

      Yeah, that's not solving a problem. It's prolonging one.

    • Re:

      Old oil and gas pipelines are not really suitable to transport hydrogen.
      First of all: they come from oil/gas wells... there is no hydrogen production there.
      Secondly, the transport works by having pumps/compressors every few km/miles, that are powered by the transported fuel. E.g. gas pipelines burn the gas they transport to compress the gas in the pipe. That would perhaps be an easy switch from gas to hydrogen, but complicated for oil.
      Then oil and gas pipelines are usually simply steel, which is not suited

      • Re:

        It doesn't have to make sense, it has to make them money.

        As for your question, hydrogen is produced at natural gas processing facilities. You can't do that at every car hydrogen pumping station that they envision. Perhaps with electrolysis but for now that's just a tiny fraction.

        Also I didn't say it would be the same pipes. These companies are happy to sell new pipes (and they do).

        That it doesn't make sense is true. But it's public information that oil companies are lobying for large scale hydrogen gas infr

  • Re:

    Some industrial processes are reliant on spatial heat from burners also hydrogen can be used to create reducing blast furnaces to replace coke based ones.

    It's an essential part to make industry net zero, regardless of transport fuel and seasonal storage.

    • Re:

      OK, in the real world of the USA, is this what you think will actually happen?

  • Re:

    Yep, nothing can ever change, and the "problem this is supposed to solve" couldn't POSSIBLY include that.

    "Why do we want to emit more CO2 & methane?"

    That seems like a question you are uniquely qualified to answer. Because it damages the people you want damaged?

  • Re:

    Modern hydrogen production is done by splitting water with a catalysator and heat, usually solar.
    No CO2 involved.
    The rest is electrolysis with renewables, or a plant that does load shaping and prefers to waste surplus heat/electricity to make hydrogen instead of powering down the plant.

    • Re:

      Correction: 4% of hydrogen production is done by splitting water with a catalysator [sic] and heat, usually solar.
      
      The other 96% is produced from & with fossil fuels & all the CO2 that involves. Apparently, more than $7 billion worth.

• Just what are they going to use the hydrogen for? It is a waste of time if they think it will be any use for land transport. Could be used for long haul shipping and aviation, but creating hydrogen is the least of the problems with making that happen. Could be useful for some industrial processes, I guess.
  
  Great that they trying to do the right thing, but I can't help but think the money would be better spent elsewhere if the objective is CO2 reduction.

  • Re:

    The least problems still have to be solved on a schedule to be ready by 2050 if you want to have a shot at net zero by then.

    Everything has to be done in parallel now, not low hanging fruit priority.

    • Re:

      Hydrogen is a waste of time. Its a fuel and not a very good one at that. Its hard to store, it corrodes the pipes and isn't much more efficient than FF. You can't scale fuel cells as the metals in them are exotic and rare. The thing we have to do is make hydrocarbon fuels from nuclear power. Everything else is throwing tax-payer money down a black hole. If you want a shot at net zero by 2050, then you are going the wrong direction with these policies.

      • Re:

        "The thing we have to do is make hydrocarbon fuels from nuclear power. "

        Delightful. That's what "we have to do". Only do carbon extraction if we can add that same carbon back!

        Now, if only that were viable perhaps we could fund doing it. Maybe you should take the lead.

        There is, in fact, ongoing research on these types of synthetic fuels. It's sad, though, that the entire world isn't as smart as you, or that they fail to know something about renewable vs. nuclear that you do. Perhaps if only the industry

        • Re:

          What's wrong with that? It closes the carbon cycle meaning it adds no more CO2 to the atmosphere, it's no more contributing to the problem than solar and batteries. It's perhaps better than solar and batteries since it doesn't require near as much labor and materials. Also, with the carbon stored as fuel the fuel becomes a carbon sink. The more carbon based fuel we produce and put in fuel tanks the more carbon is taken from the environment and "sequestered" in those same fuel tanks, that's CO2 which is

          • Re:

            Regardless of nuclear, synthetic hydrocarbons have extra costs too. At net zero you will have to recapture the CO2, partially in situ and/or directly from air, combined with (bio-)synthesis of the hydrocarbon this ain't cheap.

            Directly using hydrogen will likely be preferable for some or all the use cases.

      • Re:

        Why is there no alternative to hydrocarbons? Why not batteries?

        • Re:

          Do the math on energy density and you will discover why batteries are not an alternative to hydrocarbons. I saw an interview with Elon Musk where he tried to talk through how a battery powered airplane would work, and what he described would have been something the size of a Boeing 747 that carried maybe a dozen passengers. The energy density of batteries have been improving over the years but we are hitting real physical limits. We are seeing BEV manufacturers, like Telsa, backing away from lithium-ion

          • Re:

            Do EVs exist with ranges of around 300 miles? What is the power plant to wheel efficiency of synthetic hydrocarbon creation and use?

          • Re:

            Where I do agree is that the stability and density of hydrocarbons is preferable to hydrogen, and in some cases the energy density is critical. However the better generation to wheel efficiency of batteries and cost means that for many applications,batteries are already superior.

            • Re:

              Where batteries are superior do that, where batteries are impractical it is nonsense to argue about the "well to wheel" efficiency of the process. There is no practical battery electric airplane so it is nonsense to sign the praises of batteries having higher efficiencies or whatever. I'll see people claim that battery powered aircraft could run this route or something but that's a niche application which has no real impact on transport by air more generally, that's one route run by one or maybe a handful

              • Re:

                Aircraft and shipping are tough nuts to crack, although rail.can offset the requirement for regional flights. It can also offset the need for long haul trucking and trucking is being electrified already. And yes, BEVs are cheaper than diesel, which is why they are being adopted. Since it is happening, then by your logic they must be cheaper. And indeed, they are.

      • Re:

        Its hard to store, it corrodes the pipes and isn't much more efficient than FF.
        That is all 1950 ideas.
        We are approaching 2050.

        You are completely and utterly wrong.

        The thing we have to do is make hydrocarbon fuels from nuclear power.
        Why, if you think we can not transport it in pipes, because it brittles them, why do you even want to make it?

        You have a problem with coherent thinking.

        If you want a shot at net zero by 2050, then you are going the wrong direction with these policies. So you want every vehicle

• So I guess the dotard OG was conned into signing this. There is no particular need for hydrogen except to greenwash fossil fuels. Hydrogen isn't a primary fuel source, is difficult to store, inherently hazardous, and difficult to transport due to the problem of containment leakage and low storage density. The Japanese are betting on it, but it's completely redundant and pointless with an electrical grid.

  Advancing the 30% of total global energy from renewables and sunsetting fossil fuels including natural g

  • 2/

    Clarification: We're at 30% of energy from renewables globally now. Increasing that to nearly 100% is entirely feasible. DRC, Somalia, Iceland, Paraguay, Namibia, Costa Rica, Tajikistan, and Norway are almost 100% renewables now. Brazil is at 80%. Canada is at 66%. Germany and Turkey are ~50%. China 25%. The US is trailing below India and Russia. Singapore, South Africa, Eastern Europe, South Korea, and most of the Middle East lack significant renewable energy investment.