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Comment by ffggvv | Hacker News Reader

can we stop shilling for green electricity? we know batteries are not charged from low carbon sources today

> we know batteries are not charged from low carbon sources today

Have you got any grid-scale "green hydrogen" projects with a higher energy efficiency than existing grid-scale renewable energy projects (solar, wind)? Because unless you do, "green hydrogen" is dead on arrival in any market.

> can we stop shilling for green electricity?

No, because we already know how to make grid-scale low-carbon energy.

Show me grid-scale "green hydrogen" and I'll retract my criticism.

This might be one to watch: Massive green hydrogen hub in Utah wins $504M federal loan guarantee (*)

Course this could end up like Concentrating Solar Power plants and end up on the wrong side of the cost-benefit equation, but I'd argue it is still worth a look.

(*) https://www.canarymedia.com/articles/hydrogen/massive-green-...

It was interesting to read about efficient electrolyzer - https://newatlas.com/energy/hysata-efficient-hydrogen-electr... .

You need to think of batteries/the electric network like an interface. We can eventually replace the electric backend with better and better sources over time without needing to change the cars, but gas will always be stuck being as polluting as it always has been. Retrofits for gas / diesel cars/trucks are few and far between.

Why can't this argument be made for hydrogen

I think there's definitely room for hydrogen, but the interface analogy falls flat for hydrogen. It's not like you can just drop in another fuel type into a hydrogen car after it's produced? The strength of electricity is that the backend is agnostic. It can be hydro, nuclear, sun, or some other future fuel. Hell, you can could run electricity using hydrogen if you wanted.

oh yeah, I meant the hydrogen production source could be changed from not green to green. Exactly if you have extra green energy you can just produce hydrogen with it.

Yeah, that's totally reasonable. I have a friend that has a Mirai and it's really really cool. We just need to build out more infrastructure.

This is HIGHLY regional. In New Jersey, half of the power generated is nuclear, and in the west, hydroelectric dominates.

We have a number of hydroelectric dams around the country, so it depends on where you are I guess.

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