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Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

I thought the article was fairly to the point:

> There is a “common understanding worldwide that hydrogen should be limited to applications where it would be difficult to achieve decarbonisation with other methods”, says the report by the Tokyo-based non-profit think-tank Renewable Energy Institute (REI), but Japan has instead laid out a vision of a “hydrogen society where hydrogen is used in every sector”, while promoting and subsidising the use of highly polluting grey H2.

The "save the planet" bunch are unsurprisingly not fans of plans that don't "save the planet".

edit to add: batteries are now at the point where a new pumped hydro scheme from scratch (i.e. no pre-existing dam) would be challenged to be a viable business case versus spending the same amount on renewables and batteries, even if you have a suitable geographic site for the water.

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The "vision of a hydrogen society where hydrogen is used in every sector" is probably motivated by a desire to become technological leaders in this field. Japan has fallen behind in battery technology, and Toyota was an early leader with its hybrid vehicles, but when it comes to fully electric cars, Japanese car makers are also falling behind. So I suspect they are trying to find a niche where they can develop technologies that they can maybe export later. From that point of view, where the hydrogen is coming from is not that important. And: a battery electric car is also not really helping to "save the planet" if the electricity used to charge it is coming from a coal plant...

This was a plan from 2017, before (and possibly part of the reason) they missed the chance to lead on battery vehicles. So it just needs updated, as the article suggests:

> The report outlines three key areas where the government’s strategy is severely flawed:

1) The selection of low-priority applications;

2) Prioritisation of fossil-fuel-based grey and blue hydrogen; and

3) The lack of focus on domestic green hydrogen production, leaving Japan lagging behind other nations.

> Japan has fallen behind in battery technology

If you could say a little more about this, I'd appreciate it. Sanyo (Panasonic) and Murata Manufacturing (Sony) still produce top quality Li-ion cells, among the best there are, and the best NiMH cells in the world are still made only by FDK Corporation.

The attraction to hydrogen by the automotive companies of Japan is that it would preserve their balance sheets. An ICE car produces various revenue streams for auto makers. First, the sale price, then the oil changes, and plenty of ongoing maintenance. While a straight up EV would shrink an automaker's balance sheet tremendously. The motor has one moving part that is very resilient. The motor doesn't require a transmission. Regenerative brakes means a long time between needing new brakes. And then of course, other industries that support ICE transportation. Oil refineries, gas stations and all of that.

Conveniently, a hydrogen fuel cell in a car replicates almost of that. The fuel cell is a hot, complex finicky source of power that needs maintenance and sophisticated manufacturing to create. Storing the hydrogen itself is very tricky as it tends to eat metals. It still needs normal brakes.

You can see why the CEO's of Japanese car makers could allow themselves to be deluded about how much better fuel cell technology is than EV tech. EV tech is just a battery, an electric motor and regenerating braking. This is technology from a hundred years ago and needs very little regular maintenance other than tires, a wall socket and wiper fluid.

BMW is considering charging for heated seats in a subscription model.

"No maintainence" EV cars are just platforms for subscriptions.

Hydrogen vs battery isn't about farming dollars and cents, that can be done other ways.

Have they considered ad-supported seat heating? Along with crypto mining?

But pumped hydro schemes are targeted at frequent charge / release cycles (like once a day). I think what the post you answered to you pointed out is that Hydrogen could be used as long-term storage (storing overproduction from summer to be consumed in winter). This is where batteries are maybe not the best way forward.

I have not looked too deeply into Hydrogen myself, but even this [0] fairly critical post classes longterm storage as a B (scale A: very good, G: absurd). Even though there is other alternatives that are mentioned.

[0] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/clean-hydrogen-ladder-v40-mic...

Summer storage for winter will not be a thing.

Tropical solar farms synthesizing ammonia for export to high latitudes will be.

Pretty much nothing in the renewable sector is a "viable business case" without some sort of government interference. You're speculating that batteries will be better buffers than hydrogen, but in truth nobody can predict the technological trajectories and neither presents a solution in the foreseeable future. If there really is an upcoming climate catastrophe, it would be stupid not to hedge your bets, which includes supporting hydrogen, nuclear, synthetic fuels and many other avenues. The fact that mainstream climate activists reject so many potential alternatives out-of-hand tells me that they don't truly believe in the catastrophe. They believe in fighting the monopoly man.

> Pretty much nothing in the renewable sector is a "viable business case" without some sort of government interference.

While not 100% a flat faced lie, this is intentionally misleading.

All energy production is heavily subsidised by the state, but of all methods of producing electricity as of Jan 23 2022, renewables are the cheapest.

Issues with storage, human rights, environmental impact, are a mixture of lies and red herring. How many human / environmental tragedies resulted from fossil fuel extraction?

People against battery storage don't actually care about that but they know that you do. "The card says moops"

You're arguing against a strawman. No one is seriously against battery storage. But if you take a serious look at the raw materials and supply chain issues it seems unlikely that we will be able to build enough grid-scale storage in the next couple decades to maintain reliable power for heavy industry. Some other solutions will be needed. That probably means building other storage systems plus continuing to operate many fossil-fuel power plants (at least on an intermittent basis).

> All energy production is heavily subsidised by the state, but of all methods of producing electricity as of Jan 23 2022, renewables are the cheapest.

That's not an honest assessment, because the major renewables are either geographically limited, or their production fluctuates heavily. To compare them against fossil or nuclear, we'd need to factor in the cost of the buffers, which completely changes the equation. If buffers + renewables were still cheaper, everybody would already be doing that and nothing else. People whose beliefs are challenged in this way tend to resort to conspiracy theories surrounding the fossil fuel lobby (disregarding the fact that renewables have a big lobby too).

> How many human / environmental tragedies resulted from fossil fuel extraction?

My point is purely economical.

> People against battery storage don't actually care about that but they know that you do.

I'm not against battery storage, but simple back of the envelope calculations show that production capacity is orders of magnitude away from solving just part of the problem (stabilizing the grid). Moreover, batteries do not last forever. It may well be the case that a combination of natural gas and renewables is the most effective option even from an CO2 perspective, especially if we have a way to turn surplus energy into negative CO2. Hydrogen happens to fit into that scheme, because natural gas plants can easily be converted to hydrogen plants. Then again, maybe there's a breakthrough in battery technology instead. You can't predict these things, it's therefore unwise to dismiss alternatives that don't check all the boxes of solarpunk fiction.

I find there is a selective black and white perception of the world.

For example, renewables right now rely heavily on quick-to-dispatch gas plants - and that's fine as a stepping stone to a carbon-free future. Though the plan fo eliminating it is still vapourware - maybe better batteries, maybe larger grids, maybe something else.

But creating a hydrogen economy that somewhat relies on fossil fuels, with a clear pathway to eliminating the fossil fuel component? Anathema!

I have nothing at all against renewables and batteries, it sounds neat but remains incomplete here and now. But until it's clear it can replace all our uses of energy, I remain baffled by people who would like to shoot down any potential different path to that same goal.

You are correct. This discussion is about ideological purity. Meanwhile we are still are the experimental stage to determine what technologies will actually work in the real world. Instead of "letting a hundred flowers bloom", we are railing against those who dare to violate the "little green book".

It just makes the Green movement look like extremists.

It's not about purity, it's about removing carbon from the atmosphere. All the existing industrial scale hydrogen production gets hydrogen from carbon based fuels, using other energy. There doesn't appear to be an option at this time for producing carbon at any reasonable scale without using carbon fuel sources. If we get fusion power, really cheap power, instead of splitting water using that free energy we could just directly run electric cars. There is a cynical pushing of "green hydrogen" from the companies that want to preserve their internal combustion industrial infrastructure (notably Japan), and from carbon fuel producers but calling the result 'green hydrogen'. The issue is there is no clear pathway. When/if that happens, there's still the issue of the infrastructure to manage carrying around hydro to refuel or making it at the source. There's no there there.

Did you read past the headline? It's not anathema because of aesthetics, it's anathema because it doesn't work. There's nothing wrong with shooting down an idea that you have studied and found to be counterproductive.

It doesn't say anything like it, and your comment doesn't address mine either.

1. That particular approaches don't work is irrelevant. TFA focuses on a particular Japanese policy, which may or may not be misguided. The article is light on discussion, but let's take it at face value. Should we say wind+solar is stupid because Germany is currently in an energy mess? I don't think so.

2. I don't think it's dumb at all to experiment with various synthetic fuels via fossil fuels initially. With both hydrogen and battery storage, the real devil is in the details, in particular in seasonal storage. If we can make battery, or hydrogen, or ammonia economies work, then we know how to produce things, and thanks to cheap intermittent renewables we can do it. Frankly, efficiency hardly matters at this point. If, as predicted by renewables evangelists, energy will be almost free soon, storage efficiency matters not. All that will matter is long term storage cost, an open question for any approach.

3. Regardless, my comment is aimed mostly at other comments. "Duh everyone knows batteries are better", "hydrogen is a dead end".

The part of my comment you tacitly ignored is that burning fossil fuels is somehow ok en route to renewables+batteries without a viable concrete plans on how to decarbonize fully, but not for other synthetic fuels such as hydrogen.

There's one key problem, making hydrogen without creating more carbon in the atmosphere. If they solve that, then it's worth considering. If we have fusion providing endless electric energy (which could be used to split water), then we could just use it to fuel electric cars too. There's the classic problems of lack of energy density, and hydrogen fires not being visible. I think we can probably make hydrogen containment systems better, and figure out how to make fires visible. To me it all comes back to getting the fuel. When we can do that we can consider it.

https://www.powermag.com/fukushima-hydrogen-energy-research-...

> For the past two years, FH2R has consistently been ranked as one of the world’s largest projects of its kind. According to project participants, FH2R uses a 20-MW solar PV array built on a 180,000-square-meter site along with grid electricity to power a single-stack 10-MW-class electrolyzer. Its developers say it can produce, store, and supply up to 1,200 Nm 3 /hr of hydrogen at rated power operation.

This is a "its not completely there yet but this is where its trying to go."

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