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Limitless ‘white’ hydrogen under our feet may soon shatter all energy assumptions
(www.telegraph.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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White hydrogen is still a non-renewable energy and exploiting it will lead to environmental pollution.
Moreover countries with more hydrogen will gain leverage in the political game just like OPEC has currently, which has only been problems for everyone because of the tensions surrounding oil demand.
Solar and wind on the other hand can be harvested pretty much everywhere, which will give autonomy to most country and thus balance geopolitics.
Tldr: white hydrogen should keep sleeping underground
I don't know that I entirely agree - yes white hydrogen is non-renewable and yes there are environmental concerns over harvesting it, but I don't see as much of a risk in demand, given that anyone with a solar panel and some water can produce their own hydrogen.
My fear is that white hydrogen will be used as an excuse for continuing to harvest carbon-based fossil fuels - "we're trying to extract hydrogen in this field but we've just gotta extract these pesky hydrocarbons in the process". There would need to be a metric fuckton of regulations in place to get me even close to on board with the process, and odds are these regulations would make it much less "cost competitive" than promised.
It kind of screams co-opting by the fossil fuel industry, doesn't it. Just like all of the efforts to make Alberta tar sands oil sound environmentally friendly, by pointing to the strong regulatory environment. Rather than focus on what will actually improve things the most, they want something that keeps them in business
Anyone can produce green hydrogen Indeed, but it will be much more expensive and therefore states will probably choose the cheapest option. I really fear it would just be "oil 2" with only a few a the issues of oil resolved. I agree it needs a lot of régulation to avoid doing the same errors all over again
Yeah, agreed. The biggest difference though is that green hydrogen provides a price ceiling that we don't really have with oil currently
But we can't, at least not in usable quantities. Electrolysis is extremely slow.
But that is a 'pollution' with pure H2O.
It doens't come out the ground as pure hydrogen
Of course not. Like everything else that you dig out of the ground.
But if you burn it in combustion engines or fuel cells, it must be cleaned before. You don't want to kill your engines.
The point is the "other stuff" coming out of the ground is still very likely pollution.
So we trade one polluting mining operation for another, but we get a fuel that burns cleaner and doesn't produce greenhouse gasses.
Look, I'd much prefer we switch to solar/hydrogen, but we can't say that X is bad because X isn't perfect, especially when the alternative is far worse.