It is often interesting how things are framed in international media when you know the local discussion.

To put this in perspective: The role of hydrogen in the German energy system is extremely small. There are a couple of test plants, but that's about it. Yeah, lately there have been a few calls for more investments in that area, some articles discussing a larger role in the future. But it's certainly not at the center of the debate. The headline seems heavily overblown.

At the end of the day it's a matter of infrastructure. BEVs benefit from a pre-established electric grid, end of story. Sure that grid might need improvements/hardening/modernization as BEVs become more popular, but the fundamental infrastructure exists.

Hydrogen needs entirely separate refineries/production facilities, specialized transport vehicles and fuel stations, all of which must be built entirely from scratch and negate many of its efficiency benefits. A viable hydrogen vehicle market would likely need tens if not hundreds of billions in initial capital just to get off the ground and be self-sustaining; and even if such an effort was politically feasible why not put that money into BEVs where it will arguably do more good?

Using renewable electricity to make Hydrogen is bonkers today.

Using high temperature nuclear heat is not. You just need gas-cooled reactors that can make 900 to 1000 °C steam.

This company is making gas-cooled reactor in Canada and claim they can make competitive Hydrogen: https://usnc.com/FCM.html

The processes are different from electrolysis. From https://art.inl.gov/NGNP/NEAC%202010/INL_NGNP%20References/R...

"1. SI Process: A thermochemical process that incorporates: (1) endothermic decomposition of hydrogen iodide (HI) at about 450°C in the presence of a carbon catalyst to yield hydrogen and I2, (2) recycle of the iodine to a concurrent or countercurrent column reactor where it reacts exothermically at about 120°C with sulfur dioxide (SO2) via the Bunsen reaction to form hydriodic acid (HI) and sulfuric acid (H2SO4), (3) gravimetric separation of the HI and H2SO4, and (4) thermal/catalytic decomposition of sulfuric acid (H2SO4) to oxygen and SO2 at high temperature, up to 900°C, with the SO2 recycled back to the Bunsen reaction section. In the SI process, H2SO4 acts as oxygen carrier and HI as a hydrogen carrier.

2. HTSE Process: A ceramic electrolyte and electrode electrolysis process operating at up to 950°C. Water is the only reactant, and high temperatures allow for some of the energy required to split the steam (water) to be supplied as heat as opposed to electricity alone, as in LTE cells.

3. HyS Process: A hybrid process that produces hydrogen and oxygen in a polymer membrane based electrolysis cell operating at temperatures below 125°C. In the HyS process, SO2 is used to depolarize the cell and allow it to operate at lower voltages and hence higher efficiencies and current densities as compared to higher temperature electrolysis cells. Sulfuric acid is produced along with hydrogen in the cells, with the SO2 recycled from a sulfuric acid decomposer similar to that used in the SI process."

As noted in the article, hydrogen is currently unfortunate, because the most economical way to produce it is through steam reforming of natgas. Germany already has supply issues with natural gas, not just the pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Electrolysis of water is another method, but requires a lot of electricity. Using it in the short term is highly wasteful, when the source fuels could just be used directly.

Nonetheless, on a longer timescale, hydrogen effectively becomes a roundabout instrument of space-, time- and demand-shifted energy storage, but potentially bulk-conveyable using portions of existing gas pipeline infrastructure. This compares favorably to batteries (which are heavy, solid, contain other commodities, and are non-bulk-conveyable in a comparable way), and other energy storage schemes (which are immobile or lack effective the distribution of work). It's broadly similar to hydrocarbon natgas and syngas, but without the direct release of carbon during actual combustion.

The hope in this effort to encourage progress and deployment of hydrogen-based technologies, infrastructure, and business models, and tolerate some short-term wastefulness to target a more favorable goal in the long term.

The "clean" hydrogen story when most hydrogen is generated from gas decomposition is dubious at best. Hydrogen can be extracted using electricity, granted, but the costs given are usually those for hydrogen from gas.

>Her group is calling for the natural gas system to carry a mandated share of renewable and decarbonated gases, including biomethane, synthetic methane and hydrogen, starting at 1% in 2021 and rising to 10% by 2030.

Those are most likely volume percent... methane/natural gas has 3x the energy density of hydrogen so it pretty much does not have any effect on emissions but is mostly a publicity stunt.

I remember going to the science museum as a kid and they had device the split water into hydrogen and oxygen. I wonder if we could use wind and solar when the sun is shining to do this and burn these gasses when we renewables aren't producing.

While everyone likes to mention that it's inefficient to split water to produce hydrogen (~60% efficiency round trip to produce electricity, if memory serves me), no one seems to take into account that you now also have a source of pure oxygen. Oxygen is great for producing syngas from carbonaceous materials like biomass (left over dry plant material). If used in tandem one could produce two carbon neutral or carbon negative fuel sources.

I remember back in the early 2000s BMW made a lot of splash about hydrogen-powered cars. So Germany has had a love affair with Hydrogen for a while now.

Does anyone think its a worthwhile competitor to BEVs for personal and commmercial use?

That’s funny. I’m some debates related to nuclear power very recently, I had the thought that it’s probably better to focus on using excess power from renewables to generate synthetic gas and simply use the existing gas pipelines and power plants.

The world still needs hydrocarbons. They need to be made renewably. That might only be affordable when wind and solar is overproducing, ie we’re getting “free” energy. Producing those hydrocarbons solves a lot of problems, including balancing the power output from those renewable power plants

I’m not so sure about hydrogen specifically. It just doesn’t have great properties. It’s just that it’s pretty easy to make renewably. Making synthetic hydrocarbon gases is harder, but it helps capture CO2 (at least temporarily) and is more energy dense and versatile. We also have better hydrogen fuel cells, but that could also change with time. Besides, I think this article was mostly about burning gases.

I think this is a good direction for Germany.

There inherent inefficiency in making and burning hydrogen is daunting. But there now is a larger cost gap opening between wind and fossil fuels. If that gap gets big enough, hydrogen could be a good way to store and transport wrong energy.

There's "green hydrogen" and then there's "blue hydrogen" a new way of marketing an ancient technology... coal gasification (ancient tech) along with pumping the CO2 (safely, forever) into old wells. Devil's in the details.

https://reneweconomy.com.au/hydrogen-blues-is-this-the-gas-i...

It's like Germany's answer to ethanol in gasoline. Who does this subsidize? VW, probably, which ought to be a leader in electric cars, but isn't. Although they're finally bringing out some designed from the ground up electric cars.

"What’s held back hydrogen for decades is the cost and complexity of the technology"

My landlord said it was the energy corps that were against it. The tech is so simple that you could run it at your home with a small solar panel.

Don't know if he was right.

Unlike fossil fuels, hydrogen is not a primary energy, so that article starts very poorly.

But there is no natural source for hydrogen. It's also rather dangerous, and I say that having worked in automakers facilities outfitted for dealing with the hazards.

Tesla Model 3 owner here. I don't understand why you would ever want a vehicle that must be refueled / recharged at an uncontrollable third party station instead of just having a car ready to go at home every day with the option of solar power. Will they also release cheap at-home hydrogen generators to go with the cars?

Hydrogen does sound like an interesting option for countries that can't generate the power needed to generate hydrogen for power plant scale operations with green options like wind and solar. The hydrogen could be generated elsewhere and brought into the country or regions I suppose?

I don't think it's going to pan out, for the same reason it hasn't panned out in the rest of the world despite decades of pop-sci publications saying we're five years away from a hydrogen economy. Hydrogen is more like a liquid battery than it is like gasoline, since you have to first generate the energy and then turn it into usable hydrogen, whereas petroleum gives you more energy than you use in obtaining it.

Germany should turn to safe, modern nuclear plants, eg Molten Salt Reactors.

Nuclear is needed to generate the energy stored by Hydrogen.

Really interesting that with the benefit of hindsight - the German Energiewende stared circa 2010 and their progress on carbon emissions seems to have stalled. Ironic that that was the short term effect of transitioning to use more renewables.