stu54 t1_ivee4fm wrote on November 7, 2022 at 10:46 AM

Reply to comment by YpsilonY in Dutch pilot project for hydrogen heated homes allowed to begin by alex20_202020

Also, storage is a problem. Natural gas can be liquefied and fed into a distribution system as needed. Hydrogen requires much more extreme pressures and temperatures for that.

You might think hydrogen could just be produced on demand then, but on demand power is already the biggest problem with post fossil fuel energy systems.

SweetBiscuit t1_iveei0r wrote on November 7, 2022 at 10:51 AM

>Also, storage is a problem.

It's really not, this argument is very outdated. We've shipped hydrogen from Australia to Japan already, and our existing LNG pipelines can handle hydrogen just fine with zero leakage.

The simple solution to the temperature issue is converting to ammonia, which will be happening anyway because we need it for fertiliser.

stu54 t1_iveh0ci wrote on November 7, 2022 at 11:24 AM

I don't think you are being honest with yourself about the costs of hydrogen compression or conversion to ammonia. Both options require substantial energy. Just because storage and transport has been done doesn't mean it wasn't expensive.

SweetBiscuit t1_ivelf4i wrote on November 7, 2022 at 12:13 PM

>Both options require substantial energy. Just because storage and transport has been done doesn't mean it wasn't expensive.

That's...pretty much how all new technology works. It's prohibitively expensive until eventually it's not.

The companies funding these hydrogen projects are throwing billions of their own money at the problem. If they thought that the price would always be an issue, they wouldn't even waste their time.

But they've done their homework, hired people much smarter than you or I to do feasability studies, and believe cheap green hydrogen is possible within the next few years.

So what could possibly be the point of attacking them for trying? It seems to be an almost personal issue for redditors on /r/futurology