Explosion damages newly opened hydrogen fuelling station in Germany

[progree]

11. "Fossil fuel use is growing". Yes, energy use is growing, so not a major surprise

Citing a post from a hydrogen bot here is unimpressive, at least to me. (I have that particular bot in question on my ignore list, but the link circumvented it apparently.)

I'm not sure that poster is a "bot", and calling a DU member a "bot" is well... but for sure the person strikes me as a hydrogen ideolog. I have mixed feelings about that poster.

If you are sure enough to accuse them of being a "bot", then there are ways to let your concern be known to where it can lead to bot removal.

I don't see anywhere in this thread where I cited a post from a hydrogen bot.

The 2024 Edition ((of the IEA WEO table -P) should come out soon and when it does, I'll be posting from its tables.

Good. I've used them in many of my posts. I find it particularly interesting that even if (a huge and extremely unlikely if) stated policies are actually followed,fossil fuel use would decline by only 11% by 2050 https://democraticunderground.com/1017845732#post1

Note that hydrogen and batteries are not listed, as they shouldn't be, on the grounds that they are not primary energy. They waste energy.

No disagreement from me.

The period of growth to which I refer is ten years, all during the often advertised growth of the magic "renewable energy" nirvana that has had no effect on the accelerating growth of concentrations of carbon dioxide, which can also be delineated by numbers, like these:
Week beginning on September 22, 2024: 421.71 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 418.28 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 395.47 ppm
Last updated: October 01, 2024

I don't know though, let me know, producing some credible evidence: Are these numbers lies?

No, but I do know that correlation is not causation.

It looks to me like the main cause is that energy consumption is increasing (from 541 EJ in 2010 to 632 EJ in 2022 using the top line of the table), as one would expect from growing populations and some net economic development per capita. And not that "renewables" (or some subset like solar+wind) consume more energy than they produce. (I should subtract off the "non-energy use" numbers (25 in 2010 and 32 in 2022), but it would not qualitatively change the picture -- the corrected energy consumption numbers would be 541-25 to 632-32 = 516 to 600 EJ if I did that)

Some would argue the problem is that not enough wind and solar is being produced to keep up with the increase in energy consumption. And of course a lot more than that needs to be done to actually start bringing down the atmospheric CO2 levels.

Somehow, I think the data from the IEA's annual "World Energy Outlook," which always has optimistic "scenarios" about the outbreak of a "renewable energy" paradise that never arrives, is better than the bot's post claiming to speak for VP Harris, who all of us enthusiastically support, me especially because of the Biden administration's outstanding efforts to promote nuclear energy.

As for "the bot's post claiming to speak for VP Harris", I couldn't find that one in recent threads.

Seems to me there's a lot more money and lip service being thrown at solar, wind, hydrogen, and batteries by this administration, than on nuclear ($8 billion or so for research on new reactor technologies and loans to help existing plants to restart or keep from shutting down, and some streamlining of regulations, and what else?). You've written in a number of posts that that's just shrewed, even Lincolnesque politics, for the administration to speak up for and spend money on so-called renewables. Myself I think that they think that all of the above are helpful in achieving climate goals, and that it is not just "politics" but what their staffs tell them.

If they really and truly believed that all the things you think are harmful -- solar, wind, batteries, hydrogen, EVs -- are truly harmful, but are ballyhooing them with money and words for altruistic political reasons (somehow) -- I'd at least expect a little bit of slowly preparing us for a transition away from those harmful things with at least some mention of some of the downsides of these technologies. But I don't hear even a little bit of that. It's more plausible that they truly believe that all of the above are helpful.

I haven't said that there aren't Potemkin quantities of hydrogen produced with electricity, although the use thereof is incredibly stupid from a thermodynamic sense. The issue is one of scale, and in particular, given the exergy destruction that generating hydrogen involves, it causes the use of more fossil fuel energy than it creates.

It also depends on the end use efficiency, e.g. fuel cells and electric motors are much more efficient at converting the energy in the hydrogen to energy applied to turning the wheels, than are internal combustion engines in turning the energy in the gasoline into wheel-turning energy. So I need to see the entire cradle to grave lifecycle of both the hydrogen pathway and gasoline pathway to make that determination. (I haven't made that determination one way or the other because I only see data and arguments that cover part of the life cycle)

By the way, we utility operators love storage, even though it wastes energy, because marginal system production costs are often 10X higher at peak times than at low load times. So from a cost standpoint, its a huge operating savings, but of course the cost of building the pumped storage or battery system or whatever has to be factored in on any decision to purchase and install these systems in the first place.

And the stored energy is used to keep from having to run our least efficient units, along with the costs dollar-wise and emissions-wise of their startup/shutdown cycle. (But the emissions and other negative externalities of building and at end-of-life must also be considered).

Now I suspect that you may be an energy engineer or involved in the power industry which doesn't make you infallible on the subject of power generation, just as my understanding of mass spectrometry make me infallible in interpreting the molecular biology evaluated with that tool. If you are such a person, can you tell me whether one lights a coal fire under a boiler that's been idled because the wind is blowing, whether the turbine turns instantaneously as soon as the fire is lit, or does it take time (and energy) to bring the steam pressure up, time during which the pollutants are released for no benefit? Does a shut combined cycle plant reach maximum efficiency in a few minutes, or does it take time for the steam pressure on the Rankine cycle portion of the plant to come up? Suppose these devices are started twice a day, or three times a day, according to the weather, clouds, rain or snow, or wind or because of demand because air conditioners need to save lives from the extreme heat fossil fuel waste is causing. Does this increase energy efficiency or does it cost it? What is the economic and material cost of keeping the O&M systems up to speed when they are not available for revenue generation because the wind is blowing on a sunny day?

We have data on the minimum up and down times and ramp rates and shutdown and startup costs of units (both their fuel costs and O&M) as well as costs at various loading levels and we simulate the operation of the power system to determine the best course of action, We don't shut down units and start them up unless that's the economic path to follow.

My days at NSP were before there were signficant amounts of non-dispatchable energy resources, but from what I read, and would reasonably expect, they shut down the solar or wind resource if it's going to cost money overall and can't be economically sold.

Where on this planet has there been sustained so called "renewable energy" excesses that persisted long enough to make the thermodynamic nightmare of electrolysis economically or environmentally profitable?

I haven't seen the numbers on what it costs dollar-wise or environmentally to produce hydrogen with so-called renewable energy to fuel a fuel cell and produce wheel-turning energy vs. the thermodynamic nightmare of the internal combustion energy producing energy from gasoline, which in turn is produced at considerable dollar cost and expense and emissions from crude oil etc.

Like I say, I'm not a fan of hydrogen, I'm just sifting through what's being posted and what I find, to try to understand it all.