
Germany eyes new offshore wind farms dedicated to green hydrogen production - based2
https://www.rechargenews.com/wind/germany-eyes-new-offshore-wind-farms-dedicated-to-green-hydrogen-production/2-1-748198
======
qchris
For a lot of countries in the world, discussion of a hydrogen economy at any
scale seems to be a bit of a hard sell. Barring sources like steam methane
reformation from landfill-reclaimed methane, it's stuck between not being
nearly as portable due to hydrogen embrittlement of storage container
materials and ease of leak because of the small molecular size as traditional
fossil fuels (albeit less C02 intensive), but a fair bit less efficient
overall than just directly using the electricity.

That said, Germany's somewhat unique situation with regard to limited natural
capacity for renewable energy means that that, in an argument for any degree
of national energy independence, hydrogen could make sense if they can
maintain some control the means of production and export.

The mention of using hydrogen in heavy industry is also interesting, and
aligns with what I think of as a realistic stance. I used to work in the R&D
section of a hydrogen fuel cell OEM, and one of the primary applications of
hydrogen vs. batteries is in exactly the area stated: things that need quite a
bit of consistent power generation, like buses or cranes or forklifts. Areas
where recharge rate and up-time are really important, since available voltage
doesn't drop with remaining energy capacity (you have the some available
voltage until you stop supplying hydrogen to a fuel cell) and tanks can be
refilled or swapped out more quickly than batteries.

I think it's also worth noting, that at least as far as I know, the tech for
that sort of thing isn't years and years away on the energy-conversion side.
The manufacturing capacity isn't exactly at scale yet, but because of the work
put in by giants like Toyota and for specialty industries like refrigerated
warehouses, I'd put the maturity of the fuel cells themselves closer to a
TRL-7 or -8 than a TRL-2 or -3. It at least makes expectations seem more
realistic than if the ministries were to say, "Well, we'll just hydrogen all
the things!"

~~~
edejong
I am not an expert on the hydrogen economy, but I've consistently seen a
couple of important road blocks.

First, like you mention, the transport and storage of hydrogen is complicated
due to hydrogen embrittlement of iron and steel. The Dutch gas companies seem
to be very optimistic using the existing high-pressure pipe system crossing
large parts of the Netherlands to transport H2. Question is whether long-term
embrittlement might occur? how do we know? What about the smaller pipes
leading to homes? The rate of embrittlement is quoted to be ten times higher.
Do you have any wise words to add to this? Do you share my concerns?

2\. Risk of hydrogen build-up in enclosures. Hydrogen's lighter than air
property is often cited as a benefit, as it can evaporate into the atmosphere.
However, in an enclosure, it might delay detection, since it is captured in
the top of the building and presence might not be picked up with added odors.
Some buildings open mostly at the bottom, such as distribution centers. Is
this an unknown risk? We don't know, because it is actively being researched.

3\. For powering vehicles, there is tremendous loss of energy from renewables
due to transfer of energy and transport of gas. I think I've seen cited 30%
efficiency.

4\. There is an actual, continuous demand for hydrogen. However, for green
hydrogen, we will need near 100% utilization of the electrolysis plants. That
contradicts the premise to use excess energy from renewables to produce
hydrogen. The electrolysis plants would shut down when generated electricity
can be used to power industry motors directly.

5\. Subsidizing hydrogen initiatives pulls subsidy away from Photo Voltaics,
better electricity distribution and battery technology.

6\. Long-term, we will end up with two infrastructures, with all the fixed
costs associated. That might be more expensive than one (less efficient)
infrastructure.

So, all in all, I am mildly skeptical on mass-scale hydrogen solutions.
Perhaps you can make me more optimistic?

~~~
Hypx
1) Main strategy to avoid this is to just coat pipelines with plastic or make
them out of plastic. Not all metals are equally susceptible to this process,
and newer alloys are being developed that can strongly resist this phenomenon.
While it is a problem, it is a solvable problem.

2) What I’ve read is that they’ll build hydrogen sensors and alarms for this.

3) This is hugely overstated for two reasons. One, just because an process
contains inefficiencies, doesn’t mean the entire process is invalid. After
all, gasoline powered cars throw away more than 80% of the original energy
found in crude oil as waste heat. Fuel cell cars may waste more energy than
battery cars, but it is less than ICEVs. Also, you do want to have excess heat
sometimes.

Second, most of the sources of inefficient are solvable and/or were wildly
exaggerated to begin will. Many arguments against hydrogen seem to cite some
20-30 year old source, and had some extremely pessimistic projections like
hydrogen tanks leaking 20% or more of their fuel. Most of these projections
haven’t been borne out.

4) Why do electrolysis plants need to run at 100% utilization rates? In a
renewable world, almost nothing will have 100% utilization. This is not really
a big deal since electrolyzers can be turned on and off quickly.

5) That’s true of any subsidy. One of the biggest complaints of the subsidy
regime is how wasteful it is, and how poorly optimized it is for reducing GHG
emissions. It will be almost a relief if hydrogen gets of those subsidies,
since right now it is an important necessary technology that’s getting close
to zero subsidies.

6) We don’t really need two overlapping infrastructures. Limit each
infrastructure to where it is most effectively used.

~~~
edejong
Ad 1) But is that realistic, given the existing LNG infrastructure? The story
being told is that we can just pump H_2 into the existing LNG pipes.

Ad 2) Yes, in processing environments. The story that is told to us is that we
can replace LNG with H_2 to heat houses (with minimal investments).

Ad 3) True, ICEs are grossly inefficient. However, as I've seen it, EVs are
still twice (?, reference needed) as efficient as H2. Especially for
renewable, efficiency is key, as the whole production line competes with the
price of oil.

4) Capital Expenditures. The YoY ROI is obviously very strongly influenced by
the utility rate.

5) Green hydrogen as it stands is heavily subsidized and it needs to be. The
capital expenditures for a hydrogen filling station is more than 50% covered
by subsidy. And that is optimistic. So, close to zero subsidies, is not what I
am seeing.

Ad 6) This might be true for industry usage, but not for consumer usage.

~~~
Hypx
1) You can blend hydrogen with natural gas. To go 100% H2, you may need new
pipes, but this isn't an insurmountable problem.

2) These sensors aren't that big. It'll probably be like fire alarms but for
hydrogen if we go that route.

3) The gap is shrinking over time, as fuel cells and electrolyzers get better.
Batteries are basically maxed out on efficient so they won't improve by much.
Loosely spoken, the gap should shrink to about a 50% advantage for the EV in
the long run. That means EVs may always make sense for short ranged trips, but
for anything that needs big batteries the cost of the batteries probably will
outweigh electricity savings.

4) If electrolyzers get really cheap this may not hold. I suspect that
optimizing to 60-70% utilization is more than good enough.

5) Relative to the competition, it is tiny. We're subsidizing wind,
photovoltaics, batteries, etc., to the tune of tens of billions, but for
hydrogen it was in the hundreds of millions. Though this is starting to change
as well speak as hydrogen is starting to get bigger subsidies.

------
unchocked
Hydrogen producing wind farms could be located far offshore without having to
tie into the grid. Hydrogen is a great medium for long-term energy storage and
is mostly compatible with existing natural gas infrastructure.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Natural gas pipelines do not handle embrittlement from H well.

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245232161...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452321618302683)

~~~
jussij
There are work arounds on their way:

 _Ammonia—one nitrogen atom bonded to three hydrogen atoms—may not seem like
an ideal fuel: The chemical, used in household cleaners, smells foul and is
toxic. But its energy density by volume is nearly double that of liquid
hydrogen—its primary competitor as a green alternative fuel—and it is easier
to ship and distribute. "You can store it, ship it, burn it, and convert it
back into hydrogen and nitrogen," says Tim Hughes, an energy storage
researcher with manufacturing giant Siemens in Oxford, U.K. "In many ways,
it's ideal."_

More details:

[https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/ammonia-renewable-
fu...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/07/ammonia-renewable-fuel-made-
sun-air-and-water-could-power-globe-without-carbon)

~~~
ncmncm
Ammonia is great. It is also useful directly by farmers, both for fuel and
fertilizer.

There have been major advances recently in small-scale (single-turbine)
production of ammonia from just current, water, and air. It seems like a much
better choice than hydrogen for everything except the next generation of
aircraft.

Aircraft need high energy per unit mass fuel, and hydrogen is king, but
tankage is huge, so hydrogen airliners would need to be lifting bodies to have
room for the fuel tanks.

~~~
lcam84
Isn't most of the ammonia produced using fossil fuels?

~~~
jussij
Currently that is the case.

As the article points out:

 _Most of the world’s ammonia is synthesized using Haber–Bosch, a century-old
process that is fast and fairly efficient. But the factories emit vast amounts
of carbon dioxide (CO2)._

However they have invented a gentler, greener alternative.

 _A reverse fuel cell uses renewable electricity to drive a chemical reaction
that makes ammonia._.

------
aaron695
The hydrogen will not be 'created' offshore.

It's just a wind farm that transports electricity to shore which then through
regulations has to be turn to hydrogen.

Right?

The TL;DR to me is it's a complicated way to subsidise the hydrogen economy?

I get for hydrogen production the power doesn't have to be as clean so you
might get some gains there. But I assume they will not be significant to the
over all process.

Like this example which is still on the grid as you'd expect -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJhm6S3Gs1Q](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJhm6S3Gs1Q)

~~~
jcfrei
> The TL;DR to me is it's a complicated way to subsidise the hydrogen economy?

I get that impression too. The widespread usage of gasoline for passenger cars
has created lots of jobs: Driving trucks for gasoline transportation,
maintaining pumping equipment, gas station attendants, etc. If these jobs
disappear due to a switch to electric vehicles in addition to the jobs lost
due to the lower maintenance costs of electric cars then it seems reasonable
to assume that some companies or organizations will try to maintain the
current infrastructure. Even if it requires a switch to hydrogen.

------
afarrell
Is there any chemical process which could produce methane from CO2 and water
instead?

Hydrogen is hard to store.

~~~
jcims
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction)

Still need to generate the hydrogen but you don’t need to store it.

------
jokoon
I've also read that hydrogen is some kind of way for the petro-industry to
maintain its infrastructure and business, since it's a pseudo-green energy
which can be advertised as an alternative to batteries.

Steam reforming is not green. Electrolysis is great but it's less efficient,
although it would work with nuclear energy since nuclear can give energy in
abundance.

There are 2 sides to reduce the carbon footprint: nuclear energy and energy
sobriety.

------
leptoniscool
Here's a map of the hydrogen fuel stations in the US:
[https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/hydrogen_locations.html#/find/...](https://afdc.energy.gov/fuels/hydrogen_locations.html#/find/nearest?fuel=HY)

It looks like this is only in California. Is there a lack of demand from other
areas of the country?

------
bathtub365
What are the ecological ramifications of turning seawater into hydrogen? Are
we depleting the total amount of water on the planet? I realize the scale that
it’s happening at is probably relatively small, but I’m curious.

~~~
ben_bai
The scale is way too small for it to matter. Also burning hydrogen you get
water as exhaust. So it's a closed loop.

~~~
elric
> The scale is way too small for it to matter.

I suspect that's what people thought when they began burning oil and gas for
energy...

I don't remember the source, nor can I vouch for the veracity, but I remember
reading an article that worked out what would happen if all cars ran on
hydrogen. IIRC it had a significant impact on local weather conditions in
cities.

~~~
ben_bai
3/4th of the earth surface is covered by water. Total oil mining since 1850s
is estimated between 100-150 billion metric tons. If you pump out 150 billion
metric tons of sea water from the oceans the sea level will drop 0.5mm (1/50th
of an inch).

Moisture levels will increase and water vapor is also a greenhouse gas.
Everything is a compromise...

[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090507072830.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090507072830.htm)

[http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-
climate/estima...](http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/glaciers-and-
climate/estimating-glacier-contribution-to-sea-level-rise/)

[https://climatechangeconnection.org/science/what-about-
water...](https://climatechangeconnection.org/science/what-about-water-
vapour/)

------
solarkraft
Oh, hydrogen. Do the cost savings in building and transmission infrastructure
really outweigh the costs of building hydrogen processing and storing
infrastructure and the vast losses encountered therein?

------
sgt101
It would be better if Germany focused on getting rid of the lignate coal in
its domestic power supply. I believe 1/3 of German electricity is generated
this way.

One option would be build nuclear.

~~~
kseistrup
Nuclear power is too expensive compared to solar and wind power these days.

~~~
steeve
Not until you factor in energy storage, at which point it’s far more
expensive, and carbon intensive.

~~~
spenrose
Not sure how to parse this comment, but 11 months ago bid prices for solar
plus storage were about $35 MWh [1]

[1] [https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/report-
levelize...](https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/report-levelized-
cost-of-energy-for-lithium-ion-batteries-bnef)

~~~
martinald
These stats are quite misleading. Solar + storage can deliver cheap energy,
but still somewhat intermittently. Usually it would be something like a 10MW
solar array paired with 10MWh of batteries. This only gives you 1 extra hour
of runtime at 10MW. If you were to match nuclear's 24/7 output you'd need
something like 100MWh of storage connected to a 10MW array. This becomes
cripplingly expensive.

I'm aware the grid can balance some of this load, perhaps with wind or solar
arrays further away. But solar itself has externality costs of intermittency
which the grid has to pick up.

~~~
spenrose
When I Google large recent projects, I see 4hrs [1][2] or (at 1.3GWH!!) 2
hours[3] of storage at much more than 10MW, and at lower prices today than the
people selling nuclear hope to reach in 10 years.

Nuclear is good! We should deploy it as fast as we can! That happens to be
quite slow relative compared to our deployment of utility scale solar and
wind. Let's go faster if we can. But for heavens' sake, nuclear advocates
should, well, advocate for nuclear, not badmouth the clean energy coming
online today at grid scale.

[1] [https://microgridknowledge.com/solar-plus-storage-prices-
hec...](https://microgridknowledge.com/solar-plus-storage-prices-heco/) [2]
[https://cleantechnica.com/2019/09/11/la-8minute-solar-ink-
lo...](https://cleantechnica.com/2019/09/11/la-8minute-solar-ink-lowest-cost-
solar-plus-storage-deal-in-us-history/) [3]
[https://www.environmentalleader.com/2019/12/gemini-nevada-
so...](https://www.environmentalleader.com/2019/12/gemini-nevada-solar-plus-
storage/)

~~~
martinald
That's at $80-120/MWh though, much higher than the GPs $35.

Agreed though it is exciting to see the cost drops - but it's important to
compare like for like wrt to intermittency.

~~~
spenrose
That's the price range for the Hawaii projects. The cost for the (much larger)
Eland and Gemini projects is $35 MWh (previous and [4], respectively).

WRT intermittency, the point of this conversation is that hydrogen generation
is a solution: over-provision and generate combustible hydrogen (or ammonia,
etc) that can be used later and / or where electricity performs poorly: long
haul transport and high-temperature industrial processes. Many links on
@ChrisGoodall2's excellent "Carbon Commentary": [https://us9.campaign-
archive.com/home/?u=a336c39e55a6260d59a...](https://us9.campaign-
archive.com/home/?u=a336c39e55a6260d59adbffb0&id=ffb538443d)

[4] [https://www.barrons.com/articles/warren-buffett-berkshire-
ha...](https://www.barrons.com/articles/warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway-
solar-power-nv-energy-690-megawatt-51577995149)

~~~
Mirioron
Isn't hydrogen one of the hardest things to transport?

------
AtlasBarfed
All analyses of hydrogen I've read from EROEI conclude that it is more
economically and thermodynamically efficient to direct power to the grid and
send it to batteries.

It always seems anything this is advertised it is the fossil fuel industry
trying to prop up a power generation system that will use fossil fuels, and
window dressed/greenwashed by a small fraction of alt energy.

"Green Hydrogen" smells like "Clean Coal" to me.

~~~
xxgreg
Yes - the article states that electricity is more efficiently used directly.

Hydrogen is valuable for other processes such producing steel, high
temperature heat, and chemicals.

German industry already uses large amounts of hydrogen produced from fossil
methane. The first step will be to replace this with renewable hydrogen.

Interesting fact: Germany has a few 100km of hydrogen pipelines which have
been in operation since the 1930s.

~~~
twic
America has 2600 km of hydrogen pipelines:

[https://hydrogeneurope.eu/hydrogen-transport-
distribution#PI...](https://hydrogeneurope.eu/hydrogen-transport-
distribution#PIPELINES)

------
craftinator
Still way more expensive per megawatt than nuclear... Probably higher death
toll as well.

