>There have been more investments and longer development times in battery tech than in hydrogen tech.

I would love to have link on this. It's not surprising that battery tech would be getting more investment now; proving a technology works and a market exists does wonders for encouraging investment. But I would be willing to bet that the situation was quite different even 5 or 10 years ago.

So do you have anything for me?

Germany checking in here. Forget it. Europe talks a big game, but they'll happily reclassify anything as "green" or "sustainable" if it suits them.

Considering that we have just lost all our cheap energy for industry, expect that Europe will be a little more...practical...when it comes to where energy comes from in the near future.

It's nice to protect our environment and our climate. But if a country is threatened with mass unemployment, then the environment becomes a petty distraction. If you don't think that Europe is facing mass unemployment, keep in mind that we have basically no aluminum coming in, no steel being produced, and the entire petrochemical industry is stalled out because natural gas is limited.

All of this shows that we should have been moving away from Russian Gas a long time ago (perhaps to hydrogen), but the unfortunate fact is we need solutions *now*. Look for some unpleasant compromises to be made.

TL;DR: Europe is not in a very good position to maintain a strict environmental policy.

Because right now, the big energy companies are the only ones who can create hydrogen at scale that is even remotely close to being practical in terms of cost. Unfortunately, this is using processes that are nearly as (in some case more) polluting as the ones we want to replace.

Dangle the prospect of green energy in front of an uninformed but well-meaning public; when they finally bite and commit to hydrogen, then simply switch in the gray and blue hydrogen. When anyone complains, point out that green hydrogen is still too expensive, but maybe "some day".

Agreed. About 15 years ago, I was absolutely convinced that hydrogen was the obvious choice and that batteries were a dead-end. Hydrogen only had a few (admittedly big) problems to solve and batteries seemed like they had a never-ending list of challenges to get past.

Fast forward to today and batteries have pretty much solved all their challenges and are now simply going from strength to strength. Meanwhile, hydrogen has barely moved forward from where it was 15 years ago.

My two observations are:

1. Hydrogen does not merely need to be better than batteries; it needs to be significantly better than batteries to justify even bothering to develop and roll out. It cannot even keep up with batteries currently, is losing ground, so hoping hydrogen can leapfrog batteries seems unrealistic.
2. While I readily accept that life is full of surprises and perhaps we'll get yet another twist in the hydrogen-vs-battery fight, there is no indication that something like that is building up.

>The implication that this technology is being developed or supported primarily by the fossil fuel industry is a completely fabricated conspiracy theory.

Are you kidding me?

First, you missed the point. The fossil fuel industry is quite happy to use the current technology for creating hydrogen. They don't care about *or want* green hydrogen. The point is to dangle the idea of green hydrogen in front of us, and once we have committed to hydrogen, then keep us on the hook with cheaper gray and blue hydrogen.

Second, are you honestly expecting an industry making billions *per day* to simply roll over and die? *Of course* they are going to fight back, hard. What would *you* be willing to do for even "just" $1 billion? Even if they can stall people for just a single day, that is how much more money they can make.

Third, who else has the incentive *and* the money to really push something like hydrogen?

Fourth, how are *you* planning to fight them? Once we are on the hook for hydrogen, they will be the ones paying the politicians. You can scream and cry about how this was supposed to be about green hydrogen, but the simple truth is that they have all the levers. You are simply a tool for them right now to avoid being shoved completely out of power. The moment they have successfully positioned hydrogen as the replacement, your services will no longer be needed or wanted.

This is do-or-die for the fossil fuel industry. They know their days are numbered. That is why they are fighting several rear-guard actions at once while desperately looking for a way to keep us depending on them.

I'm not strictly against hydrogen, but we should not allow a single atom to be used until two things happen:

1. Practical green hydrogen exists on something besides paper
2. Airtight and near-impossible-to-roll-back legislation to ban all hydrogen production *except* green hydrogen have been implemented.

I have some hope for the first one, although the current state of things probably means we are at least 20 years out from having it solved. We are not really close to a lab solution yet, so we probably need 10 years of research to make it practical. This is an outsider's perspective, so I will be the first to admit it's merely an educated guess. Then it will take about 10 years to get the real production lines set up *if we are fast*. So 20 years. But at least it's doable.

I have serious reservations about the second point. I do not trust any government to be able to resist Big Oil kinda money.

So no, this is not "fabricated". It was and is a logical and obvious continuation to ensure the dominance of the existing players.

>While the results don’t reveal anything new about lithium-ion batteries

*sigh*

You need to actually take a deeper look before being quite so confident.

You are semi-correct though: it *is* a conscious choice. You are just completely wrong on the reasons.

Here are the real reasons:

• We do not have enough batteries. We need every single battery we can make to be in a car, not sitting around somewhere doing nothing.
• Swapping stations are bulky and expensive. It is *much* more efficient and effective to use the same amount of space and money to make chargers than swapping stations. We are not talking 10 or 20% better, but more like 10 to 20 times better.
• Your "5 minutes" only works if you compare a single car charging to a single car swapping. Because you cannot have so many swapping stations, you are going to end up with queues, and that will drastically change things up. Even just a 4 car queue is going to put charging and swapping on fairly level ground.
• There are legal issues surrounding the batteries. If you bought them, then what happens when you get new ones swapped in? What if you deliberately swapped out defective batteries just to get better ones? If you don't own them, how does that work? Who is responsible for the batteries currently in your car?

I want to make clear that none of these things are unsolvable, but they *are* major headwinds. We are having trouble building out just a charger network; waiting for a swapping network would delay things by at least 10 years or more.

Only the first one is guaranteed to be solved, more or less on its own. In 5-10 years we can strike it from the list. The last one is probably the next easiest, but I expect it will take at least 10 years for all the legal difficulties to wind their way through courts.

The middle two are tough, though. As charging times keep coming down and the ability to charge at home keeps increasing, the use case for swapping gets smaller and smaller. Perhaps it will end up being a thing in some bigger cities, but it will probably never be the standard.

Bonus Reason: Because of all of the previous reasons, it is less expensive (and makes the car lighter and safer) to make the batteries part of the structure. So unless someone can quickly solve all those earlier points, the carmakers are going to all gravitate towards swapping being physically impossible. This reduces the use case for creating a swapping system and the whole idea simply collapses in on itself.

I've done government funded projects here in Europe. You are dead on right. They make a lot of noise about it being spent right, but nobody checks, and as long as the right numbers are on the right lines, nobody is going to check.

We actually did our best to do everything right, but it was scary how nobody cared what we were doing.

Production - You are going to have to be significantly more clear in what you are suggesting. Otherwise you are saying that the entire world is filled with idiots unable to see such a way forward and unwilling to become rich in the process. If such an inexpensive way forward exists, why did the hydrogen industry decide to give batteries such a head start before figuring it out? Quite sporting of them, really. But we were identifying hurdles, and this one was already accepted out of the gate.

Transport - Accepted as hurdle (and that is all I'm looking for here).

Storage - I'm underwhelmed that we are still at the suggestion stage here. I will take this to mean that it has been accepted as a hurdle.

I continue to maintain that we are 20-30 years away from a viable hydrogen system that can be rolled out across our economy. Because of this, I do not see hydrogen playing a part in most of the transport industry, as that will have been effectively solved by batteries; we will be in a near-closed system by then. But I do see a significant role in industry and heating.

Finally, I agree we should be on this as soon as possible. It may be disappointing for people who were still holding out hope that hydrogen would solve our transportation needs (I used to be one of them), but there is good news in that batteries have unexpectedly become an effective solution.

What is that method called? I want to make sure we are talking about the same thing.

>You just said the same thing with different words...

Nope.

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>Now if you mean at my apartment, then no, that won't ever happen.

Of course it will.

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>It would make sense if I paid for it myself

Yes, it would.

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>i honestly don't believe the power coming to the building would be adequate to support 10+ charging stations

That's a solvable problem.

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>And I wouldn't be able to take it when i leave

Sure you could.

What is your solution to keep all that hydrogen from leaking away? Storing hydrogen is notoriously difficult.

>But the recycling process is still limited if the demand is to be my 2030

I don't know what you wanted to say here.

>Hydrogen would work a lot better for long duration

Really? You sure about that? Because hydrogen is extremely bad at long duration storage.

What is the problem with mining lithium?

>It also doesn’t address that there are limited recycling programs for spent batteries.

This is simply not true.

Redwood and Tesla, just to name two companies, are chomping at the bit *waiting* for the used batteries to start piling in.

Come on; batteries are not terrible.

Prices are coming down and have been for decades.

The heavy and rare earths being used per battery are being reduced all the time.

Recycling is already ready to go.

They fucking work. And they work now.

And sure, there is a cost to the environment. Just like hydrogen has. Just like coal has. Just like oil has. Just like you have.

>The efficiency of that production is perhaps the hurdle to overcome.

No. It is *a* hurdle to overcome.

The next one is transport, and this is more difficult than is often appreciated. Sure, we *could* use our existing pipes, but anyone suggesting this tends to leave out a pretty big details: those pipes need to be refurbished to be able to transport hydrogen without losing most of it.

Closing out the big three is storage. This is a true pita. Either you need huge tanks (unviable), extremely thick, heavy tanks (expensive and heavy), or cold tanks (expensive and inefficient). If you want to speculate, there is the chance that we might be able to store it by injecting hydrogen into some solid material. This tech exists today, but it's unclear if it can be mass produced.

All three can be overcome. All three *must* be overcome for hydrogen to succeed. I personally think we are 20-30 years away from all three being ready for prime time, and by that time, I suspect that hydrogen will be mostly used as an industrial input.

>It's attached to all kinds of other things

That was kinda his point.

>I would basically have to visit a charging station

No. You would basically have to have a charger installed near your apartment.

>We also should not use it to replace gas or oil heating in places connected to the power grid. That is way better served with heat pumps powered from the grid.

Some of us are not so lucky. We would *love* to use a heat pump in our home, but it would mean gutting a 200+ year old house and replacing the entire heating system.

Not only is that expensive, but I would have to work out what the environmental cost of that renovation is (as well as tossing out perfectly fine components) compared to the savings of getting a heat pump.

Now, if I were able to simply modify the boiler, then things become a bunch easier to calculate.

So sure, new houses should definitely go with heat pumps. But there are millions of houses that simply cannot make this level of renovation without defeating the purpose. Hydrogen might be really good here.

>Driving around 2.5 ton cars with huge batteries you normally use 5-20% of the capacity is also kind of stupid

Well, now you exchange a ton of batteries for a ton of hydrogen storage, motor, and all the tech you need to make the hydrogen work. And by your own scenario, you are dragging that around most of the time, when you don't actually need it. Also, don't forget all the tech you need to connect those two systems.

I currently have an SR+. We take it on long vacations and it's just fine for that.

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>You also got to take into account that we have to overbuild renewables by a lot.

I agree with this statement, but not the conclusion you make from it. Honestly, we have no idea what is going to have when we reach super power. This is simply not a situation we have ever had outside of very small, local, temporary scenarios.

It's not like the equipment to create that hydrogen is free to build or maintain. The question will be: is the stored hydrogen we get from it worth the construction and maintenance cost?

That's a nice idea, but your pursuit of perfect is slowing down the attainment of good.

I don't have anything against hydrogen, but it does seem rather overhyped for its position right now.

The only place where I see it being clearly better is in replacing NG in industrial processes.

We do not need it for cars. That is already done.

Looking at the truck market, it looks likely that we will not need it there either.

Air travel is still in play. Maybe?

Ships might also be in play.

So if someone wants to say that we should be investing in hydrogen for those three segments -- air travel, ships, and industrial -- then I can support it.

What I think is happening in some places is that, having completely missed the BEV wave, some people and companies are dreaming of being able to unseat batteries in that area; and, that is utterly silly, imho.

What problem?

> in one tiny slice of the energy requirements we have: light vehicle transport

I would not say that 15% of the entire energy requirements is a "tiny slice".

Otherwise, I generally agree with the rest of your points.

I would add that hydrogen is *not* going to be the dominant energy transport of the future, but it will be important in certain industries.