Climate Change and Renewable Energy News and Discussion

Green hydrogen is a dud. Cost to make hydrogen out of natural gas will also decrease once Chinese energy mix gets out of expensive LNG.
LNG might make sense for ships, barely, but hydrogen makes no sense.
All this investment into hydrogen is basically a waste of money.

Aircraft will remain using hydrocarbons for the foreseeable future. Even if those hydrocarbons have to be made synthetically. They are the densest and lowest hazard alternative simple as that.

Question: Why bother with green hydrogen as a direct fuel instead of just using it as a precursor chemical for the already commonly used hydrocarbons? It will add a few extra steps into the chemical processing, but it's better than having to retool everything to store and run or hydrogen, nor the issues of using hydrogen as a fuel, leaks, hydrogen embrittlement, increased risk of explosions etc etc.

Well, we already have engines able to run on ammonia or methanol. So, it's an easy transition. Hydrogen is also seriously used in industrial processing already. Keep in mind that the goal of Chinese hydrogen industry and renewable industry is to get the cost of green H2 production below that of coal produced H2

If you look at the chart on the bottom, it's entirely doable if cost of electricity continues to come down. Also important to note here that China's industrial need for hydrogen will reach close to 40 million ton by 2030. Of which, conversion to ammonia is 28%, methanol is 35%, oil refinery is 27% and steel smelting is 10%. So there is a huge economic reason to raising China's domestic productoin.

But aside from that, the Europeans are getting rid of fertilizers (see the Dutch far riot) because of climate goals. Do you think Europeans are willing to buy ammonia made from coal from China? I don't think so. So in order to sell green fertilizers to EU, you have to produce them using green energy.

There is also energy security benefits from using your own solar/win power to produce these things. It helps scale up your domestic electrolyzer industry. Remember, while green revolution has been touted as a huge industrial benefit in Western countries, it really has only helped China so far.

The table below shows just how much investment Sinopec alone has made into Hydrogen power development. Think about it from the direction of Sinopec. You are trying to become a chemical superpower at a time when EU is getting rid of refineries everywhere. Are Europeans going to be happy importing your products that are made with hydrogen from coal? I don't think so. That's Sinopec is leading the effort in Green H2 development and saying that 60% of its hydrogen needs will be green soon. Promoting yourself as moving away from hydrocarbon is a great marketing scheme for petrochemical companies.

MingYang has now unveiled its own 10 MW onshore wind turbine, tied for largest in the world.
They are definitely going for the high tech, high revenue aspect. Sany is going for the lowest cost route. Goldwind is getting slaughtered.

I already told here. Ammonia is corrosive and toxic. There is no way it will be used as a transportation fuel in any significant way. Methanol is way better but like all synthetic fuels it is expensive.

As for the Europeans, they are already burning more coal to replace the natural gas they previously used, and it is quite likely over next decade they will be using more carbon heavy fuels, rather than less. It is fine if China produces these hydrogen technologies for export, but they make no economic sense to use in most cases, you could argue that the hydrogen could be used for industrial processes, but since when is electricity that cheap to waste like that?

Also, let's say you produce the hydrogen in the interior of China, where there is plenty of land you can cover with windmills and solar panels. How will you transport it to the coast where it can be used? Via pipeline? Hydrogen pipelines are extremely expensive to build. Which is why there are next to none in operation in the world today.

gelgoog said:

I already told here. Ammonia is corrosive and toxic. There is no way it will be used as a transportation fuel in any significant way. Methanol is way better but like all synthetic fuels it is expensive.

As for the Europeans, they are already burning more coal to replace the natural gas they previously used, and it is quite likely over next decade they will be using more carbon heavy fuels, rather than less. It is fine if China produces these technologies for export, but they make no economic sense to use in most cases, you could argue that it could be used for industrial processes, but since when is electricity that cheap to waste like that?

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That's how cheap onshore wind and solar getting for china. Each batch of wind turbines just keep getting cheaper. Electrolyzers will continue to get cheaper and more efficient. That's how technology works. The numbers are all in provided chart above.

Don't worry, Russia will be able to keep selling natural gas to china for a couple of decades.

But china doesn't really care what you think. It has made hydrogen production and renewables a national priority and it will be busy exporting excessive hydrogen and ammonia for low cost in the future

I am not worried about Russia selling gas to China or not. Russia is the country with the world's largest land area. So they are basically the country with the most resource extraction potential. If they weren't exporting natural gas, they would be exporting something else. There is lots of stuff to mine.

What I am worried is a country as large as China getting into this nonsense bandwagon and upending its energy future chasing a mirage. The Indians also thought they could use solar several decades ago, to save on rural electrification expenses, and it was an economic disaster for them.

gelgoog said:

I am not worried about Russia selling gas to China or not. Russia is the country with the world's largest land area. So they are basically the country with the most resource extraction potential. If they weren't exporting natural gas, they would be exporting something else. There is lots of stuff to mine.

What I am worried is a country as large as China getting into this nonsense bandwagon and upending its energy future chasing a mirage. The Indians also thought they could use solar several decades ago, to save on rural electrification expenses, and it was an economic disaster for them.

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Except that china gets plenty of its energy need for renewables and making boatloads of money off selling solar and wind product around the world. If there is one country benefiting from renewables and green energy, that will be china.

The IRA is attracting attention of Chinese clean energy giants to setup operation in America.
it will be interesting to see how they get treated. So far, we haven't heard the same level of pushback on them as the CATL/Ford deal

Mingyang with its huge turbine technology is leading the charge in lowering costs through building bigger

Solar and wind energy generation expected to be achieved ahead of schedule:


2023-04-04 08:52:35China Daily Editor : Li Yan


State Grid employees check solar power panels in the Tibet autonomous region. (Photo by Song Weixing/For chinadaily.com.cn)
China may reach its 2030 target for wind and solar energy development five years earlier than planned.
Prefecture-level regions have planned to increase installed capacity for wind and solar energy by at least 800 million kilowatts during the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-25), according to research conducted by the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs and the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences.
This means that China may be able to beat its target of increasing installed capacity for these two forms of renewable energy to 1.2 billion kW five years earlier than scheduled.
The target was outlined in a State Council circular on implementation plans for the development of new energy unveiled last May.
The total capacity of renewable energy generation in China — including hydro, wind, solar and biomass — reached 1.2 billion kW at the end of last year, up by 2.5 percentage points on 2021, according to the National Energy Administration.
This indicates that the national capacity for renewable energy has overtaken coal for the first time in a historic catch-up.