Comment by edejong | Hacker News Reader

Comment by edejong | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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.

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