Rather than showering taxpayer money on another energy boondoggle, this administration, and subsequent ones, should focus on streamlining the process for licensing new nuclear plants — especially, small, modular ones — and investing in research and development efforts to reduce the cost of those plants.
I’ve been saying this for decades while watching California shut down its best power generating facilities leading to never ending brown outs.
But alas, the climate nuts will never allow this clean and abundant energy source. They’d rather destroy economies than build them.
Why green hydrogen is a lot of hot air
One of the central tenets of the Biden administration’s energy policy is the pursuit of “green” hydrogen, defined as hydrogen manufactured with zero carbon emissions.
This push has involved $7 billion dollars in subsidies for the creation of Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs as well as significant tax breaks for hydrogen production through the Inflation Reduction Act.
While the administration touts this as beneficial, the reality is that using hydrogen as an energy source makes no economic sense.
There are two reasons this scheme won’t work.
First, we cannot create usable energy out of thin air. Instead, we expend energy to obtain energy resources — drilling for oil and gas, mining coal — to convert it to forms we can use for things like generating electricity or powering your car.
This works because the conversion process uses much less energy than those resources provide.
We would never refine crude oil into gasoline if two gallons’ worth of energy were required to produce every gallon.
But that’s precisely the problem with green hydrogen, which must be manufactured.
Manufacturing leads to the second problem because no manufacturing process is 100% efficient; some energy is always lost, just as some of the heat from a furnace escapes up the chimney.
Consequently, it will always take more energy to manufacture hydrogen than that hydrogen contains.
https://nypost.com/2024/02/24/opinion/why-green-hydrogen-is-all-hot-air/
I’ve been saying this for decades while watching California shut down its best power generating facilities leading to never ending brown outs.
But alas, the climate nuts will never allow this clean and abundant energy source. They’d rather destroy economies than build them.
Why green hydrogen is a lot of hot air
One of the central tenets of the Biden administration’s energy policy is the pursuit of “green” hydrogen, defined as hydrogen manufactured with zero carbon emissions.
This push has involved $7 billion dollars in subsidies for the creation of Regional Clean Hydrogen Hubs as well as significant tax breaks for hydrogen production through the Inflation Reduction Act.
While the administration touts this as beneficial, the reality is that using hydrogen as an energy source makes no economic sense.
There are two reasons this scheme won’t work.
First, we cannot create usable energy out of thin air. Instead, we expend energy to obtain energy resources — drilling for oil and gas, mining coal — to convert it to forms we can use for things like generating electricity or powering your car.
This works because the conversion process uses much less energy than those resources provide.
We would never refine crude oil into gasoline if two gallons’ worth of energy were required to produce every gallon.
But that’s precisely the problem with green hydrogen, which must be manufactured.
Manufacturing leads to the second problem because no manufacturing process is 100% efficient; some energy is always lost, just as some of the heat from a furnace escapes up the chimney.
Consequently, it will always take more energy to manufacture hydrogen than that hydrogen contains.
https://nypost.com/2024/02/24/opinion/why-green-hydrogen-is-all-hot-air/