Environment & Energy

NNadir

(36,183 posts)

1. The "cost" of hydrogen in China is tied to the fact it's generally made from coal there. The real cost, of course...

Mon Jun 2, 2025, 09:00 PM

Jun 2

...is environmental, since the production of hydrogen in China, as in the rest of the world, is dangerous fossil fuels.

Every time a fossil fuel greenwasher comes here to wax lyrical with a slick dishonest video advertisement seeking to rebrand fossil fuels as "hydrogen," a process that wastes energy and thus requires more fossil fuels than burning them directly in devices like buses, I'll just repeat again, the reality:

Currently, nearly all hydrogen in China is either produced directly from fossil fuels (55% from coal gasification and 14% from steam methane reforming (SMR)) or as a byproduct of petroleum refining (28%), with only 1% coming from water electrolysis. (2) Producing 1 kg of coal- or SMR-based hydrogen emits roughly 19 and 10 kg of CO₂, respectively. (3) In 2020, hydrogen production from fossil fuels in China emitted approximately 322Tg of CO₂, equivalent to 25% of total CO₂ emissions from industrial processes, a number expected to rise with increasing hydrogen demand. (4) Industrial processes include production of nonmetallic mineral products, chemical, and metal products, as well as production and consumption of halocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride. (4)

EST: Chinese Hydrogen Production Is Making Climate Change Worse.

(cf: Subsidizing Grid-Based Electrolytic Hydrogen Will Increase Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Coal Dominated Power Systems Liqun Peng, Yang Guo, Shangwei Liu, Gang He, and Denise L. Mauzerall Environmental Science & Technology 2024 58 (12), 5187-5195)

The dishonest slick ads are toxic.

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The "cost" of hydrogen in China is tied to the fact it's generally made from coal there. The real cost, of course... NNadir Jun 2 #1

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