Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member Latest Breaking News Editorials & Other Articles General Discussion The DU Lounge All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

NNadir

(36,181 posts)
1. I hope we learned something from China's solar dominance, just as I hope we'll learn something from these hydrogen scams
Thu Jun 12, 2025, 10:17 PM
Jun 12

For solar, we've learned that tearing the shit out of huge stretches of wilderness for put in solar facilities has no effect, zero, on the destruction of the planetary atmosphere. In fact the data shows that the expenditure of trillions of dollars on solar energy has only made things get worse faster. Since the year 2000, the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste carbon dioxide has risen by 61.26 ppm from January 1, 2000 to the week beginning June 1, 2025, where it came in at 429.96 ppm, compared to 326.7 ppm in the week beginning January 2, 2000.

Of course, the marketing team trying to rebrand fossil fuels as hydrogen clearly doesn't give a fuck about the atmosphere or the environment.

For hydrogen, as always, we'll learn - as we've been learning for the last 50 years of hydrogen hype - that it's a great marketing tool for fossil fuel consumption and waste, again with the result of making things worse, faster.

Once again (I keep it handy):

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 text is clear enough.

From the introductory text:

... 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)
.



Another report, on so called "green hydrogen" from this year as opposed to last year, is here, on the carbon impact of the hydrogen scam, even if the entire and useless wind and solar fantasy were devoted to it:

de Kleijne, K., Huijbregts, M.A.J., Knobloch, F. et al. Worldwide greenhouse gas emissions of green hydrogen production and transport. Nat Energy 9, 1139–1152 (2024).

Hydrogen's ridiculously terrible and dangerous physical properties, despite the fallacious video put out by the marketing team to demonstrate that hydrogen is "safe" by clearly opening a valve rather than experiencing a hydrogen metal embrittlement failure, also involve the costs of handling it, all of which are dirty.

Have a nice day.

Recommendations

0 members have recommended this reply (displayed in chronological order):

Latest Discussions»Issue Forums»Environment & Energy»China announces national ...»Reply #1