Hydrogen. Another clean energy dead end?
Hydrogen, the first element in the periodic table and the most abundant element in the universe, is portrayed as another source of clean energy.
You might be wondering what hydrogen has to do with computers and why would I bring up this topic. I want to illustrate the pitfalls which CTOs sometimes face: Imagine you’re asked by a business to implement new technology. On paper, this sounds like an awesome idea. However, when you do the back-of-the-napkin calculation, the numbers don't add up. The famous statement 'we believe, this will be great for <pick the latest hot issue>' is usually the first sign that things are going wrong. And since talking about computers can get boring very quickly, talking about hydrogen as another way to clean the environment is popular, it might get my point across better.
As I noted above, hydrogen is abundant. However, it is not a naturally occurring element on Earth. You can find it in the water, natural gas or oil. We can produce it from water using electrolysis or reacting water with methane and carbon monoxide. There is also methane pyrolysis and few other methods, but they all require energy and/or hydrocarbons, which we are trying to stop using.
The industry-established naming convention for labeling hydrogen - green, blue and gray. Green hydrogen is generated by separating water to hydrogen and oxygen. Currently it represents 0.1% of the overall production. That means that the 99.9% of all hydrogen produced is contributing to the pollution we are trying to eliminate.
The clear direction from those who are touting hydrogen power as the next big thing is to produce more green hydrogen. That requires more electricity, which also should be green. Here is where we run into the problem I mentioned above: “This sounds good, but the numbers don’t add up.”
The challenge is that currently the process of turning water into hydrogen has 60 to 80% efficiency. We are losing at least 20% of energy here. If your argument is to build more green energy to power up even more green energy (in the form of green hydrogen), then we still have a problem. We don't have enough energy to begin with.
In 2021, I penned an article calculating that if all the current non-commercial vehicles in the US could be changed from gasoline to electric cars, there would be about a 25% electricity shortage.
Not only that, there is a desire to get rid of coal plants. This will naturally reduce our overall energy supply while our needs are growing. Which means that for the foreseeable future, the new sources of energy we are building are to just cover consumption. Adding to that, the production of clean hydrogen means that we would have to build 20% extra capacity.
Actually, that’s not quite the whole story. We would have to produce even more because the 20% is just to turn the water into hydrogen. Turning hydrogen into electricity and from 80% you are somewhere between 18 to 46%. And if you add storage of excessive hydrogen...
The 25% of extra electricity was just for the electric cars. Replacing natural gas for heating or for manufacturing just adds to the overall energy demand. A new report from Norway - the green energy powerhouse in Europe - predicts that by 2027, Norway will have to start importing energy from the rest of Europe. And it won't be clean energy, since Europe doesn't have enough.
On top of all of that, there’s another factor that raises the cost of implementing hydrogen power at-scale: we don’t have a well-developed distribution network. Building that out will take many years and a lot of money. When it comes to hydrogen power, right now, the numbers just don’t make sense.
The point of all of this? Before you embrace new technology and start putting it into production, you always have to do the 'calculation'. The answer is sometimes not what you expect or wish for, but it is the reality. If you want to have a recurrent pattern of building reliable solutions, this is the way.