13 Comments

Producing (and generating electricity with) Green hydrogen is 'lossy' with spare heat being produced, it would be good to recover some of it. We have huge heat demands and will have for decades, so should produce more heat with big heat pumps and utilise district heating with seasonal heat storage more. e.g. Underground or in football pitch sized insulated storage pits. In fact a football pitch could be laid over the floating insulation. Or cover the waterproof underliner with sand and big bags of river pebbles and put housing or parks or car parks over rigid insulation. The bags can be lifted if the flexible liner springs a leak.

Expand full comment

Green H2 is promising. It’s early to understand their real possibilities.

Expand full comment

Instead of building infrastructure to cope with intermittent generation from renewable energy, concentrate on the demand side by encouraging industry and commerce to find novel ways of benefiting from cheap or free electrical energy, in the summer months for example. If new industry can be located near to the generators than would also reduce the need for grid upgrade expenditure.

Expand full comment

To summarise this article: one way to get a renewable based energy grid to work is to build huge amounts of renewable energy generation at very low EROI, then build green hydrogen generation plants that would be used some of the time, then build green hydrogen storage, and finally green hydrogen electricity generators (which again would be used some of the time).

An awful lot of energy and CO2 would be required to do this. Wouldn't it be easier to just build high EROI nuclear power plants?

Would be really good to see more analysis on the lifetime CO2 impact of renewables and not just the theoretical zero at point of generation.

Expand full comment

1. The wind (maybe large solar) plant would have a good EROI because they would be generating for the electricity market when prices were positive and then for the hydrogen market when they were negative. 2. We've already got a good start in having some storage facilities for natural gas which can be converted to hydrogen storage

Expand full comment

EROI has nothing to do with market prices. It is energy return on energy invested: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_return_on_investment

It's a concept that you should familiarise yourself with. Although far from perfect, as a measure it is much more fundamental than the vagaries of market pricing.

Expand full comment

Ok, it’s an obscure measure will little relevance to practical issues and which, as a result, I don’t want to spend time working out my own version of this analysis.

Expand full comment

It's less obscure than the market prices you keep quoting. You don't seem to do analysis, just propaganda

Expand full comment

Not your propaganda, that’s for sure

Expand full comment

I haven't written any propaganda, just asked questions about your analysis. The only way to get to the best solution is to get as full an understanding as possible by making sure you question all angles. Your analysis would be much better if you were willing to do this.

Expand full comment

Excellent article totally agree with your conclusions

Expand full comment

Link to the report doesn't seem to work.

Expand full comment

the link should work now

Expand full comment