Climate Change and Renewable Energy News and Discussion

gelgoog said:

Just clueless you say. They are already testing hydrogen powered trains in China using fuel cells as we speak. And you say the video's argument with regards for example about transportation use don't apply. Sure right.

Just look at this chart from the IEA:

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It is way cheaper to generate hydrogen from coal than making it with electricity from renewables. Like a fourth the price. And hydrogen from natural gas is half the price of generating it from coal. The expectation is that this might not be the case... in 2060!

If you want hydrogen for energy security making it from renewable electricity and electrolysis is definitively the wrong choice.

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You're quoting an old estimate from 3 years ago.
Plus I suspect it is distorted by the effects of non-Chinese countries.

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A Bloomberg 2023 Forecast below

Basically in the 2028-2030 timeframe, Green Hydrogen beats fossil-fuel sourced hydrogen on cost. At a minimum, all industrial processes which require pure hydrogen (such as steelmaking and ammonia fertiliser) will switch to Green Hydrogen. This is only 5-7 years away.

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"Still, green H2 now undercuts blue H2 1-3 years earlier in all modeled markets. Green is cheaper than new blue H2 by 2028 using Chinese alkaline electrolyzers, and by 2033 using western alkaline electrolyzers.

Green H2 undercuts new gray H2 in over 90% of markets by 2035. By 2030, building a new green H2 plant is already cheaper than continuing to run an existing gray hydrogen plant in Brazil, China, Sweden, Spain and India"

Source
about.bnef.com/blog/2023-hydrogen-levelized-cost-update-green-beats-gray/

Natural gas and coal prices are still messed up because of Western sanctions on Russia. Even then the renewables aren't cheaper.

Once extra natural gas export capacity ramps up in two years in the US and Qatar the natural gas will be a lot cheaper. And as China continues replacing electricity generation from coal to nuclear and renewables, China will have more coal available for other purposes. At the same time Russia is vastly expanding coal production in the Far East. The price of coal is also bound to drop.

So I would dispute this Bloomberg forecast with regards to either blue or gray hydrogen.

Besides, even if green hydrogen would displace other forms of hydrogen, that doesn't necessarily mean hydrogen is more economic than other feedstocks for certain processes or applications. There are several reasons why hydrogen isn't used more widely.

gelgoog said:

Just clueless you say. They are already testing hydrogen powered trains in China using fuel cells as we speak. And you say the video's argument with regards for example about transportation use don't apply. Sure right.

Just look at this chart from the IEA:

View attachment 121434

It is way cheaper to generate hydrogen from coal than making it with electricity from renewables. Like a fourth the price. And hydrogen from natural gas is half the price of generating it from coal. The expectation is that this might not be the case... in 2060!

If you want hydrogen for energy security making it from renewable electricity and electrolysis is definitively the wrong choice.

Click to expand...

Yes, I've done more research than these people that write these articles.

These things are clueless.

Let's start with the basics. The vast majority of green hydrogen project right now are toward ammonia and methanol production. As such, there is no concerns about needing to transport hydrogen at all. Green ammonia is a great way to produce fertilizers that China can then sell to Europe. Green methanol is a great way to produce "green olefins" that can be used in products you export to Europe or to satisfy domestic firms that are looking to achieve green sustainable by certain year.

Remaining green hydrogen projects are mostly geared toward being used as feedstocks to refineries and have pipelines built for that purpose. Or in some cases used to power steel or other industries. Again, the goal is to export to Europe without getting carbon tax on them.

As for the cost of green hydrogen production. The first major green hydrogen demonstration project by Sinopec is already reported to have cost as low as 18 RMB/kg

Sinopec also told the media that the production cost of green hydrogen would be around 18 Rmb/kg ($2.5/kg), the lowest level in China currently.

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This will continue to go down further as electrolyzer cost goes down & efficiency comes up. Also as cost of renewables continue to drop rapidly, which they are in China

In America, grey hydrogen from fracked NG cost about $2/kg

So, green hydrogen cost in China right now is already almost as grey hydrogen cost level

But things will continue to get better. my own spreadsheet based on numerous analysis on this topic. Keep in mind that electrolyzers themselves also continue to get larger and more productive as cost comes down.

I don't need a doofus in IEA to do estimation on world wide hydrogen cost when I have my own calculations

Just using standard improvement in size & efficiency of electrolyzers, green hydrogen in 5 years will be close to that of coal produced hydrogen

What's the point of using international costs when cost in China for renewable is often 1/3 or 1/4 the cost?

Why are you comparing green hydrogen cost in China with gray hydrogen cost in the US in the first place? You should be comparing with cost to generate hydrogen from coal in China. Because that is the competition.

I think the expectation that this "production" will result in some sort of bonanza of sales to the West is misguided as well. The West came up with the green agenda as a way to crush expectations for development of the Global South. It is just a tax on the Global South. If they cannot tax on this criteria they will come up with a new one. Just like the US taxed Chinese made solar panels and steel you will find Europe doing the exact same thing.

The West convinced India to bet on solar power and satellite communications in the Cold War. And it led to massive retardation of their development. More recently, they convinced them to build highways at the expense of rail. And it led to huge cost increases for transportation of products in India compared with other countries and need for massive oil imports.

gelgoog said:

Natural gas and coal prices are still messed up because of Western sanctions on Russia. Even then the renewables aren't cheaper.

Once extra natural gas export capacity ramps up in two years in the US and Qatar the natural gas will be a lot cheaper. And as China continues replacing electricity generation from coal to nuclear and renewables, China will have more coal available for other purposes. At the same time Russia is vastly expanding coal production in the Far East. The price of coal is also bound to drop.

So I would dispute this Bloomberg forecast with regards to either blue or gray hydrogen.

Besides, even if green hydrogen would displace other forms of hydrogen, that doesn't necessarily mean hydrogen is more economic than other feedstocks for certain processes or applications. There are several reasons why hydrogen isn't used more widely.

Click to expand...

In China, coal prices have remained the same during COVID/Ukraine as it is sourced domestically. That is the cost baseline used.

If you want to dispute the Bloomberg forecast, then you're going to have to critique their methodology.

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Hydrogen costs from Bloomberg in March 2023

Green: 20RMB/kg
Natural Gas: 17RMB/kg
Coal: 10RMB/kg

Bloomberg also report that hydrogen electrolyser shipments in China are increasing by 2x this year
So the 18RMB/kg cost quoted today by tphuang makes sense.

Your assertion that Green Hydrogen is 4x the cost of Coal-based hydrogen - is also outdated.
There has been a huge reduction so Green Hydrogen is now only 0.8x more expensive

We also see CICC forecasting electrolyser shipments increasing by 50x to 150GW by 2028.
With such a ramp up, it is highly likely that the cost of Green Hydrogen becomes lower than coal.
And such a scenario is guaranteed if a carbon tax is implemented.

Source

H

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Climate scientists from the research group of Prof. Aihui Wang from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, argue in a new study that land–atmosphere coupling (the coupling of the land surface and the atmosphere through processes such as evaporation, transpiration, and heat exchange) may have played an important role in the persistent compound

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witnessed in the summer of 2022 in eastern China.

The paper has recently been published in

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.

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The findings of this study enhance our understanding of the processes underlying persistent extreme events and potentially offer insights into better predicting them.

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China already announced projects for 300B RMB in green hydrogen related stuff so far this year

80% of consumption is for ammonia and methanol, which is where most of the projects are going toward


but there is this 30k ton liquid hydrogen project in Inner Mongolia that just got announced for 10.5B RMB. Unclear the end user

Next year is historic, it's likely going to be the first year that China's fossil fuel use is expected to peak and decline. Not just oil but coal as well. And it will likely just keep declining faster and faster each year. Combine that with increasing domestic sources of fossil fuel production, ever increasing amounts of renewables being installed every year, ever increasing amounts of EVs and overland sources of fossil fuels from neighboring countries and soon China won't have to depend on vulnerable sea lanes for it's fossil fuels anymore.

It will be a massive geopolitical shift on the same level as America being energy independent off shale oil/gas and becoming a gas/oil exporter after decades of having to rely on the middle east for oil. The entire Taiwan conflict will be to be completely redrawn and re-examined once the naval blockade option suddenly becomes much less effective at starving China out. And I don't think the dinosaurs at Washington really understand just how fast the energy transition is happening in China and how fast their oil/coal use is going to drop as a result.

yes and I wrote a response to that. these people fundamentally don't understand it's in China's interest to reduce emissions.

This is not just an environmental issue for China, it's an energy independence/security & economic issue also.

tphuang said:

yes and I wrote a response to that. these people fundamentally don't understand it's in China's interest to reduce emissions.

This is not just an environmental issue for China, it's an energy independence/security & economic issue also.

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The sheer speed that's happening is what's gonna shock people. We already see that policy makers have zero idea what's going on in China and tend to react with shock and outright denial when confronted with facts.

There's no way that they can react to such a rapidly changing situation when China goes from "They import the majority of their oil/LNG from Saudi Arabia/Iraq/Iran that has to go through the Malacca straits">"peak oil demand">"they import a moderate amount of oil/LNG from sea lanes">"overland pipelines/domestic production can entirely fulfill their basic needs and whatever oil that still comes from sea lanes is just for refining/producing oil deprived products for export">"domestic production can entirely fulfill their basic needs and overland pipelines just provide oil for oil deprived products and for refining and export">"China becomes a net oil/energy/fossil fuel exporter off entirely domestic production"

And each step in that chain might only take a year or two. China's electric vehicles still has a ton of room to grow, right now the percentage of all vehicles in use in China that are EVs are still less than 10% and we're already seeing peak oil demand due to that, can you imagine how low oil demand will go when >50% of vehicles in China are electric, and of course the insane growth in renewables and green hydrocarbon production and China's own growth in domestic fossil fuel production. It's hard to stay on top of the situation when by the time you gather the data and write your report, it's already massively outdated.