Image by Manuel Angel Egea
Only 18 months ago the Australian government gave $14 million dollars to Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest to figure out if his team could build a 500MW electrolyser to make hydrogen gas on an island near Brisbane. It was going to be a glorious Australian green-techno future, the largest hydrogen plant in the world, but it’s missed three deadlines in the last three months to greenlight the project. Instead the Australian company is going overseas.
As Nick Cater points out this part of the made-in-Australia renewable superpower is going to be made-in-Arizona because they still have cheap electricity — a miraculous 7.5c a kilowatt hour!
Australia’s manufacturing decline is a story of broken promises and failed industry welfare programs
Nick Cater, The Australian
Bowen described the project’s success as “critical” to Australia’s ambition to be a green energy superpower.
It turns out abundant sun was not such a competitive advantage in the manufacture of green hydrogen. Low taxes, fiscally responsible government and cheap and reliable carbon-free energy are far more appealing drawcards for investors.
The future is already being built in Buckeye, Arizona, where Fortescue is investing $US500m ($765m) in a green hydrogen plant it says will be up and running by 2026.
In 2023, manufacturing in Arizona grew faster than in any other state. It includes energy and water-intensive industries such as silicon chip manufacturing, with Arizona coming from nowhere to fourth place among US states.
..It isn’t hard to work out why. Arizona’s top state income tax rate is 2.98 per cent. … For energy-hungry industries such as hydrogen and the IT sector, however, the biggest attraction is the industrial electricity price: 7.47 cents a kWh in Arizona compared to 18 cents in California.
Our electricity prices are twice as high as any hydrogen industry could bear
We are so far out of the running. Last month the boss of Fortescue Energy said he was hoping our prices would fall (by half!), and cites Norway as an example of “cheap renewable energy” as if we could emulate that. It’s a bit rich given that the only renewable energy Norway uses is hydropower (96%). Norway has 31GW of hydropower while we have 4GW and can’t even tack on a 2GW pumped hydro dessert. To put it bluntly, Norway has a thousand fjords and a half million lakes and Australia has no fjords and about fifty salt lakes.
Fortescue says hydrogen hopes rest on a halving of power prices
By Peter Kerr, Australian Financial Review, March 11 2024
Mr Hutchinson [Fortescue Energy boss] told The Australian Financial Review Business Summit that high power prices were the main impediment at Gibson Island. “We’ve been working very, very hard on it,” he said. “But it’s tough based on the current power prices when we’re looking at competing globally. It’s a tough decision.
The company expects to approve a green hydrogen project in Norway this year which would be powered by carbon-free hydroelectricity. “If you look around the world where you can get cheap renewable power, competitive renewable power is below $US30 a megawatt hour,” he said.
The irony is that to make hydrogen he needs the cheap power we used to have on the Australian national grid before we started adding renewables (after 2008 when Kevin Rudd was elected). For twenty years the whole Australian grid price was about $30 a megawatt hour. At a point after 2012, when the carbon tax was added, electricity prices rose up beyond the $50 per megawatt hour price limit that makes hydrogen industry unrealistic, and never came back down.
Once upon a time, Australia had electricity so cheap no one would have bought hydrogen. Now electricity is so expensive, hydrogen might be competitive, except no one can afford to make it.
Like the Penrose impossible triangle, just keep going left and it never makes sense.
REFERENCE
AER quarterly wholesale electricity prices 1999- 2023
Gee, is there a Disneyland in Arizona?
140
No, but there is a big nuclear plant that will look after most of the energy concerns. And of course plenty of cheap fracked gas.
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Forgot to add that Arizona’s average retail electricity cost is A$0.1635/kW, and they are moving to repeal their renewable mandate, which currently requires their utilities to generate 15% of their electricity from renewables. They have determined that they have wasted US$3.5bn on renewables without any system benefits.
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So, the bottom line is….
…cheap hydrogen can only be produced if electricity to make it is cheap ?….
.BUT, if electricity is cheap, the need for hydrogen is questionable !
280
sounds logical, … but it would be better to have a pourable motion lotion
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Oh the unintended consequences of adding so much unreliable ruinables to the grid.
Only unintended to any one with half a brain or less as it appears most Politicians fall into that category.
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As a tax payer, I want my money back.
It was never going to work.
Any high school student with an interest in science could have worked that out.
What therefore was the $14 million spent on? Where are the audited accounts?
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It seems BOBowen failed to matriculate! Idiocrity rules and the taxpayer suffers
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I would actually give him some points for that!
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Exactly!
When taxpayer money is handed to these carpetbaggers and they then go bottom-up without ever producing what they’re supposed to and our money has been given to them to produce whatever it was, then we should be handed our money back.
I’d be in favour of legislation that demanded/ensured that any taxpayer funding would be secured for return in the case of failure. Let it come from the personal wealth/holdings of those who had their hands out for our money.
If these things are such good ideas, let these carpetbaggers put up their own money, and stop sticking their hands out for our money.
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Do you have this back issue of Scientific American in your collection?
JANUARY 1, 1973
After 50 years we are no more closer to a “Hydrogen Economy” than in 1973.
The main reason is the cost of making hydrogen and then distributing it.
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I don’t have that copy, but like most “green” ideas, “green” hydrogen can be traced to the National Socialists.
Also see Green Tyranny – Exposing the Totalitarian Roots of the Climate Industrial Complex By Rupert Darwall.
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Co2 Lover,
Similar to Fusion which has been and is still 20 years away…..
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Child’s play for someone with my resources 😁
Here ya go:
https://ufile.io/ch6xi10m
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The Master of Rent Seeking, Twiggy Forrest, will be coming back for more of YOUR money
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Co2 Lover,
Slightly O/T but being stung by a fortescue fish is extremely painful . Twiggy is running out of fools whose money can still be parted with .
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“Twiggy is running out of fools whose money can still be parted with.”
I wish that was true, but the fact is that taxes aren’t optional and we have no say in how that money is spent. Forest and all the other robber barons like him are happy to let governments steal our money before handing it to him.
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“Funding will provide revenue support for investment in renewable hydrogen production”
Only a politician would call any of these boondoglles ‘investments’.
Tritium recently, now green hydrogen and failing wind generation companies around the world.
BOBowen will, no doubt, move on to a well-paid government or UN position after stuffing up Australia with no come-uppance.
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DM, you would probably know, but from memory didn’t Twiggy and that other clown from Atlassian get major Guvvy money for the solar farm in the NT that was going to export to Singers but fell over…..???
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Yes, that was the whole point: expensive exploration of a concept that was ridiculous from the start.
Good money while doing the exploring.
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I thought the QLD government had gifted him an electrolyser site, together with access/egress industrial grade roads in Gladstone. Forrest has constructed buildings thereon. No internals.
https://live-production.wcms.abc-cdn.net.au/eac4fd0a876455942252588c04734fcf?impolicy=wcms_crop_resize&cropH=3333&cropW=5000&xPos=0&yPos=205&width=862&height=575
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Governments, the only people who create a problem and then want more tax payers money to fix the problem.
Sounds like they keep setting up laundries to me.
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And what is all this “green” hydrogen going to be used for?
It’s a nightmare fuel even for NASA to use. Most commercial rocket companies avoid it.
It’s not amenable for consumer use to refuel cars and is difficult to store. It would be stored as either a cryogenic fluid, or heavy metal hydrides or in the form of something else like ammonia. None of those “solutions” is satisfactory or practical or safe for LH2 or NH3.
I wish those in power weren’t so scientifically and technologically illiterate.
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Australia’s Elon Musk, he knows how to hoover up subsidies.
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cheap hydrogen?
hopefully someone will devise a plan/process to use it to reduce iron ore to pig iron.
And make the process available only in Australia?
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LOX and kerosene works well.
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“And what is all this “green” hydrogen going to be used for? It’s a nightmare fuel even for NASA to use. Most commercial rocket companies avoid it.”
That was back when exploding cars were seen as unacceptable. Random detonation is now just part of car ownership, like punctures.
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Warning to Arizonians and Americans in general.
We’ve heard all this BS before here in the Stupid Country.
Reference to the linked quote below:
1) In Australia he uses the nonsense term “renewable energy superpower” but for the US he’s instead changed it to “world-leading global green energy producer”.
2) The reference to the White House Resident’s Inflation Production Act, a large scale wasteful spending of borrowed taxpayer money, is just code for harvesting such money for this project.
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Companies can rapidly move all over the world farming subsidies and greenwashing part of those subsidies back as political donations. What a rort!
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Ironic that Fortescue should promise to make the USA a
Producer? Their process *consumes* far more “green” energy than it produces.
As you say, dealing in hydrogen massively complicates things, but that might be its selling point.
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I don’t think they can smell a carpetbagger any better that we can.
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The people ‘signing the cheques’ are all in on the scam. It’s ‘boomerang’ money, a good chunk of which circles back into the hands of the politicians. There’s a reason why so many people enter politics with meagre funds, earn fairly unremarkable salaries for twenty years, yet somehow accumulate millions of dollars.
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This Albo brainwave of industry made in aus will see more of these stories. Green manufacturing in a high tax, high wage, high energy cost, high regulation, highly unionized isolated country? It’s year 12 level thinking at its best.
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That’s a bit rough on the year 12’s.
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I would have thought year 7.
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Australia is now so dysfunctional we can’t even keep taxpayer-subsidised “green” industries.
And there is no mainstream conservative party with a chance for government.
Vote conservative-oriented parties such as:
United Australia Party
Libertarian Party
One Nation
There is nothing to lose because the Liberal Party is only slightly less bad than Labor. They still believe in unreliables, censorship, Big Government spending and taxing and totalitarian rule during the plandemic among other things.
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Anyone with half a brain, knew that power prices were too dear in Oz to make any sort of Hydrogen, let alone “Green” Hydrogen.
It was false pretences to take the $14M and Twiggy knew it.
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Why Hydrogen? It leaks and it blows up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgWHbpMVQ1U
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One closer to home (Australia) in 2023
On 17 September 2023, at a chemical processing plant in North West Queensland, a release of pressurised hydrogen gas resulted in an explosion and fire injuring three workers and causing damage to plant. The incident occurred during the recommissioning of equipment after routine scheduled maintenance.
https://www.rshq.qld.gov.au/safety-notices/mines/hydrogen-explosion-and-fire-during-the-recommissioning-of-plant-equipment-post-maintenance
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Part of what they said-
Remember that hydrogen is considerably more hazardous than liquid petroleum gas (LPG), as it possesses a wider explosives range, and the ignition energy is approximately 13 times lower than that of the LPG. Further, the low viscosity and small size of a hydrogen molecule create the potential for gradual dispersion through the atomic matrix of solid metal, such as pipework, leading to additional challenges in containing hydrogen.
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It was America’s fault!
The Hindenburg had been designed to use helium for lift, but American export restrictions on helium meant that the airship had been filled with flammable hydrogen instead. As the spectators at Lakehurst looked on, this triumph of engineering turned to tragedy.
Helium Act of 1925, 50 USC § 161, is a United States statute drafted for the purpose of conservation, exploration, and procurement of helium gas. The Act of Congress authorized the condemnation, lease, or purchase of acquired lands bearing the potential of producing helium gas. It banned the export of helium, for which the US was the only important source, thus forcing foreign airships to use hydrogen lift gas.
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This year’s catchphrase appears to be:
Everybody’s working very, very hard on it.
‘Learnings’ & ‘moving forward’ are so last year.
c/- Ministry of Information & Propaganda.
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This is Newspeak for “We are actively lobbying politicians to obtain more taxpayer funded subsidies”!
“‘Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.’” – 1984
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Spot price for electricity in not what customers pay. It is however a factor in setting contract price in the long term. Sustained high spot price means that contract prices will rise. In the short term they will determine which generator is dispatched and whether a shortage is looming.
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But, but, but I thought there was a glut of cheap solar panels. Why aren’t they being used to generate the electricity to create the hydrogen?!!!
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According to Wikipedia, Arizona gets its electricity from the following sources:
So most of the energy to make this “green” (sic) hydrogen comes from coal, gas or nuclear.
Wouldn’t it be better to use such sources of energy directly rather than convert them to hydrogen with large efficiency losses?
Where are the scientists and engineers in positions of influence to speak out against such insanity?
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Bitcoin mining is popular in the States.
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A largely desert state (half the area semi-arid, one third arid), presumably with abundant sunshine, doesn’t seem to be very committed to the renewable farce with only 6.6% grid scale solar.
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So funny that that’s what Twiggy’s green worship needed.
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Americans, look what the Australian subsidy harvesters have done to our country.
Don’t let them into yours.
You have enough of your own nation destroyers.
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The small hydrogen molecule is one of the hardest to deal with as silly Twiggy will soon find out.
It makes pipes brittle and leak and you wouldn’t want to live anywhere near this very dangerous gas.
Next you have the problem of liquid hydrogen transportation to other sites around the world and then the process required to change back to a gas and how to stop the leaks all over again.
You’ll need very good luck with hydrogen powered cars, trucks, planes ships, etc and the blowout costs involved.
In Arizona you may start CHEAP but end up super EXPENSIVE when you try to use this very dangerous gas.
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Neville,
Hydrogen burns with a clear flame – you can walk into a hydrogen fire and not realise until too late. Makes electric cars look safe , at least you can see the flames….
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Thanks Old Goat , but I didn’t say it didn’t burn with a clear flame, so what makes you think I did?
But it can explode and cause a very big mess and loss of life as we’ve seen around the world and the Hindenburg Air Ship was probably the most well known example.
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Neville,
You are correct – I just wanted to reinforce your point . No offence intended…..
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China, Russia, Iran, Nth Korea etc must be laughing their heads off at the loony OECD countries and their mad rush to use TOXIC, DILUTE UNRELIABLE,EXPENSIVE energy and just watching and waiting for the best time to make their move.
The weakness of OECD countries should be very obvious by 2040 if not before then and there will be no time to rebuild or to run and hide.
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So can’t green-hydrogen power be used to manufacture green hydrogen?
If not, what’s the point?
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Sean I think you’ll find you’d be creating no new net energy and ending where you started.
Like a dog chasing its tail and no net new increase of energy.
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Hmmm, sounds like a ‘Net Zero’ plan that might work.
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There is no point and Fortescue have just proven that. If they make it in Arizona using predominantly fossil fuels then it is not “green”.
Lets say you target an output of 10t per day. You are connected to a grid like Australia where you get paid to consume electricity for 3 hours per day and use the proceeds to run another 3 hours. So you run 6 hours per day with no energy cost. That means for 18 hours you consume hydrogen made in those 6 hours. So no sunshine output is 7.5t/day. You are using a hydrogen fuel cell that operates at 80% efficiency so you put through 9.38t overnight to keep producing.
Your electrolyses can produce low pressure hydrogen at 80% efficiency so during the 6 hours on grid power you need to produce the 2.5t for sale and 9.38T to keep going overnight, which is 11.88t for 6 hours; say 2t/hr. So you need to build a 48t/d plant to get 10t/day out of it. Plus you need fuel cells to keep the plant going. If the conversion efficiency from hydrogen to electricity is lower than 80% then the ratio goes much higher than 5X very quickly.
You soon realise it is lower cost to ditch the fuel cell, build a plant that will produce all your output in 6 hours of available zero cost energy. Hence the plant has rated capacity of 10/6= 1.67t/d. Smaller than if you tried to run continuously and you avoid the fuel cell.
I think the hydrogen plant in the Pilbara uses a battery to keep running to keep the size of the electrolyser small and operating at high utilisation.
This highlights the capital intensive nature of intermittent operation.
I doubt anyone with process knowledge would be backing “green”: hydrogen. It is like “renewable” energy. The energy is free but the extractors and storers cost heaps. A lot of people are looking at all the wind and solar power curtailment and asking why can’t we use the capacity. The light bulb comes on and they think lets make “green” hydrogen and put all that underutilised capacity to good use. But then you are confronted with building big on electrolyses that suffer the same problem of poor utilisation. The only winners are the mining companies that supply the raw materials.
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Got to thinking about the practicality of storing the 12t of H2 for overnight use. At 12 bar (180psi), a vessel needs 1m^3 per kg at 20C. So 144,000m^3 or 32m radius sphere. That would require a wall thickness of 30mm of high strength steel. Vessel weight 3050t. It would likely be more practical to have 5 or so smaller vessels.
This highlights one of the serious problems with hydrogen. It is a VERY low density gas. So even at 12bar it requires a massive volume. The volume can be reduced by increasing pressure but then the energy cost goes up. Likewise with cryogenic storage.
The truck in the photo at this link transports 1 tonne of hydrogen at 517bar.
https://www.h2hauler.com.au/type-4-storage-transport/
It takes a lot of energy to get 1000kg of hydrogen up to 517bar. But just 10 of these trucks could store one day of production from a 40t/day plant working for 6 hours when the solar farms in Queensland are cranking.
Anyhow it works out it is lower cost just to build the electrolyses and accept it will only run when power costs nothing. Compressing to high pressure for transport adds a lot of cost.
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You all need to believe harder. That’ll do it.
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Where’s Tinkerbelle, to wave her magic little green wand?
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Rumor has it that Taco Bells were the result of Tinkerbelle forgetting her diet. Fortunately rare establishments in Australia
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However, the UK Parliament was not properly advised by its public serpents (similar to how the CSIRO acts in Australia) about the costs involved, especially in relation to battery back-up for when the wind does not blow and the Sun does not shine {Don’t Poms emigrate to Perth to get all the sunshine there!}
So now there is much talk in the UK of hydrogen coming to the rescue!
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“But it’s tough based on the current power prices when we’re looking at competing globally. It’s a tough decision.
This highlights the disconnect with these useful idiots.
Hydrogen is supposed to be the new low cost energy store. That is the whole reason for making “green” hydrogen.
They could get paid to consume lunchtime power and make hydrogen for next to no energy cost for maybe 8 hours a day. Then shut down until the sun shines the next day.
The problem is that there is a heap of capital tied up in electrolysers and the economics get nasty with just 30% utilisation of all that capital. And therein is the fundamental issue with “renewable” energy.
This is 2019 data for Arizona power generation:
1E9BTU is just under 300GWh. 400E9BTU is 117TWh from coal. Total 1200E12BTU is 351TWh. Average output 40GW. A lot of power for 7.3M people but growing fast from Climate Ambition™ refugees. In fact Arizona’s 351TWh is substantially more than UK with 266TWh for near 10 times the population. No wonder UK is no longer Great Britain. It is an island group off eastern Asia.
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Twiggy once oil and gas to be banned so it can be supposedly replaced by his “green hydrogen” which will make slaves of all non-Elites.
Tragically our politicians are supporting him in this endeavour.
And there’s still no plan about how exactly this “green hydrogen” product is going to be used or where the staggering amount of money for its distribution infrastructure is going to come from.
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And also from the above article, Twiggy also believes in “lethal humidity”.
In addition, he wants “economic stimulants to encourage “green growth and transformation”” which, of course, means harvestable subsidies for him.
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David, Twiggy is a clueless donkey and doesn’t understand data or evidence about Humidity or life expectancy.
Singapore has a life expectancy of 84 years today and that’s expected to increase to 92 years in 2100 according to the UN data.
IOW one of the highest in the world. But Singapore also has a tropical climate and very high Humidity throughout the year and much higher than most countries around the world.
Singapore is also a wealthy country and very high standard of living and education and HEALTH CARE etc.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/SGP/singapore/life-expectancy
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I was amazed this morning to read that Albanese and friends are giving a US company $1Billion of our money to develop a “Quantum” computer. Like Malcolm Turnbull, we have the new Medici, rich bankers who cannot wait to get rid of our money on the latest hare brained scheme.
What happened to all that Nano Technology? Or Malcolm Turnbull’s Snowy II? Or Daniel Andrews Big Build which has left the state with more debt than Queensland and NSW together? And NOTHING finished. Hundreds of millions on the Commonwealth Games now cancelled. Odd, when we ran it happily in 2006 with what we still have? Or Flannery’s $98million for Hot Rocks. Or Turnbull’s gift to himself of $444Million, unexplained and missing in action.
A $14million backhander to billionaire Andrew Forrest shows that Andrew understands the game.
Who cares? Certainly not a government about to announce a $14Billion black hole despite record income from minerals and gas royalties.
And then the $44Billion every year to help those poor Aborigines who have been forgotten overnight after spending a fortune trying to change the Australian Consitution failed. You have to wonder where the money is going when that amount would make 44,000 aborigines millionaries every year. It sure beats Tattslotto.
Who is paying all this money to fail? And who decided making Hydrogen or a Quantum Computer was what the country should be doing with a crashing $A and booming deficit? The Crips are raiding the liquor store.
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These extraordinary amounts of money are meaningless to politicians and senior public serpents, most of whom have never had a proper job nor do they have any meaningful qualifications or knowledge in anything useful.
More details on the billion dollar deal here:
https://www.smartcompany.com.au/startupsmart/news/australia-invests-billion-silicon-valley-quantum-startup-psiquantum/
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You’d think PSIQuantum might have shown some gratitude and issued a press release thanking the Aussie taxpayer for their generosity but not a word as of the time I post this.
https://www.psiquantum.com/news?Category=PsiQuantum-Press-Release
But you will see this BS:
FFS!
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Australia has become a “Soft Touch Superpower”
Twiggy Forrest has been spreading the word among his Rent-Seeker mates
Sounds like the next Tritium to me!
Brisbane fast-charging company Tritium may be forced to close its Australian factory and move its headquarters overseas.
But then again with Digital IDs and Digital Currency no doubt more taxpayer dollars will be thrown at this project
Looking forward to Pauline Hanson’s take on this one!
How many private jet flights were involved in this announcement?
Is the QUANTUM computer to be built on the site of the Callide B coal-fired power station, Shire of Banana, Queensland? Scheduled to close soon.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-30/australia-signs-deal-for-first-useful-quantum-computer/103781352
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“hopes to build an error-corrected computer by 2029.”
Hopes? If is an error, it is funding a Blue Sky project with $1Bn of taxpayer’s money while creating a massive deficit.
Still it’s cheaper than Turnbull’s $2.5Bn Snowy II which does not look like finishing by 2029 and looks like costing $20Bn.
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One thing the world’s first ‘useful’ quantum computer should be able to do is break the computer encryption algorithms used by the banking system.
Now that would be really useful! Cash would again be king.
40
Our bank accounts aren’t safe anyway with socialist governments in power but there are encryption algorithms which are resistant to quantum decryption.
Apple have already upgraded iMessage encryption to a quantum resistant protocol called PQ3.
There is no threat now but Apple are doing it to prepare for an attack strategy called “harvest now, decrypt later” whereby a hostile party steals data now to decrypt it when the technology is available.
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I wish apple good luck with that. Only 4 new algorithms have been approved by NIST for industry use. Of those 4, 3 are signature algorithms and one, the important one, a key exchange algorithm. At least 2 of those approved including the key exchange algorithm were developed using lattice based mathematical theory which one researcher has just found a flaw in, so back to the drawing board.
And good luck reading the paper on it https://eprint.iacr.org/2024/555.pdf
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The hydrogen economy is mostly a fantasy that exists only in the minds of the crazed climate zealots. The only reality is the stolen taxpayer funds that get distributed to wealthy rent seekers that are connected to big government. Like RE, this is just another big scam.
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Twiggy has solved another problem. How to sell hydrogen. Now he does not need to export it to America in ships which don’t exist. It will be made in America for Americans. Which is fine, except we should fund any part of it! We do not make Australia a Renewable Superpower. Dr Forrest makes hydrogen from cheap American nuclear based electricity to sell to Americans. How is that a renewable breakthrough?
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I can’t see how Twiggy can claim the hydrogen that will be made is green unless in Arizona the electricity
generated has no CO2 emissions. Because hydrogen uses so much electricity to generate it , it sort of defeats the purpose if the electricity being used largely comes from fossil fuels
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Except Arizona has one of the biggest nuclear plants in the US, which is why energy is so cheap. And insanely, it is considered now that CO2 is the embodiment of emissions, that nuclear energy ‘has no emissions”! Obviously nuclear is as safe as houses, except it is banned in Australia for a reason which escapes everyone.
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But there is a bigger problem for Australia, for manufacturing in general. Hydrogen is just a single case.
Manufacturing in essence is using energy to make things. If the energy is too expensive, you cannot afford to manufacture anything. Which is why QENOS is leaving and we lose all ability to make plastics from resin or recycle plastics. And 700 jobs. All likely because QENOS is one of the ‘big polluters’ about to pay the first trance of Carbon Dioxide tax at 5% growing to 35%. This just adds to the energy cost, another 35%. As with all metals, steel, aluminum, lead, zinc. Concrete. Glass. Fertilizer. CO2 itself, a demand gas.
There is no way we can become a manufacturing superpower when the Federal Government has a 35% CO2 tax on top of the huge cost of electricity. There will be no manufacturing in Australia. Which suits China just fine.
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It is interesting that the government has leaked against QENOS that they were talking about selling their real estate 9 months ago.
That of course was the date that the CO2 tax started on 1st July 2023 and made it clear to QENOS that in a fire sale, all they had was the land.
So blame the victim. It’s the way Labor politics works.
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There is still no mention in the press of massive CO2 tax on all Australian companies, or at least the biggest of them. Even the MMBW, Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works. The Trans Tasman Ferry. QANTAS. VIRGIN. Glass makers. It’s endless. It’s as if the 5% growing to 35% tax (sorry levy) did not exist. In a country where people still think we have no carbon taxes.
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Under the very best of circumstances, H2 production is only 52% efficient with respect to energy input. 48% of input energy is lost. That is before considering liquefaction, transport, etc. A negative 48% efficiency in original production via electrolysis.
A very good treatise on the H2 economy is: “Energy and the Hydrogen Economy”
https://afdc.energy.gov/files/pdfs/hyd_economy_bossel_eliasson.pdf
Essentially, see pg 28. H2 requires 165% to 212% more energy input than it can deliver. So, that’s a net negative efficiency of -65% to -112%
H2 is a fantasy of innumerate and ignorant believers in pixie dust.
So, add that into the inefficiency of RE powered H2 production. It quickly becomes farcical.
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So how dense is Nuclear energy compared to gasoline? Here’s a way to try and understand the mind boggling comparison.
https://atomicinsights.com/million-mile-per-gallon-mmmpg-carburetor/
“Those uranium shooters ( marbles size), however, would contain approximately as much energy as 30 tanker trucks full of oil. For a more accurate representation of the energy value of uranium, you would also have to imagine that line of tanker trucks being accompanied by a fleet of hundreds of blimps containing the oxygen necessary to obtain energy from oil, but we do not usually think much about supplying the combustion oxygen. Most of the time, we simply take what we need from the global common atmosphere. Bottom line, a mass of uranium contains 2 million times as much potential energy as a similar mass of a hydrocarbon fuel even if you ignore the oxygen requirement”.
“Since uranium is about 19 times as dense as gasoline and since a gallon is a unit of volume, not weight, a gallon bucket of uranium would contain the same energy potential as 38 million gallons of gasoline. Therefore, if you could somehow substitute uranium for gasoline in a car getting a rather modest 20 miles per gallon, you would be able to achieve the 760 million mile per gallon automobile. Even at 200,000 miles per car, it would take 3800 generations of cars to use up the first gallon of fuel.”
Of course a Youtube video also explained that the Nuclear powered Aircraft Carrier USS Ronald Reagan had not been refuelled for 27 years. Unbelievable but TRUE.
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ARIZONA… Coal, Nuclear Power….No wonder its cheap. https://azgs.arizona.edu/energy-resources-arizona
40
Solar and wind barely rate a mention.
So Twiggy Forrest is making “green” hydrogen using mostly coal, gas and nuclear power with huge energy losses compared to the original sources as pointed out above by RickWill and Lance above.
It’s insane!
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But why use man-made electricity to manufacture a man-made gas to manufacture electricity?
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Im not supporting the concept, but i believe its called .” Proof of concept”.
IE, to demonstrate IF hydrogen can be effectively ( technically and financially , etc) produced from electricity using current technologies.
The drive is to find a “green” alternative to the current commercial hydrogen production process of steam reforming from gas
Hydrogen is a valuable , essential, industrial feed stock.
I didnt see any mention of reusing the hydrogen to generate electricity though ?
Most sane people realise that this is technically possible , but totally impractical and too expensive…(even ignoring the fact that they will be using Fossil generated electricity)
..Ultimately the suggestion is to use “Green” sourced electricity as in the original Sun Cable project in the NT
Its all “Fantasy Follies” using public money , exploiting poorly informed ,weak , Government
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Hydrogen haters still gonna hate, and cite OLD problems, since solved, as obstacles.
Safety – solved
Cryogenic temps – solved
Metal storage degradation – solved
Efficiency/electrolysis and energy inputs – solved (and solved another giant problem in the process).
ALL products in their infancy have problems but that doesn’t automatically disqualify them from being viable.
Maybe skeptics could spend some time with a search engine? 😉
“There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will.”
~ Albert Einstein, 1932
“Television won’t last, because people will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.”
~ Darryl Zanuck, movie producer at 20th Century Fox, 1946
“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.”
~ Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943
Shall we add Hydrogen as another famous wrong call in the future?
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Amazing that Australia has banned the use of Nuclear Energy and yet exports Uranium around the world.
Also Nuclear Energy is the closest thing that we could call a miracle and has a very safe record over the last 65 years.
Here we’re reminded that the Nuclear powered Carrier USS Ronald Reagan could be operated for 20 years without refuelling. Just astounding for a ship that weighs 97,000 tonnes. Video about 1.5 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTSaM9XY2as
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“The study is critical to the domestic and export industry for clean hydrogen and ammonia supply-chains to deliver Australia’s first renewable hydrogen shipments to international markets.”
-Captain Planet Saver aka Chris Bowen
Surely the fact that the need to shift the project from Gibson Island to Arizona, a US state that sources most of its power from gas and nuclear, demonstrates the hypocrisy of this pipe dream. Two things to consider here. Firstly, Bowen upon consulting Fortescue, thought hydrogen could be generated cost effectively. Secondly, he’s jumped to the idea of exporting this phantom project product to service his fantasy of making Australia a “renewable superpower”.
We’re doomed if we have a politician poorly qualified to deal with energy issues putting the horse before the cart. Ie, we need affordable power in our own backyard before we entertain the idea of trying to provide to overseas markets (a logistic prospect that is equally unattainable anyhow)
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Someone tell Mr Bowen that an awful lot of cheap hydrogen would go a long way to permitting the production of nitrogen fertilizers, of which Australia imports a very large amount of every year.
But that would mean Australia would have to produce a finished product rather than a raw material.
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CSIRO’s view: link
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Renewable energy is so cheap that no one can afford to produce it
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We already have a source of dirt cheap power with water. Yallourn (Hazelwood) has coal with nearly 50% moisture. All the Hydrogen we need could be manufactured right there.
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[…] From JoNova […]
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Do we get our money back? The leaders of this country are #$%@& insane.
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