By Jo Nova
The irony! The only generator that can make affordable hydrogen is brown coal
The Great Green Hydrogen dream was killed by the dual impossibility paradox, it has no customers prepared to pay the Gucci level rates, and it can’t be made cheaper without using brown coal to which would mean it isn’t “green”.
The irony is practically radioactive — analysts admit Green Hydrogen is only economic if a company can get electricity at $30 to $40 per megawatt hour, which Australia had for decades, but blew away by adding “renewables”. Like every other nation on Earth, the more unreliable wind and solar we added, the more expensive our electricity got. These days the only generator that still make electricity at that price now is old brown coal.
For years Australian average wholesale electricity prices were $30/MWh
Sure, for five minute bids, and with generous subsidies stolen from taxpayers, wind and solar can pretend to be cheaper, but it turns out that the hydrogen factories, like every other factory, aren’t efficient if they stop and start every time a cloud rolls over, or the wind ebbs. All the infrastructure and staff, and the insurance and loans are still sitting around clocking up the bills, while nothing gets done. And all the inflows and outflows need to be adjusted, and the temperatures held steady. It would have been obvious to any precocious ten year old that hydrogen plants needed reliable electricity, which means they needed galactic size batteries to fill in the gaps, and therefore an interstellar budget.
The truth is, no one really wants “Green” hydrogen, or green steel, except as a fashion accessory to brag about at Davos. But people might buy it if it was cheap, which it isn’t. The only way to make it cheaper is with brown coal, which means it’s isn’t green hydrogen, and so we find the nation has accidentally stepped into a Escher Puzzle where all staircases lead upwards and left and end right where they started except the bank balance goes phht with every cycle.
Let’s not underestimate the scale of this debacle
Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest burned off $2 billion dollars (AU) on setting up his Green Dream Hydrogen energy plan which has just collapsed with the loss of 700 jobs. But bigger than that, the Australia Labor Government made it the centerpiece of its $2 billion Hydrogen Headstart program.
“I am not giving up on hydrogen at all,” Forrest tells The Australian.
“The green electricity price just kept keeps heading north, and It’s been dragged up by the fossil fuel price. We’re not pivoting away. We’re going upstream to get the green electrons at the right price”.
On the 7:30 Report he kept dodging the question of what this meant for Labors big Renewable Nation plan, which means it obvious isn’t good.
At one point he mentioned “the war”. As if somehow a war which limited gas supplies and drove up the price of coal “dragged up the price” of renewables. The truth was that the Ukrainian-Russian War and the death of the Nordstream Gas pipeline should have been the best thing that could happen to renewables. It was their golden market opportunity to fill the gap, but it only exposed how useless they are. When push came to shove, everyone wanted coal and gas, including the companies that make wind turbines and solar panels. The reason wind and solar went up in price was because wind power can’t make wind turbines, and solar power can’t make solar panels, and no one can afford to make batteries.
Those killer costings on Hydrogen:
Fortescue’s pivot shakes faith in Labor’s Hydrogen Headstart strategy
Angela Macdonald-Smith, AFR
Matthew Rennie, a former EY partner who is now an independent adviser, said his firm’s analysis indicated that prices for power and electrolysers – which use renewable power to split water into hydrogen and oxygen – would need to be much cheaper to produce green hydrogen in Australia even at under $3 a kilogram.
He said power prices would need to be less than $40 a megawatt-hour and electrolyser costs would need to more than halve to produce hydrogen at that level – still 50 per cent more expensive than the government’s $2 target for the gas to be competitive.
Or worse, $30 a megawatt hour:
Keep hydrogen dream alive, Andrew Forrest tells Labor
By Joe Kelly, Nick Evans and Rhiannoin Down, The Australian
Dr Finkel, said green hydrogen could replace coal as a chemical-reducing agent in the production of iron, but acknowledged its viability was “highly dependent” on the costs of renewable electricity.
He said the goal should be to start producing green hydrogen at about $2 a kilogram, “which would require the electricity that is used to make the hydrogen to be less than about $30 per megawatt hour – which is very cheap.”
The current average price on the wholesale national electricity market in the top two renewable states this month is $199 per megawatt hour (SA) and $214 in Tasmania. Even in Qld and NSW the prices are still $100 a megawatt hour more than they used to be.
Twiggy Forrest and Anthony Albanese believed their own fantasy propaganda. Twiggy was still talking tonight of “infinite” energy in Australia from the sun and the wind, showing how little he cares about numbers that matter.
Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay
Graph: AER data
It amazes me that these “towering intellects” never thought to ask a chemist or a physicist about the energy requirements to create hydrogen. Not like physics has changed, or the valence bonds of the required feed stock have changed their atomic structure, or anything like that!
That analysis was worked out over a century ago, and results in the produced hydrogen retaining between 12% to a maximum of around 30% of the energy, depending on the processes used. Of course, there are other ways to make hydrogen more efficiently, like directly from natural gas or ammonia, which is also produced from fossil fuel. But it still costs more in energy to produce than it returns when it is “burnt”. And those processes couldn’t be called “green”.
Now just ask how much of your money Twiggy just poured down the drain! Not that the people of Australia would have owned anything from this poorly thought through “investment” anyway! But at least Twiggy didn’t have to risk his own fortune on a scheme that had no chance of success.
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It’s an incredibly simple calculation to make isn’t Paulie?
It’s remarkable that no one involved bothered to do it. Either that or they simply didn’t care because it was “someone else’s money”.
And apart from all that, hydrogen is a nightmare to handle and use as a transport fuel and even a nightmare for NASA to use in rocketry.
The other hydrogen-rich transport fuel is ammonia which is also a nightmare to use.
We already have perfectly adequate, safe and inexpensive (distorted by high taxes) transport fuels available in the form of hydrocarbon fuels and plenty of supply. There are also EVs for poseurs and virtue signalers. Something for everyone!
Now onto the next fantasy project. How about that giant 4300km cable running from a proposed solar plantation in the Northern Territory to Singapore? I understand Forrest is no longer involved but Cannon-Brookes is still interested.
Anyone with basic science, engineering and economics knowledge would say that’s not viable either.
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It is now, and has only EVER been about the “spillage” from all the money being sloshed about.
Money, ultimately taken at gun-point from the wallets of the “peasants”.
Eventually, some of those peasants are going to notice the ‘work” of the Kleptocracy and demand a reckoning,
Caveat: Here in the penal colonies, sticking your head “over the parapet” is a decidedly dangerous move, especially when money and political power are in play.
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Speaking of EV’s I just had an epiphany.All those people driving around in”Electric Cars”patting themselves on the back for being such good citizens siting on a VERY large battery waiting for it to self combust and hoping that they can get out of said car in time.
I bet that they are NOT told about THAT little gem.
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I saw a video by someone claiming that if you happen to be in a Tesla while it’s doing a software update, you can’t (or shouldn’t) get out of the car for the duration which might be 20mins or more.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlEV_Obiuyg&t=14s
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She and her grandparents are lucky to be alive; she is in hospital and her grandfather has 60% burns. Horrible.
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The stupid things have been known to drive away on their own at times.
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Paulie,
My chemist colleagues, plus electrical engineers, faced with building new electrical generators in the 1970s for new mines in remote places, had quite adequate understanding of these basics and in hindsight, chose the optimum.
It was diesel then.
The problem was not an absence of knowledge. The problem was decision makers who did not understand the technical concepts like chemists did, but chose to invent their own science.
I do not know how to ensure that such ambitious, ignorant people can be kept away from serious new systems, but it needs to happen for the good of the Nation.
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Geoff,
Not just the mining industry, but the entire north of Australia ran their electricity generators on diesel, wherever they were too remote to be connected to the state grids. Darwin only shifted from diesel generators in the late 1990s, after the gas pipeline from the gas fields to the south was completed.
Today, those remote mines are happily using solar subsidies to pay for new solar PV infrastructure. But their incentive is financial: to reduce the amount of diesel they have to truck in! They can work those numbers for themselves, particularly given an average mine has an average life of 20 years. Of course, the mining companies have no intention of getting rid of their diesel generators, because they know that a mine can’t rely on renewables alone!
At the same time, it is still cheaper for them to maintain a FIFO business model. So they are not “investing” in solar to reduce fossil fuel emissions!
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A bunch of fantasising nonsense. Of course they “asked a chemist” and all the other things you imagined they didn’t do. That’s not why it fell apart.
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Or sarcasm, ironic hyperbole or something.
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Thank you for your insight into why it fell apart, namely
.
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Mr. Jonas: What an excellent use of blank spaces. Appropriate.
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“Of course they “asked a chemist” ”
And you know that how. ?
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That is the problem with surrounding yourself with yes men. Disagree and you’re fired.
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There must be a reason the world needs “green Hydrogen”, but I can’t think what it might be.
I ponder the lost opportunities. Large sums are wasted. Sad.
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So you can see it if it leaks out?
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Did Forrest actually lose any of his own money on this all was this $2 billion courtesy of the long-suffering Aussie taxpayer?
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See “Ded Zepplin” cartoon Google “johannes leak cartoon today”
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Johannes’ cartoon today is utterly brilliant. It is the latest in a very long series of brilliant cartoons; he’s a genius.
One majorly good reason to subscribe to The Australian.
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It’s my first go to on the morning that Leake has his cartoon which, unfortunately, is not every day. His ability to capture the moment and his brillant artistry is unique.
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Even down to the carpetbags…a student of history, no less.
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I thought the original Oz article said that $8bn of taxpayer’s money has been lost. It wasn’t clear whether only $2bn went out the door, and perhaps the other $6bn was going to follow as delivery subsidies.
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Yes he lost about $900 million after grants and subsidies. He lost a lot of executives. Forrest is suing one lot because he claims they stole his steel making process although it is doubtful that would have been economical. Firstly, there are problems with the raw material. I believe Forrest was looking at magnetite which can be concentrated and reduced. In the 1980’s in Tasmania there was a Magnetite mine near Waratah where the ore was crushed and made into a slurry. The slurry was pumped to Port Latta where it was separated by magnetic drums, pelletised and fed to shaft kilns with anthracite and small amount of oil firing to give a pig iron product that was then exported to USA.There it was melted in electical furnaces plus natural gas with the addition of scrap and other steel components such as nickel, chrome, manganese, silica, etc. In this process hydrogen could take the place of the anthracite. Somewhere within the process it would be necessary to add carbon (maybe as graphite or petroleum coke). Stainless steel (with Cr & Ni) has about 3%C.
Making steel from magnetite can be done but it is an expensive route due to a) the more expensive iron ore, b) the expensive process and c) the use of hydrogen. There is no advantage having it in Australia. The Chinese and Indians would have steel at half the cost.
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Horray
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Even a fanatically pro-green-hydrogen website says:
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So now we’ll probably circle back to coal & other fossils, but have to “de-carbonize” through carbon capture. Real folks need energy; and the left needs
a large conveyor of money flowing through the government on the merry-go-round of lost causes so they can scoop their grift as it goes by.
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Meanwhile, in Nantucket, there are Limericks waiting to be released:
https://nantucketcurrent.com/news/more-debris-enters-water-at-vineyard-wind-farm-as-damaged-turbine-blade-deteriorates
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“Damaged” – checks photo – yep, definitely damaged.
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“Meanwhile, in Nantucket, there are Limericks waiting to be released”
I tried but kept running into words that wouldn’t make it through moderation
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Bucket?
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Bruce,
Maybe someone should send the Nantucket story to our esteemed energy and hyperintelligent (or lack thereof) minister Mr BS Bowen. I’m SURE he wouldn’t know about any of the negative aspects of “renewable” energy generation. He certainly knows all of the favorite negative aspects of “nucalar” (as he likes to pronounce it) and oil and gas.
Having very recently approved of offshore wind farms in Victoria I’m certain he’ll reverse that decision very quickly when he learns of all these additional problems.
The latest anti “nucalar” drivel sliding out the sides of his mouth is that Australia doesn’t have enough water to have nuclear power generated here.
INSANITY writ large.
Cheers,
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What about the marine life that will ingest those sharp, jagged pieces of fibreglass?
FFS, they banned plastic drinking straws over made up numbers and imaginary problems, how much more reason to ban windmills over very real problems like this?
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I remember this from days of yore –
There was a man from Nantucket
who kept all his cash in a bucket
His dear wife, named Nan
ran away with a man
And as for the bucket
Nan took it.
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That’s only one blade off one turbine. Imagine what could happen if Australia also puts offshore turbines into locations such as Bass Strait, and more than one blade comes adrift after a storm.
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See the Johannes Leak cartoon in todays Oz.
Brilliant!
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Agreed.
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Google – johannes leak cartoon today
“Ded Zepplin”
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Note the Albo Labor Fire Hose spurting out Australian Taxpayer’s Money for the already full 2 Carpet Bags of Money
if you scroll down on https://www.theaustralian.com.au/ you can see the cartoon in full screen
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Cartoon image
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And the Twigster is said to be planning on spending half a billion helping re-build Ukraine.
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Whose half a billion dollars? I bet it’s not his.
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Congratulation. You’ve stumbled upon the not so secret operations of investors.
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So the OECD countries have wasted trillions $ for the last 34 years,but will also we continue to waste many more trillions on the hydrogen lunacy + unreliable, toxic W & S etc for another 34 years?
B O Bowen made an idiot of himself at the recent press conference and his stupidity was written all over his stupid face and Andrew Bolt is correct again and he has been correct for decades.
Thanks again to Jo Nova for having the guts to pursue these loonies.
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Here’s Andrew Bolt going after these clueless,Green loonies last night on his show.
You can watch Barnaby Joyce’s response as well at the link.
https://www.skynews.com.au/opinion/andrew-bolt/absolute-disaster-andrew-bolt-slams-dishonest-governments-green-hydrogen-plans/video/34874943288fbf2789f82d0235deb08c
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I am told that hydrolysis of water is more efficient at high temperature. One of the US Government’s multiple money wasting schemes is trialling this in the hope of reducing the cost of hydrogen down to that of using natural gas.
Haven’t the link but trial 9 mile Island plant.
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Note to Minister Bowen, Write out 100 times: Hydrogen is not green.
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See my post at #16
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He’s a simpleton. Can he even write?
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Consider the possibility that the Minister could copy the required phrase – without actually understanding it, any more than I understand early Sanskrit writings …
Auto
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An early indication of Hydrogen failure was the “Forrest Canaries”. The early very highly paid senior executives who must have smelled a rat 12 months ago when they started to look for alternative employment. Then paranoia set in and Forrest set private investigators on their trails. Mrs Forrest too wasn’t happy to watch her half of the fortune slip away and sued for divorce. The big question now is “what will Blackout Bowen do”. How will he explain this gargantuan financial cock up to his Parliamentary Mates? Or will they too, just gradually fall off the edge and duck for cover behind a CO2 smoke screen?
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Bowen is a truly vindictive little d…head and the entire Cabinet knows it. Elbow cannot move him on though because the Cabinet will then blow itself to smithereens.
We have to endure the slow drip of economic destruction and just hope there is sufficient will to cope with black starts without riots.
I’ll add that over 20 years ago now I was part of a small team that a German chemical engineering group hired for a DD on producing H2 from LaTrobe’s lignite deposits. The actual patented process for production belonged to the German group but they needed to know all the basic chemistry, geology and engineering of the LaTrobe deposits. The same conclusions were reached then as Twiggy babe has found now. Nothing has changed since then.
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See my post at #29.1
This concept was revisited more recently.
All the Chemical Engineers here know that there are no free lunches in the energy world – unless the taxpayer is picking up the tab!
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The milking of the Australian taxpayer and ruination of Australia’s true industrial base by “attempting” or pretending to move forward and upward with the free energy provided by nature has to stop.
This post helps expose what’s going on in the Elite/Politico environment where chasing a dream pays better than real work
It should now be obvious that there was never any intention of sending Australian solar beams under water to places up north.
When the only Australian industry is that of moving and erecting wind plantations and solar beam extractors we have definitely reached an abysmal low in our history.
There are Those who are responsible for all this and they have NOT lead us to a better place.
Let’s get busy!
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I thought Twiggy’s main part in this was to set up a plant to manufacture large Electrolysers ready for the big Green Hydrogen demand ?
So, Has he given up on that part of the plan also ?
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https://reneweconomy.com.au/fortescue-starts-building-hydrogen-electrolyser-plant-that-will-double-global-production/#google_vignette
https://www.hydrogeninsight.com/electrolysers/billionaire-forrest-s-fortescue-officially-opens-new-2gw-pem-hydrogen-electrolyser-factory-in-australia/2-1-1622833
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Chad
” … first electrolysers will roll off the factory floor in 2023.” Thanks, noted.
Do we know who bought those first electrolysers?
Where are they?
Are they in operation?
Are they making money?
Who buys the H2?
Am I being hopeful [!] in expecting answers from the trolls?
Auto
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Even blind Freddie should understand that toxic W & S are not free, but they’re toxic, super expensive and only last about 15 to 20 years.
And W CF is about 30% and S CF is just 15%. So why can’t these so called educated scientists understand these very simple numbers?
So called Green hydrogen is also super expensive and very dangerous and could never provide enough useful energy to run a first world economy.
Why is this available data so hard to understand?
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Neville, you are right but unfortunately there are many thousands of people without Blind Freddy’s seeing abilities. LinkedIn is awash with them, fawning over the latest BS that the Climate Change Council or other “Green Energy” advocates spew out daily. Thousands of sycophants ready to defend the lies, perhaps in hope of getting a job with the Subsidy harvesting vultures? Simon Homes a Court and his cheer squad are vehemently attacking those that dare question the VIRTUES of solar and wind and tearing down the sensible arguments for exploring Nuclear as a reliable long term energy source.
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JANUARY 1, 1973 – Scientific American
A case is made for an energy regime in which all energy-sources would be used to produce hydrogen, which could then be distributed as a nonpolluting multipurpose fuel
50 years ago I gave a dissertation as part of my Chemical Engineering course based on this article.
However, the cost of making hudrogen in volume and the difficulty of distributing hydrogen still have not been resolved 50 years later and are unlikley to be resolved any time soon.
Twiggy Forrest needs to stick with what he knowns – digging iron ore out of the ground and shipping it to China. Twiggy is no Chemical Engineer.
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CO2,
were you at Sydney University, and did you have John Glastonbury as a Lecturer in Chemical Engineering.
Memories of working at night, whilst doing Chemical Engineering, having changed from Civil Engineering, at Kurnell Oil Refinery Botany Bay
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OldOzzie
University of Newcastle – I had a BHP Scholarship.
I had a one armed pipe smoking professor whose other arm had been blown off in an industrial accident at an oil refinery.
I decided to avoid the oil industry, even though I did get a job offer from Mobil, and worked in the brewing industry instead. Free beer was an offer too good to refuse!
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Did you know Prof Terry Wall at Newcastle or was he there later. He was there when I gave a talk at an International flame conference around 1984.
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A friend of mine worked with TW.
In another department, we had Neal M, what a dynamo.
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Twiglet is still trying for Green Energy in Arizona where electricity is cheaper and using iden subsidies. Let’s see how long that lasts when Trump is elected President
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Labor’s green hydrogen rules for $6.7b subsidy splits producers
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Hydrogen does work. I’ve seen it on ads where little pulses of blue are injected into things. Sure it’s a cartoon but….
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The funniest thing is – is it Alinta Energy? – runs ads telling us the future is machines just like the images Jo uses on the articles these days, in their rush to end coal. Shows you just where their minds are at – fantasy
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AFR
https://www.afr.com › Policy › Economy
18 Apr 2024 — While the Chinese property sector consumed 296 million tonnes of steel in 2019, the RBA expects demand to fall by 80 per cent to 58 million tonnes.
China accounted for a record 85 per cent of Australia’s $136.1 billion in iron ore exports in 2023, according to analysis of data from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade by The Australian Financial Review.
Twiggy’s cash cow may already be under pressure and so he no longer has his and our money to burn on “Green Hydrogen” Schemes (Scams).
https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/china-s-iron-ore-demand-may-have-peaked-rba-warns-20240417-p5fkfl
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When watching the news of it last night, my first question was, “how much money did the government spend here?”. My estimate was a few hundred mill, thinking I was exaggerating. Nope. 2 billion.
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There was talk in The Oz of $8bn being lost.
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The whole renewables push is about money . They know it doesn’t work , but its a way to get their hands on the money hose created by taxation . Twiggy got rich by getting control of mining assets during the minerals boom but realises that is ending . Warren Buffet openly stated that subsidies fuel renewables and all the hedge fund managers and CEO’s know it too , but they all have to make profits , so they keep the charade going . It’s interesting that the MSM is starting to admit the truth , but has a bad case of cognitive dissonance .
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Anything with ‘green’ in the title immediately exposes itself as a scam to fleece the poor taxpayer….Scams which are not ‘green’ in any way, shape or form – Pure BS and no one in govt thinks to question it – just throw bucketloads of OUR cash at them so they can virtue signal to their inner city latte sipping, climate cultist voters.
All of these ill thought-out schemes lead to worse environmental outcomes, especially in poor countries that mine and process the raw materials but they are NIMBY so it doesnt matter…..
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When I was a young nipper, ‘green’ meant naïve, inexperienced, immature, lots to learn… still does.
Similar to when pollies use the word ‘fulsome’, thinking it means generous or bounteous: instead it describes them to a ‘T’ – insincere, servile, gross, disgusting, brown-nose [Odhams Dictionary 1946].
George Orwell wrote something about language.
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Are children in school still required – or even encouraged – to read Orwell, these days?
And, if not – is there a reason?
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Anything with ‘green’ in the title
Well, if it says “green” it doesn’t work as well as it could. Your “green” washing machine saves so much water it doesn’t wash or rinse your clothes properly! Your washing powder without phosphates isn’t as good with hard water. Your “safer for the environment” paint stripper doesn’t work as well as the old dichloromethane type. Your car costs more and has slightly less power due to pollution control on the exhaust. I could go on…
The point is that with most things there is a trade-off. What I hate is the lying, the fear compaigns, the manipulation of naive young people (and some old fools), the complete nonsense and blatant corruption.
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Natural Hydrogen gas is rare on earth even though it is the most abundant element in the Universe.
U.S. law prevented the Hindenburg from using helium instead of hydrogen, which is flammable. After the crash of the hydrogen-filled R101, in which most of the crew died in the subsequent fire rather than the impact itself, Hindenburg designer Hugo Eckener sought to use helium, a non-flammable lifting gas.
However, the United States, which had a monopoly on the world supply of helium and feared that other countries might use the gas for military purposes, banned its export, and the Hindenburg was reengineered. After the Hindenburg disaster, American public opinion favored the export of helium to Germany for its next great zeppelin, the LZ 130, and the law was amended to allow helium export for nonmilitary use. After the German annexation of Austria in 1938, however, Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes refused to ink the final contract.
Today, 95% of man-made hydrogen comes from steam reforming, a technique with a great efficiency, “but a disastrous carbon footprint”. On the other hand, electrolysis creates hydrogen from renewable energies, but loses about two thirds of the energy input in the production process.
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The same 70% loss applies to stripping hydrogen from ethane and sequestering the Carbon Dioxide.
But the whole point of this exercise is being missed.
What is the actual objective of all this? To reduce world CO2? How is that going to be done? And what is the benefit?
Politicians controlling climate was a ridiculous notion. And so it remains. But the destruction of Western society has only one beneficiary. China.
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“but loses about two thirds of the energy input in the production process.”
Something taught in chemistry class when I was at high school in 1962.
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IMPORTANT: Hydrogen is not an energy source only a vector of energy
Coal, natural gas and oil are sources of energy (as is nuclear power).
Natural occuring hydrogen gas is rare – although much taxpayers’ money will be spent to find more of it now the reality of the cost of making it without CO2 emissions from natual gas produced hydrogen sink in.
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What I find ironic is that Twigless is worried about “lethal humidity”, a scare I’ve heard nowhere else, but his solution is to have every vehicle emit huge quantities of water vapour
. It would be interesting for someone with say a double PhD in Engineering, to do some back of the envelope calculations about water vapour levels in a city powered by hydrogen. How much water vapour would be added to the local atmosphere? Would humidity levels be significantly affected? I’m very curious.
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Twigless. Very good. Fallen off his own twig. But now vilifying water? The other noxious chemical output of combustion. H2O. I knew one day they would try to propose humans also control H2O. It makes you wonder how general is this gift of intelligence to humans?
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Dihydrogen monoxide is dangerous stuff , dozens of innocent public have died recently when they got some on them, why it even caused a humpback whale to nearly lose its life.
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Here’s a question for you. Should we ban the following chemical product? It’s an industrial solvent that is a major corrosive agent for metals. If certain metals are left unprotected this chemical can lead to metal fatigue that threatens major structures like bridges etc. As a contaminant in the air it can readily access most metal surfaces particularly outdoors. You will also find it contained in all those industrial fire extinguishers. Multiple industries use it as a solvent which means it often leaks into waterways. It can also be quite poisonous in the right quantities, with only a small amount ingested into the lungs of babies proving lethal. In past decades it was also implicated in acid rain pollution which affected European forests. Clearly this product is dangerous – it is known as dihydrogen oxide and we should ban it.
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Yes, ban it. Dihydrogen oxide has killed more people over recorded time than any other product of combustion. Far more than Carbon Dioxide.
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Floods, drownings, shipwrecks, tsunamis, pool accidents, choking and even worse, droughts, sandstorms, hurricanes, tornadoes, sleet, snow. The damage done by this toxic chemical has no match in human history. Banning it should be part of the Green and Greenpeace platform. And painted on the side of every Greenpeace ship. And without it we wouldn’t get rising sea levels, most of which are due to combustion because the ocean is saturated with the stuff.
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A hydrogen economy is a bigger joke than global warming, and that’s saying something.
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Dr Happer tried to educate us about their co2 BS and fraud on his last Aussie visit.
This video takes about 9 + minutes but he has an honest point of view and his Salem witch trials and hangings story is very interesting.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQyvUJ1k9_M&t=20s
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He’s not ” Twiggy” Forrest, by the way. Apparently, he is now Dr Forrest.
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Can’t see the Forrest for the twigs.
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Surely every office is a Branch office?
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And now 700 employees are leaves?
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So, now we go full circle and now they’ll be again pushing “carbon” (sic) sequestration.
The insanity of these tools never ceases to amaze me.
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In the scaled-up version the CO2 produced will be “captured” somehow in Bass Straight.
Which begs the question of just leaving Victoria’s lowest cost reliable brown coal power stations operating and disposing of the CO2 the same way!
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Pump it down Bass Strait wells and push up more oil.
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Even better, ship dried Brown coal to Japan and they can worry about the CO2 sequestration (not that it’s a problem anyway). The problem is, we (Australia) have signed up to some IPCC Hydrogen production agreement years ago. Some idiot politician or bureaucrat earned themselves a full paid for junket to sit in a room with some other green fanaticals and signed some bit of paper. But for some reason Australia is honest and then goes ahead with the agreement. How many of the other signatories to that agreement have actually done anything? My wager – possibly none or very few. For some reason we get this big dose of FOMO and implement crazy policies.
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Ross,
Here, in the UK, the FOMO is rabid – not least in our ‘Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero’ as Sir Starmer now describes the Bacon Butty Botherer, The Rt. Hon. Ed Miliband.
Already – they’ve only been in office two weeks – prime agricultural land is to be concreted over – at about 52 North, less then 900 miles from the Arctic Circle – for Slaver panels.
Onshore wind developments will, once more, bust bats and blight the landscape [and given that the best locations will, most likely, be already taken – not hugely effectively].
There is a move to ‘quadruple offshore wind’ by 2030 [Labour 2024 Manifesto – page 51].
Even talk of floating offshore wind – discussed here and elsewhere as impractical – and hugely expensive, if it is even, technically, possible. Massive rotating rotors, weighing hundreds of tonnes, reacting to every wave and every breeze, on a shaft metres long – a hundred and fifty metres [c.500′] above the sea surface. Bearing replacement after every winter?
And nothing for energy storage on even a tenth – a hundredth – of the scale needed.
Not even with Other People’s Money …
So your Bowen may be local – but he’s not alone!
Sadly.
Auto
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Whatever happened to Classical Physics training? Forrest went to a good school but economics and business were his thing. I though he showed himself up to be a bit of dummy on the ABC last night. Bit sad cos I like the man. He does a lot of good work in Australia.
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With combustible hydrogen vehicles and the enormous and expensive infrastructure to support hydrogen, combustible EVs are actually the superior option between the two.
Oh, and notes to Leftists:
-Liquid hydrogen is difficult and dangerous to make, transport and use and constantly bleeds off.
-Metal hydrides are too heavy for transport storage.
-Tanks for high pressure gas are too heavy.
-Ammonia is also toxic and dangerous.
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The only way hydrogen makes sense as a fuel is when it’s stuck onto a nice carbon backbone.
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And ammonium nitrate is explosive….
Though mixing with diesel enhances that
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We need to be careful to “avoid throwing out the baby with the bath-water”. Hydrogen on its own is not a lot of use due to the energy cost of production and the containment issue but H burns with a very hot flame so adding it to the intake air of a big diesel engine will cause rapid flame spread, higher flame temp and therefore better expansion of the gas mixture. More of the diesel is completely combusted so you derive more power from a given volume of fuel. You produce H & O continuously and do not store it but feed it directly into the air intake as close to the engine as possible. You require about 2 to 4% of intake air to be augmented with H & O gas.
I reckon the ICE has a long way to go and for Ultra High Temp coal furnaces H & O augmentation would be ideal.
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We love to blame Labor and Chris Bowen for these crazy fantasy energy projects, like Green Hydrogen. But, the Liberal National Party are equally to blame because they were in government when Net Zero was agreed to. Also, you will probably find that many of the IPCC agreements were signed up by Australia under their governorship. Angus Taylor, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison were also the green idiots, just that they didn’t make such a spectacle of it. Which is what Labor are good ( bad?) at. Plus, you then have the government bureaucrats and scientific advisors ( eg Finkel, CSIRO) using bad activist science to support policy. Dutton is talking nuclear, but only because it is a relatively “carbon free” energy source. Has anyone asked him if he believes in man made climate change? I’ll bet he does and also most of the LNP do as well. The only decent federal politicians they had were Craig Kelly and the soon to be departed Gerrard Rennick. Littleproud, (leader of the National Party) is a warmist and I’m unsure of Matt Canavan, who is probably more of an opportunist. It’s basically a Uniparty on climate and energy. In fact, it’s a Unigovernment as well.
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And what does NETT ZERO do? Takes us back to 2005? So what is the point of that? Wasn’t CO2 already too high in 2005?
And how does Nett zero which is about ’emissions’ actually reduce world CO2? Because Global Warming is not produced by emissions. It is produced by CO2.
There is no logic at all to nett zero. It is an aspirational goal without any actual purpose.
1 How does Australia benefit from Nett zero?
2 How much will it cost?
3 How much will it reduce CO2.
4 when will we see the benefits?
5 why are higher temperatures bad for Australia? For most of the year, say right now, they would be most welcome.
I really have no idea, nor does anyone else of what Nett Zero is supposed to achieve. So why it is a goal for the country?
And who decided this was a worthwhile idea?
6. When did Australians vote for Carbon taxes?
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“When did Australians vote for Carbon taxes?”
They didn’t, but it’s like when you got married, you didn’t vote for the in-laws, it’s a package deal.
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Son to father. “How much does getting married cost?”
Father to son. “I don’t know. I haven’t finished paying”
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That’s why some of us call them the uniparty.
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Absolutely Ross.
Some of Australia’s worst energy decisions came from the Liberal faction of the Uniparty.
E.g.
Banning nuclear power TWICE.
Signing away much of our gas supply to the Chicomms on a bizarre 30 yr contract with no provision for inflation or market price.
World parity petrol pricing.
Nett Zero / Paris Agreement.
Allowing non-dispatchable generators to connect to the grid.
Snowy Hydro 2.
Etc..
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“Signing away much of our gas supply to the Chicomms on a bizarre 30 yr contract with no provision for inflation or market price.”
The office girl or the cleaner could have done a better job on it than that.
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And what was the $2 billion of presumably taxpayer money actually spent on?
Who profited?
And why did they need to spend $2 billion when a simple back-of-an-envelope calculation would have shown it wasn’t viable?
How did someone not notice after the first $100 was spent?
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Come on now, we are talking about Genius Bowen here!
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How anyone can think Hydrogen is a viable energy source for industrial or domestic use is beyond me, Hydrogen is so unstable it only exists naturally in nuclear reactions at the center of stars and it is only viable in very controlled conditions.
After you infuse enough electrical energy into a hydrogen compound to separate the H2 it has 142 MJ/Kg of stored energy, TNT has 4.2 MJ/Kg. A 5kg gas bottle of liquid hydrogen has more potential explosive energy than the massive 500 lb bombs they dropped to flatten cities in WW2.
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Yes, Hydrogen is an amazing stuff to play with. Making H & O in the workshop requires good ear-muffs and goggles.
We get a lot of electric storms up here in the Blue Mtn of Sydney. When lightning strikes near the house it instantly turns rain drops into a sea of neutrons, protons and electrons. Often you can hear it fizzing for a split second. I’m guessing some of them reform as H and O and then burn. Whatever goes on, it creates some stupendous sonic boom expansions. Often wonder how our windows survive.
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So is the idea to mandate hydrogen cars – then ban them as much too dangerous for the despised deplorables to use?
Leaving us with wooden bikes, roller skates, made from milk bottles, and Shanks’s Pony?
By any chance?
Auto – asking for a friend.
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So how much longer will the voters tolerate the barking mad Labor + Greens + Teals loony parties?
Their latest loony thought bubble bandaid is to use EV car batteries to recover a Bowen blackout disaster by using available EVs to somehow restore the grid.
So millions (????)of future EV owners will race home and then have flat batteries to go to work next day or perhaps save a life?
Historically bad storms can be common around Australia and the grid would be down for many days.
Bolt covered this in his show last night and asked how Albo and Bowen, Labor etc could be so stupid?
But does the average Aussie voter really understand toxic W & S or so called Green hydrogen and the extreme limitations of these disasters?
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Great questions
1: So how much longer will the voters tolerate the barking mad Labor + Greens + Teals loony parties? Too long, they still all watch ABC, 7, Nine , 10 etc talking heads parroting what Albo ,Blowhard & Co say as supposed fact.
Bolt covered this in his show last night and asked how Albo and Bowen, Labor etc could be so stupid? To the mob, Bolt has been painted as a FAR right, climate denying “loonie” like ourselves and not worth listening to.
But does the average Aussie voter really understand toxic W & S or so called Green hydrogen and the extreme limitations of these disasters? No they don’t, see point one. To add to this, it amazes me how many supposed intelligent, professional people equate their situation of having a solar system on their roof lowing their power bill as proof that solar and wind will and can run the country, they completely fail to consider all the facilities and situations that require 24/7 dispatchable BASELOAD power, they can’t even see the problem of the “duck curve” situation with solar providing unused power during the day while they’re generally at work and no solar in the morning /evening peaks!
40
Great questions
1: So how much longer will the voters tolerate the barking mad Labor + Greens + Teals loony parties? Too long, they still all watch ABC, 7, Nine , 10 etc talking heads parroting what Albo ,Blowhard & Co say as supposed fact.
Bolt covered this in his show last night and asked how Albo and Bowen, Labor etc could be so stupid? To the mob, Bolt has been painted as a FAR right, climate denying “loonie” like ourselves and not worth listening to.
But does the average Aussie voter really understand toxic W & S or so called Green hydrogen and the extreme limitations of these disasters? No they don’t, see point one. To add to this, it amazes me how many supposed intelligent, professional people equate their situation of having a solar system on their roof lowing their power bill as proof that solar and wind will and can run the country, they completely fail to consider all the facilities and situations that require 24/7 dispatchable BASELOAD power, they can’t even see the problem of the “duck curve” situation with solar providing unused power during the day while they’re generally at work and no solar in the morning /evening peaks!
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“The irony! The only generator that can make affordable hydrogen is brown coal”
The real irony is that the hydrogen economy is only required because of expensive unreliable renewables and once you use brown coal there is no need for a hydrogen economy at all – because you can just use brown coal when you need electricity.
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I haven’t mentioned this recently, so I thought I should remind you. We’re doomed.
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Watching Forrest on the 7:30 Report last night, I was reminded that you don’t need a high IQ to become extremely rich. Even before he started blithering about Putin and the evil fossil-fuel industries, he was coming across almost as confused and inarticulate as Joe Biden.
As for our pollies who pour our money into these wildcat schemes – if only some of them had STEM education even at highschool level.
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David,
That’s what happens when you have to sell (polished) bovine excrement in a media campaign . Cognitive dissonance on top of desperation . Elbow and Bowen are better at it but don’t have skin in the game because they will be on the Canberra superannuation gravy train. The ABC is beginning to resemble Pravda during the soviet era .
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Oh well , the Twigster is at 2 starts foe two losses, between Suncable and Hydrogenland. Getting in on the ground floor in Ukraine sounds like another great idea. He is certainly on a roll.
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Here’s more info about the density of the fuel load that is retained in a Submarine’s Nuclear reactor that doesn’t need refueling for 30 years. And ditto for the Aircraft super carriers like the USS Ronald Reagan.
And Nuclear power is the safest Base-load power and is also safer than unreliable, toxic W & S.
“andom-engineer”
“When a US nuclear sub is built, and the fuel is put in, there is never a need to refuel, unless the service life is extended. The fuel in the reactor is highly enriched, and designed to operate the sub for 30 years”.
“In fact, when a sub goes under, the only reason it would ever have to come up is…..food. Air and clean water can be made on board, you eventually run out of food, though. That’s why, many times, when a sub leaves port, the floors and halls are covered with canned food several layers deep. The longer you’re at sea, the more headroom you have”.
“One added note, A4W just means it’s an Aircraft carrier reactor, 4th generation, designed by Westinghouse. Many of our subs are S5G*, Submarine reactor, 5th generation, designed by GE.”
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The method of bidding into ower supply needs to be looked at with a magnifying glass, black and brown coal bid first and lowest because they need to stay on line due to the nature of the heavy equipment involved, then towards the last bidders the price creeps up until the last bid sets the price for everybody, what kind of shonk is that.
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Hydrogen: “Green” or otherwise?
We are SO screwed!
The energy equations for extracting Hydrogen from its nice bonds with Carbon atoms, just make no sense.
Furthermore, the flame front of a hydrogen burn is somewhat slower that for high-octane hydrocarbons.
Never mind all the endless re-runs of the “Hindenburg” disaster we have seen. Virtually NOBODY has ever explained the mechanics of the fire.
If you watch carefully, the Zeppelin skin burns away with huge flames and lots of smoke. Well, Hydrogen burns with an essentially invisible flame and NO smoke.
So what has everyone been watching but not seeing?
The entire outer skin, several Hectares in area, of the “Hindenburg” was a woven natural fabric. However, it was sealed with a varnish containing a red pigment which was finely ground Iron Oxide
.
On top of that was the nice, shiny silver “dope” finish that was required to reflect sunlight to prevent overheating the internal rubberized silk bags in which the Hydrogen was contained at about atmospheric pressure.
So, the “dope” binder in the paint was itself “flammable”, but, it gets better. Hand up everyone in the class who knows what a mixture of Aluminium and Iron Oxide powders is called..
That’s right, kiddies! THERMITE! The stuff used in incendiary bombs and for welding rail tracks together.
So we have several Hectares of potentially spectacularly flammable, material traveling through the air at reasonable speed. Frictional airflow around aircraft usually generates a buildup of static electricity, and seems to have done so in this case. This, again, was a known hazard and as the airship approached the mooring mast, the crew had already started to deploy a discharge cable to dump the charge to the ground, “Something” went awry; maybe the termination on the rigid Aluminium frame of the “Hindenburg” was not secure enough, but some sort of “spark’ occurred.
All through the flight. “Hindenburg” had been dumping water ballast to compensate for the “leaking” Hydrogen from the rubberized silk bags, and some of that escaped gas appears to have “pooled” inside the outer skin. Again, this was a known problem, and the airship had vents in the upper surface of the skin. These could be periodically opened to bleed off this “lost” Hydrogen.
However, it would not take much “loose” Hydrogen to cause mischief. If the “earthing” cable were not very well bolted to the frame, a spark could occur when the cable struck the ground; not all of the static electricity was “grounded” and a spark occurred in a Hydrogen-enhanced atmosphere INSIDE the airship.
So, what the old movie shows is that the skin burned rapidly,pretty much from the TOP down, the initial Hydrogen “fire” would have taken hold high in the structure and then ignited the dope and thermite “water-proofing” on the skin. This is the actual source of the bright flames and billowing smoke, NOT the Hydrogen. Note that it did NOT explode catastrophically, like a gigantic version of the old school chemistry lab “Hydrogen in a balloon” trick. The ignition of the remaining fuel for the propulsion engines was the final nail in the coffin.
Hence, the small (so to speak) problem of how to contain and distribute Hydrogen. The molecule is so small that it migrates through flexible seals andthe walls of flexible hoses..
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A slightly different angle combination –
One type of sailplane fuselage construction is a steel tube frame covered with doped fabric. And that combination is inflammable.
Gliding maintenance workshops used to have photos of one. It was fitted with internal oxygen bottles for flight over 10,000 feet and they had to be filled from outside. This one had a leak in the system which filled the fuselage with oxygen. An errant spark ignited the lot and, in no time at all, there was a glider with a bare steel tube fuselage.
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I never heard mention of a thermite effect – I’d guess that the quantities weren’t sufficient.
And by then it was mostly polyester fabric and a different line of dopes and paints.
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“The green electricity price just kept keeps heading north, and It’s been dragged up by the fossil fuel price.”
The cost of green electricity is its own cost, and isn’t dragged around by anything except the owners and operators of the facilities producing that energy who want to squeeze every last farthing out of the consumer that they can. If green electricity is truly cheaper than fossil fuel-generated electricity, then you can charge a price less than the fossil-fuel price, capture as much of the market as you can generate, and use the excess income to build more green generation to take more of the market away from the fossil fueled plants, repeated until we have 100% renewable generation. Instead, we’re seeing idiotic statements like the above, with the producers of green energy screaming for more subsidies because they can’t make a profit even if they crank their prices up to what fossil-fueled electricity is selling for — which just puts the lie to all the claims about cheap green energy. And they still have no explanation as to how they’re going to deal with extended periods of significantly reduced production from night, clouds, or doldrums except to whine that they need even more money to construct inadequate battery ‘backup’ to cover a fraction of the time they’re not producing.
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[…] From JoNova […]
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[…] to the latest news from Australia. Australian energy blogger Joanne Nova reports yesterday (July 19) that a large green hydrogen project in that country has just “collapsed” with the loss of 700 […]
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[…] with the latest news from Australia. Australian energy blogger Joanne Nova reported yesterday (July 19) that a major green hydrogen project in that country had just “collapsed” with the loss of 700 […]
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[…] to the latest news from Australia. Australian energy blogger Joanne Nova reports yesterday (July 19) that a large green hydrogen project in that country has just “collapsed” with the loss of 700 […]
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[…] to the latest news from Australia. Australian energy blogger Joanne Nova reports yesterday (July 19) that a large green hydrogen project in that country has just “collapsed” with the loss of 700 […]
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