EU Hydrogen economy/power scam

[tszaboo]

In the late 1800s there where millions of horse + carriages and only a few cars in the world. People reasoned cars would never become popular as horse + carriage have been used succesfully for thousands of years already 

The first bicycle was invented in 1839 and it had two wheels with a seat between.
The unicycle was invented in 1869 with just one wheel. It never really seen wide adaptation.
Similarly methane with two hydrogen pairs with a carbon in-between has wide adaptation while Hydrogen without the seat is something that only wierdos want. See I can also make tonge in the cheek comments.

[zilp]

That it's already happening in Germany due to your stupid government https://www.spiegel.de/international/business/wirtschaftsblunder-why-germany-s-economy-is-flailing-and-what-could-help-a-c5047bf2-0c66-4a8a-bf62-e52baaef0acd

I am sorry, but could you be a bit more specific? That is many pages of text, and skimming through it, I didn't see anything that was fundamentally new to me, so I'm not really sure it's worth reading it all, and especially I am not sure whether I'd be any wiser as to what specifically you mean, or how that text supports your opinion.

If you just scroll through it, you'll notice infographics that German industrialization is down. Something in particular, for example:

That doesn't support your claim that we're "speedrunning self-destruction". Even if we assume that industrialization is down, that on its own says nothing about how things will continue from here.

If we just lost some extremely energy intensive industry, say, then it doesn't follow that therefore, most other industries will die. It might as well be that that's a handful of products that we'll buy elsewhere now, and nothing else changes.

Also, it doesn't even follow that current policy is bad. It might just as well be that the current lack of Russian gas combined with the extreme dependence on Russian gas that was caused by the policies of past governments caused the loss of some industries, but current policies will reduce energy prices in the future and thus keep the remaining industry alive just fine.

So, there is a lot more work for you to do to actually substantiate your claim.

As for your example quotes:

"Deindustrialization  has begun," says Matthias Zachert, head of the chemical giant Lanxess, which is in the process of closing two plants in the city of Krefeld near Düsseldorf.

The German Association of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (BVMW) is reporting that almost one in five member companies is considering relocating at least some elements of production to sites abroad. Meanwhile, the chemical industry is warning of an industry exodus due to high energy prices. And a study commissioned by the Berlin-based think tank Dezernat Zukunft concludes: If the government doesn't do anything about the foreseeable high energy prices, the exodus of companies will cost Germany up to 120 billion euros in economic output – and 1.3 million jobs.

So, how do we know that these aren't just self-serving?

I mean, it's not exactly unheard of that industry will threaten to relocate or will just make exaggerated claims of problems they are facing in order to get subsidies, whether those are actually needed or not, or will claim that some political decision is the reason why they are shutting down some factory that they are shutting down for entirely unrelated reasons, in order to shift blame away from themselves, or possibly even to make politicians look bad that they'd like to see voted out.

As a result, of the nearly 14,000 kilometers of new power lines that the country needs, according to the government's own Federal Network Agency, only around 1,900 kilometers have been built to date. And because the inadequate existing lines are overloaded, as absurd as it sounds, wind turbines in the north often have to be disconnected from the grid. Valuable electricity is lost. Nevertheless, the plant operators receive billions of euros in compensation for the electricity that goes unused. In addition, there are high taxes and levies for electricity.

Now, this is an interesting one. Actually, this description is kinda missing the craziest part. The fundamental problem is that Germany has only a single electricity price zone. I.e., electricity, as traded on the exchange, costs the same, no matter where in Germany it is sourced and where it is delivered to. Now, when the grid capacity is insufficient to actually move the electricity, the source is throttled (as mentioned, often wind turbines in the north) but still paid for the electricity (because it's not their fault that the grid can't move the electricity that they've sold), and the electricity then is generated using power plants closer to the buyer, usually gas power plants. The (usually very high) costs of that generation then are paid via grid charges ("redispatch costs") that all electricity buyers have to pay. So, the buyer pays the cheap wind power price (sort of, it's actually the merit order price, but this usually happens when there is a lot of renewable generation, and thus the prices are low), but actually gets delivered gas power that's paid for with grid charges and that causes a lot of CO2 emissions. Also, it's not uncommon that pumped hydro storage plants in Austria are the buyers of this electricity, so, effectively, gas power from peaker plants is used to charge pumped hydro storage plants ... which makes no sense at all, really, as the gas peaker plants obviously could just supply power directly when the pumped hydro plants discharge later. If those plants were actually charged with wind power from the north, then that would actually be perfect, of course ... but that just doesn't work with the grid as it currently exists.

However, none of this is in any significant way the fault of what you called our dumb government, by which you presumably meant our current federal government. The problem that our grid is insufficient to move electricity along the north-south axis isn't exactly new, and that this problem is getting worse and worse with increasing renewables build-out is also not exactly surprising. In fact, planning of the conection started some ten years ago because of the obivous needs. But for some reason, conservative politicians in particular had lots of objections, and Bavaria in particular (traditionally has a conservative government since forever) didn't want to have any of it within their borders, and so, planning took a long time. Now, under the current federal government, construction finally started.

Also, the conservative government of Bavaria in particular has been hindering the construction of wind turbines with onerous requirements for a long time, which further worsens the problem, as there is little renewable power in the south when it's dark and windy. So, not only did they hinder the contstruction of the grid connection to deliver wind power from the north to the south, they also hindered construction of wind power in the south.

Well, and also, it is largely a result of conservative politics that we only have a single price zone in Germany. I mean, the obvious market-based solution would be to simply split up Germany into multiple electricity price zones, then electricity would be cheap in the north and expensive in the south, so there would be some incentive to build grid connections and generation capacity in the south. Instead, currently, people (and businesses) in the areas with lots of generation capacities and good grid connections are forced to pay for the crazy scheme that I described above, where they subsidize in particular gas power generation in the south that is necessary because of lacking grid connections to the south.

If there ever has been a federal government that is actively working on actually solving these problems rather than on sabotaging the build-out of renewables and grid infrastructure, it's the current one. While they are a bit of a shit-show, too, that's one of the things they are actually doing reasonably well, and certainly better than preceding ones.

Why do you think that it is insane? Like, do you understand why they are doing it? Can you explain why that's either a bad goal or why the approach that is chosen is not a good one? (And what I mean in particular is why they are doing it "for the environment", as I would think that that is not the fundamental motivation.)

Because surely unaffordable food prices and starvation of the poorest in the moment of crisis is more desirable than using a bit of fertilizer. And yet again, food production will move to places that do not care about pollution at all (because all people want to eat, doh) and be way less sustainable than what's currently in EU. Not to say importing food from thousand of kilometers away cases pollution by itself.

That doesn't answer my question, does it?

[wraper]

Why do you think that it is insane? Like, do you understand why they are doing it? Can you explain why that's either a bad goal or why the approach that is chosen is not a good one? (And what I mean in particular is why they are doing it "for the environment", as I would think that that is not the fundamental motivation.)

Because surely unaffordable food prices and starvation of the poorest in the moment of crisis is more desirable than using a bit of fertilizer. And yet again, food production will move to places that do not care about pollution at all (because all people want to eat, doh) and be way less sustainable than what's currently in EU. Not to say importing food from thousand of kilometers away cases pollution by itself.

That doesn't answer my question, does it?

Do you want me to rationalize irrational bullshit pulled out of an ass by people who live in cities and have no idea about agriculture, or what? I answered why it's a bad idea, because it heavily compromises food supply with no large scale environmental benefit.

[zilp]

Why do you think that it is insane? Like, do you understand why they are doing it? Can you explain why that's either a bad goal or why the approach that is chosen is not a good one? (And what I mean in particular is why they are doing it "for the environment", as I would think that that is not the fundamental motivation.)

Because surely unaffordable food prices and starvation of the poorest in the moment of crisis is more desirable than using a bit of fertilizer. And yet again, food production will move to places that do not care about pollution at all (because all people want to eat, doh) and be way less sustainable than what's currently in EU. Not to say importing food from thousand of kilometers away cases pollution by itself.

That doesn't answer my question, does it?

Do you want me to rationalize irrational bullshit pulled out of an ass by people who live in cities and have no idea about agriculture, or what? I answered why it's a bad idea, because it heavily compromises food supply with no large scale environmental benefit.

No, I would like you to answer the question that I asked.

[Kleinstein]

With the same insulation liquid hydrogen only gets 1.5x the heat than methane, it's not a fundamentally different problem.

The heat flow may be 1.5x time higher (the actual number can vary because quite some of the properties chance from 20 K to some 120 K). However it takes way less heat to voporize hydrogen and it is more tricky to produce the much lower temperature after it is 20 K instead of some 120 K, so only 1/6 the temperature. So the heat reaching the liquid hydrogen has more of an effect. The energy density per volume is also high with methane - so less volume needed and thus less area to insulate.

There is a good reason the SpaceX use liquid methane and not liquid hydrogen for there rocket.

Still the step from hydrogen to artificial methan looses additional energy. For some uses it can be worth it, for others probably not. This is especially for use in fuel cells to get electricity back - this works much better with hydrogen. Chances are we will need both.

The production of nitorgen fertilizer uses quite some hydrogen. With currently much of that produced from natral gas the price for the fertizer went up quite a bit. Having hydrogen production from electricity instead could have reduced the price hike. Anyway there are alternatives to aritificial nitorgen fertilizer - some plants (e.g. beans or peanuts and even a rare corn type) can get around without and work with backteria to capture nitorgen from the air. There is also the point of how to use excess biomass: when used for bio-methan more of the contained nitrogen stays available than when it is burned. Reducing the use of fertilzer in Germany more helps the global food supply as more is available for the poor countries and in the EU much of the soil has plenty of nitorgen anyway. So a little less would not be that bad. If the good supply is a concern a big leverage is to eat less meat and more plants.

[wraper]

Anyway there are alternatives to aritificial nitorgen fertilizer - some plants (e.g. beans or peanuts and even a rare corn type) can get around without and work with backteria to capture nitorgen from the air. There is also the point of how to use excess biomass: when used for bio-methan more of the contained nitrogen stays available than when it is burned.

Nitrogen fixating legumes are not nearly enough to replace nitrogen fertilizer.

Reducing the use of fertilzer in Germany more helps the global food supply as more is available for the poor countries and in the EU much of the soil has plenty of nitorgen anyway. So a little less would not be that bad. If the good supply is a concern a big leverage is to eat less meat and more plants.

You literally described  killing own agriculture so others can take the niche instead. Do you think farmers overuse fertilizer? They use as needed because it costs quite a bit of money. Nitrogen in soil is a temporary thing, if you grow produce, nitrogen and other elements are taken out and most of European soils are quite poor actually. These dumbasses want to reduce cow numbers too, and guess what, if you don't want to use mineral fertilizers, you need cow dung instead. And BTW many of poor soils cannot even be reasonably used for anything other than for cattle grazing, of which they want to get rid of.

[nctnico]

You literally described  killing own agriculture so others can take the niche instead.

Most of the agriculture in the EU needs subsidies anyways in order to be profitable. Either let real business people run the farms or shut the farms down.

[wraper]

You literally described  killing own agriculture so others can take the niche instead.

Most of the agriculture in the EU needs subsidies anyways in order to be profitable. Either let real business people run the farms or shut the farms down.

Ironically Netherlands have the most advanced and sustainable agriculture in the world and your government tries to kill it real hard.

[nctnico]

You literally described  killing own agriculture so others can take the niche instead.

Most of the agriculture in the EU needs subsidies anyways in order to be profitable. Either let real business people run the farms or shut the farms down.

Ironically Netherlands have the most advanced and sustainable agriculture in the world and your government tries to kill it real hard.

Most advanced: yes, sustainable: not by a long shot! After the USA, the Netherlands is the second largest exporter of agricultural products in the world. It is sheer madness.

[zilp]

You literally described  killing own agriculture so others can take the niche instead. Do you think farmers overuse fertilizer? They use as needed because it costs quite a bit of money.

Yes, they do, because, no, it doesn't.

We do have problems with increased nitrate levels in ground water and over-fertilized bodies of surface water (leading to algae booms, which lead to lack of oxygen, which leads to aquatic life dying). Obviously, that is not the result of farmers only using as much fertilizers as their crops use up.

The reason is in particular that they are fertilizing with manure. Which there is too much of. In fact, it gets exported from the Netherlands to Germany, because the use is restricted in the Netherlands due to similar problems there.

So, yes, farmers do over-fertilize because that's how they get rid of manure.

Now, maybe that is different in Latvia, I have no idea. But over-fertilization absolutely is a thing that exists.

[coppice]

You literally described  killing own agriculture so others can take the niche instead. Do you think farmers overuse fertilizer? They use as needed because it costs quite a bit of money.

Yes, they do, because, no, it doesn't.

Its getting quite common to see fertilizer being spread in a selective manner under GPS control, based on an assessment of exactly where the crops were good or bad in the last planting cycle. Framers have known for decades that they need to get their fertilizer use down, while keeping the fertility high enough to get a good crop. Technology is now catching up to that need.

As for fertilizer costs, the Ukraine war's effect on fertilizer costs has been a big shock to farming, so I don't think the costs are low. It is estimated that half the nitrogen atoms in your body have been through the Haber process. Synthetic fertilizers are a huge deal. They were a saviour to the farming industry in a number of countries, who were surviving on things like guano before that, and it was running out. You can't feed 8 billion people on food produced by manure alone.

[Kleinstein]

In parts of Europe (e.g. Netherlands, northern Germany) there is just to many farm animals and thus excess manure. In these areas they really overdo it with fertilizer. The animals are to a large part feed with imported soy and similar. For these parts it absolutely makes sense to reduce the amount of cattle and pigs. The cows to a large parts are just feed inside, so no normal grazing. Those high volume milk producing cows can not even live on grass alone and they need higher energy feed.
It is stupid to transport soy from Brazil to Germany to feed pigs and cows and than send the meat and cheese to China, especially with the thing economically only working because of added tax money to support the farmers.

There is definitely some over-regulation effecting the farmers in the EU, but this has nothing to do with hydrogen economy.

[Marco]

You can't feed 8 billion people on food produced by manure alone.

You'd have to completely re-engineer the sewage system worldwide.

Humans aren't very good at recycling.