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Without billions of dollars in subsidies, hydrogen just doesn’t make economic sense right now. And because of where the energy comes from – mainly fossil fuels and other “dirty” energy sources – it doesn’t even make environmental sense.
So until we find a way to make hydrogen fuel cheaply, and preferably without fossil fuels, we just won’t see major adoption of this fuel source or major investment in hydrogen infrastructure.
Lithium-ion batteries, on the other hand, are well established and continue to improve in energy density incrementally, year after year. They’ve continued to fall in price as well. It’s very hard to make an argument to switch to hydrogen right now.
However, my largest disappointment with EVs is that they share a similar problem that hydrogen has with its production. Most of the electricity produced to “fuel” an EV comes from carbon-based fuels or nuclear fission plants.
When people drive EVs that are fueled by dirty energy, what’s the point? And it gets worse. Somewhere between 7–20% of electricity is lost as it is transmitted over the electrical grid. Additional dirty energy needs to be produced to account for transmission losses.
The only scenario where EVs are actually clean is if we can fuel them with clean energy. If someone lives near a geothermal or hydroelectric plant and is receiving 100% clean energy to their home, that’s a great option.
Or a project that I’ve been working on for my own home is to install Tesla’s solar tiles on my roof with Powerwalls (battery storage) in the garage. I’ll be able to power a car entirely from the solar energy produced.
And we should also remember that EVs and hydrogen vehicles are all produced in manufacturing plants fueled by carbon-based electricity.
A prominent MIT professor estimates that we must drive 50,000–60,000 miles in an EV before we can offset the carbon used to manufacture it… And that assumes that 100% of our electricity used for charging the car was clean, which is rarely the case.
With all that said, I am keeping a close eye on these industries, as well as promising new industries like nuclear fusion (not fission) as a possibility to meet our clean energy goals.
My wish is that the industry and policy makers are open and honest about the entire end-to-end system needed for 100% clean, sustainable energy. That includes everything from how the vehicles are produced to where the electricity, or hydrogen, comes from.
The downside to hydrogen…
Let’s conclude with a question about hydrogen cars:
Hi, Jeff Brown,
Aren’t hydrogen-powered vehicles both more economical and more environmentally friendly, producing only water as a byproduct? Aren’t hydrogen-powered vehicles more powerful? Their only lack is a convenient network of hydrogen power stations nationwide.
No lithium mining. No battery dumping. Vehicles with less weight. More economical than gas (petrol) or lithium-ion electric vehicles.
What are leading hydrogen power company stock plays? Shall hydrogen cars beat out Tesla’s lithium-powered EVs? I believe China- and Europe-made vehicles, in the future, are going to be hydrogen-powered vehicles, and if so, they may beat out Tesla worldwide. Cheers.
– Dr. Robert O.
Hi, Robert, and thanks for sending in your question.
I’m often asked about hydrogen as a source of clean energy to fuel our cars. It’s an exciting topic, and I share your enthusiasm about hydrogen’s potential.
Powering our cars, trucks, trains, and even planes with the most abundant element in the universe sounds like the perfect solution to reduce global carbon emissions. As you said, its only byproduct is water.
And hydrogen seems perfect on the surface. It stores three times as much energy per unit of mass compared to gasoline. When it is combined with air, the energy that is released can power a vehicle. And it combines with oxygen to produce water.
We can’t do much better than that, right?
Yet that’s not the whole picture.
About 70 million tons of hydrogen are produced each year, primarily for ammonia fertilizer. And 96% of hydrogen production is made through “steam-methane reformation.”
Here’s the problem. This process uses energy created by natural gas, coal, and oil to produce hydrogen. In all, the industry produces 830 million metric tons of carbon dioxide every year to produce this “clean” hydrogen fuel.
Electrolysis is responsible for the remaining 4% of hydrogen production. This process uses electricity to split the hydrogen out of the water.
On the surface, this sounds better than steam-methane reformation. But the electricity that’s used comes almost entirely from fossil fuel power plants or nuclear fission power plants (which create radioactive waste).
Even if we use carbon-capture technology to offset the carbon dioxide that’s emitted when we produce hydrogen, it’s not perfect. Around 10–20% isn’t captured – and the cost means the hydrogen ultimately is twice as expensive.
That means we have to keep price in mind. When using hydrogen as fuel, consumers have to pay for it. A gallon of gas is a similar price to a kilo of hydrogen.
To put things in perspective, it takes about 50–55 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity to produce a single kilogram of hydrogen fuel. That’s the equivalent of almost two days of electricity consumption for an average home in America. Does it make sense to spend that much energy to produce 1 kilogram –
Indi, if you are along my route let me know and we can have a beer or two.
Ha Indigo, looked at that route but the problem I have is that I take a car loaded with stuff to Corsica, then the small ferry across from Bonifacio to Sardinia, four days in Sardinia working and then I have to come back to Nice to reload my car before heading to BCN and then the ferry to Mallorca, then Ibiza then back to Denia and then a drive to Gibraltar. Then back to Nice, reload the car and head down through Italy and a ferry across, Bari to Patras/Athens and then the long drive home. My mate took the ferry the other day, Grimaldi, from Sardinia to BCN and just wish it fitted my itinerary.
One of the reasons I got into QFI was seeing and photographing the amount of crap being blasted from the funnels of these ferries, filthy dirty things simply geared for profit, so come on MSC get this moving and let’s help them to clean up their acts.
We could all club in and buy a barrel or two of MSAR, if that’s what it is going to take.
In France at mo and heading to Sardinia on one of those carbon emitting ferries in a few days and then to Spain, BCN and then Mallorca and more ferries.
Interesting week for sure for QFI but the SP seems to be stuck. And yes the smile on Jason’s face was something to behold.
GLA
Just had a personal reply from Mike re the barrels and of course we all now know they have arrived but at least he took the time to reply, plus answered a few other points that I raised. So onwards and yes I agree we should soon be hearing of the BioMSAR results......
GLA
That’s on small step for man and one giant leap for mankind….
10 p at least after the hype gets going. There are billions of barrels of bitumen awaiting recovery in a sustainable way and if only when they announce this will work they also announce an end user.
I guess you cannot hope fo too much.
Well Gillingham, it worked, Mike just needed a prod to remind him about the samples.
GLA
Well Gillingham, your request has been answered. Lets see if my email gets answered.
Am I to assume you live in Gillingham.... The one near to the new MacDonalds. Just a thought.
Interesting to read all of the posts yesterday.
As the MSAR samples and testing are most certainly not going as was announced by QFI way back should we not be due an explanation from the management. We are all making, as is normal, assumptions that are getting us nowhere.
How about M & J stump up the reasons for the recent sample delivery failures and an explanation of the way forwards in Utah.
Did somebody not say that anything that can affect the SP, down by 50%, should be clarified.
Anybody any idea of what has been promised for August.
Basically everybody and their dog have been wanting an RNS, well you now have one, hasn't done much to the share price though.
Maybe just practicing for the BIG one next week. Watch Monday, always a good day for a positive RNS.
PR Press Relations, or PR Personal Relations.!! You can publish as much as you like in magazines, social media etc etc but when it comes down to something like MSAR as I mentioned many moons ago it is personal relationships that will sell the concept and get it up and running. Knocking on doors, being a pain in the ar** often works and gets people to listen, pay attention and stop to think, will this work.
The dreadful duo must have a long list of potential clients, sitting in an office all day not speaking to people will get QFI nowhere and I have no doubt they have been out and about, simply to get the four trials underway, but I often wonder why we suddenly have four and then it stops. No more lined up that we know of.
Maybe the various members of this board should offer their very in depth knowledge of promotion and PR to M & J.
GLA you are in no worse a place than you were a couple of months back, just a little bit poorer if you sell. Lets get the results, and when they arrive, that's when the LTH will be rewarded for their patience. Well lets hope so....
https://www.fedex.com/content/dam/fedex/us-united-states/services/FreightPackagingGuidelines.pdf
Let’s get together and commission FedEx. They have never let me down, they can ship barrels…..
Can somebody send the link to HQ. Maybe they can contact Greenfield and remind them that they are working together to get this ball rolling.
GLA
Sorry should have been Mark…….
I kind of see why Mike is leaving, he was asked to do something. Difficult times indeed, time is money, time is stress, barrels do not catch covid. Do we need three, one surely would have given us a damned good idea if this would work, in today’s world a litre would possibly have done it. You do not have to burn something by the ton in an engine to see if the bitumen will emulsify correctly, to see if it is contaminated. Maybe they are waiting for the clay to settle in the barrels. Maybe this is all a joke and the stuff is here, don’t think so though.
We should all be looking here and seeing how well everything is progressing not wondering about what the hell is going on. No wonder we get no news, news is created, nothing is being created. If one of the big oil majors had been running these trials they would have been done and dusted months ago, years ago in fact.
Ok QFI are a small outfit trying to bring a unique product to market but come on boys, get help and get this moving. You cannot just sit and wait and expect no comment on your inaction.
Hazardous goods are being shipped all of the time, protocol is in place and has been for ever to get something from a to b quickly. There are specialist companies that can handle the paper work etc etc and they new that they would need to move this stuff a year ago. As. With manufacturing the MSAR.
‘O look Jason they have just just produced bitumen in Utah, go see if they will send us some for testing, BS, everything should be prepared, as soon as those barrels were ready they should have been on a truck, delivered to a plane, or even a ship if that is the only option and here now.
Same with Morocco, it has not just happened, the planning has been going on for god knows how long.
Chief Non Operations Officer
Read the recent posts this morning, Can it really be true that we have been fed BS for the past months. The barrels were ready, we saw the deplorable pics of the pallets, not suitable but easily replaced. If they had gone by sea it would have been bad, signalling no urgency, they should be here now and results imminent, but are they really sitting in Utah. Somebody needs to explain. Along with the other failures. The words used, proactive, do M& J know what it means. Let me explain, get off your ar** and get things moving. Pick up:the phones, send the emails, you’ve got a few million still to spend, paying your salaries costs money, running the business costs money, We can sit and a wait a death by a thousand cuts or get the answers we are all awaiting and have now been for many months. If we run out of undoing so be it, but let’s not just keep paying salaries and having our directors sitting in their back gardens getting a sun tan. As they tell us they believe in what they are doing, well bl***y well do it.
Sorry about that I feel for you.
Having a bad day TT.