Producing Affordable Hydrogen by Tripling Down With the House’s Money.

Michael Barnard  in his latest diatribe on hydrogen, claims to debunk  the myth: electrolyzing hydrogen for energy Is wasteful & higher emissions clean.

“Electrolysis is often framed as a zero-emission solution, but this narrative conveniently omits a crucial factor: efficiency losses. Studies show that hydrogen production via electrolysis suffers from significant energy losses at every stage. The International Energy Agency (IEA, 2021) reports that electrolysis incurs efficiency losses of 30-50%, making it a poor substitute for direct electrification in most applications, he says.

As juxtaposition to the ChatGPT generated image in the CleanTechnica article which shows a pile of money being  burned in the pursuit of hydrogen, the following ChatGPT generated graphic shows how hydrogen can be made cheaper with electrolysis.  

“The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE, 2023) acknowledges that the current cost of electrolysis is a major hurdle, with high capital and operational expenses making it unlikely to compete with battery storage or direct grid consumption of renewables,” Barnard reports.

Lets deconstruct this argument.  First, According to CBS in 2023, the ocean is accumulating 5 atomic bombs  worth of energy every second and this is getting worse.

According to ChatGPT the world uses the energy equivalent of  about 90 Hiroshima bombs per second and global warming is about 25 times that. And this is energy in the form of heat that is going to waste yet will eventually come out of the ocean and wreak havoc on our civilization.

Besides going to waste this energy could be producing  power at between 16 to 30 percent of the current cost of a basket of existing energies.  

Energy costing between 16 to 30 percent less immediately overcomes a 30-50 percent efficiency loss  for hydrogen production at least two times over.   

And the third leg of this triumvirate of wins has been pointed out by the  DOE itself. “High pressure electrolysis (HPE) can contribute to the enabling and acceptance of technologies where hydrogen is the energy carrier. “ Electrolyzers operating at a depth of 1,000 meters,  where  Thermodynamic Geoengineering deep water condenser and electrolyzers operate, exist in an environment of 100 bar pressures. HPE requires pressures of 120–200 bar at 70 °C, whereas the temperature at 1,000 is 4 degrees Celsius so these temperatures and pressures are conducive to HPE and would eliminate the need for external compression that would otherwise consume about 3% of the energy required for HPE. Hydrogen produced at 1,000 meters also arrives at the surface 70% of the way, logarithmically, to the 700-bar pressure needed for transportation applications. Which is a  rebuttal to Barnard’s argument that  hydrogen’s low volumetric energy density, requires energy-intensive compression or liquefaction. Furthermore, Thermodynamic Geoengineering platforms producing hydrogen travel from one side of an ocean basin other to deliver hydrogen to either coast where the populations on those coasts could be first movers for a “Hydrogen Economy”.

Barnard claims electrolysis is a “Detour, Not a Destination”, but this seems to be another way the public are being gaslit about their energy choices.

The hard truth about green hydrogen is that it converts dross into energy gold and has Paul Curto, former chief technology with NASA has noted, it could save us from Armageddon.