Fun fact: the other big investor in hydrogen pipeline projects is your neighbour to the east… planned to go all the way through the Baltic Sea to Germany.
Also the French energy concept (see: RTE’s (French grid provider) study about energy by 2050) is at its core entirely based on nuclear base load in a renewable/storage system making electrolysis more economical because on top of producing hydrogen with excess renewable power during the day, you then also have a steady production of excess electricity throughout low demand night times.
Thing about hydrogen efficiency is that we use the wrong reference.
It’s not that hydrogen is that inefficient. Big parts of the losses happen when burning it to produce electricity, exactly as with oil, gas or coal. It only is low efficiency when compared to batteries filled with green electricity from solar, wind an hydro (the only production methods that are not a rather primitve “boil water and run a turbine”).
Batteries and electrification in general are just so much better.
But if your requirement is burning gas for process heat in industries where electrification doesn’t work and as peaking power plants to meet demand spikes the alternative would be natural gas (or sometimes coal) with also huge losses from production to transport to getting burned for heat.
Fun fact: the other big investor in hydrogen pipeline projects is your neighbour to the east… planned to go all the way through the Baltic Sea to Germany.
Also the French energy concept (see: RTE’s (French grid provider) study about energy by 2050) is at its core entirely based on nuclear base load in a renewable/storage system making electrolysis more economical because on top of producing hydrogen with excess renewable power during the day, you then also have a steady production of excess electricity throughout low demand night times.
i still find it strange to build out a technology with such a low efficiency. but with CHP plants it could probably be more economical.
Thing about hydrogen efficiency is that we use the wrong reference.
It’s not that hydrogen is that inefficient. Big parts of the losses happen when burning it to produce electricity, exactly as with oil, gas or coal. It only is low efficiency when compared to batteries filled with green electricity from solar, wind an hydro (the only production methods that are not a rather primitve “boil water and run a turbine”).
Batteries and electrification in general are just so much better.
But if your requirement is burning gas for process heat in industries where electrification doesn’t work and as peaking power plants to meet demand spikes the alternative would be natural gas (or sometimes coal) with also huge losses from production to transport to getting burned for heat.