Inspired in a way by a certain long discussion by a well known Sci-fi author about the announcement of a Nuclear powered container ship from China. I wanna talk about "technology won't save us" When it comes to climate change.
"Technology won't save us" is the usual refrain when someone mentions Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). CCS is often touted by the fossil fuel industry as a way of us being able to keep burning dinosaurs. Continue our lives unchanged...
so we can continue the lifestyles to which we have become accustomed. Alas, for all the talk of CCS in the last couple of decades, it's never come to pass. At least not at a large scale, not capturing 100% of emissions from that which it is fitted. And it doesn't work on mobile emitters like trucks and ships. CCS is a bit like a disability dongle, but for fossil fuel companies.
BUT, and here comes the but. There are some technologies, which we are going to need if we are to have a hope...
of surviving climate change. So in this thread I want to talk about some of those technologies, and how far away they are from being reality.
To start with, I wanna talk about ammonia. Currently ammonia production accounts for about 1.8% of global emissions. Which is about the same as shipping globally. It's made by taking Methane in natural gas, splitting that to make hydrogen, and CO2. The CO2 is dumped, and the hydrogen is combined with Nitrogen. Ammonia is however critical...
to our society. It's used primarily for fertiliser production, as well as a feed stock for various industrial processes. It can also be used to creation greenhouse gas emission free electricity via fuel cells. Those fuel cells could be used on ships... or trains... As long as the ammonia is produced without needing fossil fuels, it's a good way of powering things where Batteries don't scale.
Ammonia can be produced electrochemically, using just nitrogen (from air), & hydrogen (from h20)
Proof of concepts are there, we just need to scale it up. It's a great way to use surplus energy from renewables, or for renewables constructed in places with lots of sun, but few people. It's safer and easier to transport than hydrogen. It's an technology we are going go need to develop.
Next up. Steel. Those who remember my recent epic thread on the subject will know that steel is really important to our world. But it also accounts for about 7% of global emissions.
Steel is produced by reducing Iron ore with a source of carbon, this is usually from coke made from coal. So to make this emissions free, we need to replace that carbon source, or find a way to bypass it entirely. Here we have two potential technologies showing promise. One is to use hydrogen instead of carbon as the reducing agent. Hydrogen can be produced cleanly via electrolysis of water. This method is already in commercial production in Sweden, producing steel for volvo.
The other option is Electrolysis. A bit like how we make Aluminium. This has shown promise in small scale setups, and there is a commercial scale pilot due to go online in 2025. It's showing great promise, as is the Hydrogen approach. They just need to be rolled out at scale. (something something, future not evenly distributed yet).
Next up. Cement. This is about 3-8% of global emissions depending on source. Cement is a key part of our modern society.
Cement is a fundamental part of our society. The built environment would be very different if we didn't have cement. While there are moves to reduce it's use (see wooden sky scraper). We can't reduce our use to zero. We're gonna always need some cement. But it's production is problematic. It's basically made by cooking limestone at over 1400°C, to remove Co2 from the limestone, to make quick lime. This is one area we don't really have a viable technology to avoid emissions.
There's lots of people trying to find a way of making cement without emitting greenhouse gases, but none are ready for use at scale. But we're gonna need a solution here if we are to have some hope.
Next up. Heating. Let's step away from chemical processes for a bit and look at the built environment we live in. 17.5% of emissions come from our buildings, via heating, cooling, and lighting. Lighting is a solved issue. LED's are incredibly efficient, and can be powered by renewables.
But for most of the world, heating still takes the form of burning stuff to keep warm. In the developed world most homes and offices are heated by burning natural gas. And while the fossil fuel industry has talked about using hydrogen in the gas pipes to fuel these, so we don't have to change anything. That has proven to be unviable stuff used to distract politicians. We have a technology for heating that is incredibly efficient (like 300-500% efficient), and well understood.
@quixoticgeek Need to nitpick here: The people promoting heat pumps are the ones doing the gaslighting here. Almost certainly with the goal of selling extremely expensive heat pump systems that they have a vested interest in.
And the dead giveaway is that they've failed to mention to existence of thermally-driven heat pumps. So there is no actual requirement for electricity. If there is a way to pipe hydrogen to the home, it can have the same level of efficiency.
@Hypx@quixoticgeek Sorry mate but heating is not a good use case for Hydrogen. You lose about 1/3 of the electrical power making the stuff then lose as much again when you burn it. Contrast with a heat pump / hybrid A/C where you get a minimum of 3 times the energy out in the form of heat compared to the electricity you put in. Gaslighting? I think that is what you are doing both literally and metaphorically.
@X31Andy@quixoticgeek Again, THERMALLY-DRIVE HEAT PUMPs. The fundament difference in efficiency is very small. Why you seem incapable of grasping this is beyond me.
@Hypx Simple - I do the maths. for heating the conversion to H2 is a wasteful and unnecessary step that ends up losing about 50% of the energy.
Feel free to produce computations to prove me wrong.
H2 is incredibly useful as an industrial feedstock. Using it to drive a heat pump (via a fuel cell or burning it) or use it for heating doesn't make sense. .
@X31Andy As an aside, your coefficients are totally ridiculous. Even with direct heating, it is pretty close to 100%. Losses of the conversion steps for hydrogen is not very large. Electrolysis has dramatically improved in efficiency:
@X31Andy You seem to have experience in this topic yourself. Why don't you do the numbers yourself, this time actually being honest...
It should be pretty clear that very efficient electrolysis should imply hydrogen heating at really efficiency numbers. Definitely closer to 90% and not anything like 50%. Even more so once you become aware of thermally-driven heat pumps.
@Hypx I just gave approximate figures. A few other numbers below.
Electrolysis is about 75% each way. Heat driven heat pumps are generally much less efficient than electrically operated - that is why a gas fridge is a rarity these days.
I'm just going to apply Hitchens's razor to your comments unless you come up with supporting evidence that can withstand scrutiny.
@Hypx@X31Andy they exist. This is not something anyone is disputing. But so do electricity power heat pumps. Heat pumps that I can power from the wind turbines I can see out my window. Now. I'm not sure the 1960's era has piping in this building would cope with hydrogen.
@Hypx@quixoticgeek Yes Thermally driven adsorbation and other refrigerations systems exist - they aren't very efficient though if you do the computations (I actually have in the past) - they are mostly used where you have low grade heat without a use for.
@X31Andy@quixoticgeek Which is literally what home heating is about. Creating low-grade heat. You can dramatically increase efficiency with thermally-driven heat pumps.
Not to mention that those are not the limit of efficiency. There are many potential options, such as Stirling engine powered heat pumps with efficiencies as good or better than anything electrically driven. There are many options.
At least acknowledge the possibility that not everything you said is true, or that better options than what you've described can exist.
Hell, you already accepted that industrial use of hydrogen is needed. Something that was rejected as "impossible" just a few years ago. You can only wonder what "impossible" idea suddenly becomes possible in the future.
@Hypx@X31Andy I never said industrial use of hydrogen is impossible. I even use an example (steel production in Sweden), as well as it's use in ammonia production. Both use hydrogen. Both industrial. In fact hydrogen has been used in industry for years. What's new is that hydrogen production is increasingly from electrolysis, rather than steam forming methane.
@quixoticgeek@X31Andy And if you can acknowledge that, then you can acknowledge one more thing: Hydrogen for heating is totally possible, and under the right circumstances, plenty efficient too.
Steel production with hydrogen was seen as completely impossible until about five years ago. The progress of this topic suggests that a lot of impossible things will become possible. Though I suspect angry naysayers will scream in disagreement every step of the way.
@Hypx@X31Andy the difference is. I can buy a heat pump that's powered by electric today. One that's powered by hydrogen I can't. And even if I could get one installed, there's no hydrogen distribution grid able to feed it.
What is your involvement in the hydrogen industry? Why are you defending it so vehemently? You're welcome to publish your own thread with corrections and citations.
@quixoticgeek@X31Andy Again, your position was that the latter option is outright impossible. To the point where you were implying that gas pipes should be banned. Now you are just moving the goalposts to merely stating "it doesn't exist yet!"
As I said previously, the only way you could've held such a strong opinion on something you nearly nothing about could only be explained by gaslighting. Someone tricked you, and you are having a hard time admitting that.
You didn't answer my question asking if you get paid to promote H2 in the social media. Neither have you provided any computations.
H2 in the home, apart from a very few edge cases, is a non starter.
If you want to do energy storage with it then the most effective way is keep it centralised and fuel cell it to and from electricity to support the grid when needed - certainly not for baseload (whatever your definition of baseload is).
I will dare say that you are simply outdated on your understanding of the subject. Unfortunately, fitting the stereotype of an retired engineer saying stuff decades out of date.
If the grid is just being powered by fuel cells running on hydrogen, where is the efficiency difference? You can easily consider something like combined heat & power (CHP) and do it locally instead. Even power a heat pump with that idea.
@X31Andy@quixoticgeek If your know your stuff, where are you getting the idea that electrolysis happens both ways for heating? You are making fundamental errors.
I already presented to you how electrolysis is pushing 100% efficiency. A link that you've completely ignored.
It should be pretty clear just from back of the envelope numbers that it is pretty high in efficiency.
And ilm a climate change advocate, just like you. But apparently more knowledgeable about basic facts.
@quixoticgeek Perhaps you didn't read to the end of my post. But I clearly mentioned that thermally-driven heat pumps exist. So there's no actual downside to using a chemical fuel for heating, provided that it is zero emissions.
You also seem to have missed my point about gaslighting. If there is a way to massively improve efficiency while also reaching zero emissions, why the push to ban it? There is someone with an agenda here, and it's not from the "fossil fuel industry."
@Hypx is it efficient to produce hydrogen in one place, pipe to somewhere else, then use it, when we can transmit the same electricity the same distance with much much lower loses. We can ship 1GW of electricity 1000km with losses of less than 3%. Hydrogen is not gonna come close to that. Just through fugitive losses.
@Hypx oh. And I'm not saying ban anything other than fossil fuels. I'm saying that we have better technologies than using hydrogen for heating home, be they via driving heat pumps or any other means.
@quixoticgeek Again, you can power heat pumps with heat alone. There is no obligation to switch everyone to electricity. Like I said, someone has an agenda here. Someone is trying to gaslight us, forcing us to abandon sensible solutions in favor of something absurdly expensive.
@Hypx@quixoticgeek A solution like installing a PV system for the heat pump? A lot safer than pumping hydrogen around: consider the relative failure modes.
@Hypx@quixoticgeek The question is resources, not money: govts can always make more money, it's a social construct after all.
Who can afford to install a hydrogen supply system for their heat pump?
PV systems linked to the grid provide a distributed power system as well as local use: there are at least an order of magnitude of UK properties not connected to the current gas network than not connected to the grid, even before you get into costs of a hydrogen network.
@quixoticgeek Do you admit that thermally-driven heat pumps exist or not?
And once you figure out the answer, perhaps you will soon realize who's really lying to you. I'm going to assume that you are smart enough to figure this out.
@Hypx I don't dispute their existence. I'm merely saying that watt for watt, it's considerably more efficient to transport a given amount of energy as electricity than it is to turn that electricity into hydrogen and transport that.
@quixoticgeek Uh, no. In this case, you are using the energy in the same way. Powering some kind of heat pump. Even if you include losses from production, compression, etc. of hydrogen, it is not drastically that different than losses from the grid.
Again, one group is literally advocating for the outright ban of one of the two options. They are not merely pushing for a preference. You really do have to wonder what the agenda really is here.
@Hypx I'm not advocating for the ban of hydrogen anything. I am saying we should ban the extraction of fossil fuels. But your hydrogen doesn't come from them. Stop accusing me of wanting to ban something I don't.
@quixoticgeek You pretty clearly stated that hydrogen for home heating is "unviable stuff used to distract politicians." So you agree with the people trying to ban this idea, even if you don't personally support a ban.
The point being, the people who are pushing for a ban are also spreading FUD and lies about who their competitors are. Let's hope they do not succeed in creating a electrically driven heat-pump monopoly.
@Hypx you're lumping me in with people I am nothing to do with. I'm not advocating banning. I'm merely commentating that there are people who convinced the UK government to push for hydrogen gas as home heating, at the expense of heat pumps, even tho it had been shown to not be as good a technology. You've clearly got a bias in favour of hydrogen, you're obviously in the industry in some form. I'm just a geek who wants a sustainable future. Ban fossil fuels. I'll stick with electrons.
@quixoticgeek Then don't say stuff like it is a trick by the fossil fuel companies.
And I agree that you're a geek that wants green energy. The problem is that YOU HAVE BEEN GASLIGHTED in some way. In way that causing you to disagree with other green energy ideas, even when it can work.
You should be aware that anything that stops the use of fossil fuels is a good idea. It doesn't have to be electricity only.
@quixoticgeek Scrapped before it was ever implemented. Someone doesn't even want to know the results of the test.
Like I said, someone is pushing an agenda to the contrary of the wishes of the people. Someone is definitely lying, and this time it isn't the fossil fuel industry.
@Hypx which people is it contrary to the wishes of? Who is out there screaming for hydrogen powered heat pumps ? The only person I've ever heard push them is you. And you very clearly have an agenda to push.
@quixoticgeek Again, it is your side that is pushing for the banning for an entire class of options. No one is saying hydrogen heat must be adopted, only that it exists, something the other side denies.
It is immediately clear that my motivations are sincerely. At very least, I am saying to LOOK AT THE OTHER OPTION, not blinding listening to some authority figure that has clearly told lies about the subject.
@quixoticgeek That's literally the gaslighting I'm talking about. The opposite is true. It is flat out more efficient to move hydrogen around in pipes than electricity.
Honestly, if pipelines were really that ineffectively, why do pipelines exist at all? Wouldn't all natural gas pipelines be entirely replaced by HVDC lines long ago? Obviously, something in your reasoning is incorrect.
@quixoticgeek Actual science, not bullshit from youtubers or bloggers, clearly says this. In fact, moving molecules around will likely always be cheaper and more efficient. You can figure this out just about thinking what pipes actually are (hollow steel cylinders) versus what wires are (solid extrusions of copper or aluminum). It should be obvious from basis physics that the former is cheaper.
@Hypx thing is, I don't need to make a gas tight seal on my cables. Hydrogen is notorious for it leaking out of everything you put it in. But even ignoring that.
If I have 1Gw of electricity generation in point a, and I can transmit that as HVDC with ~3% loss. Or I can convert it to hydrogen at 70-80% efficiency. Even before I've started trying to pipe the gas. I've lost 20% of the energy. It's 17% down on HVDC, and it's not even started the journey yet.
@quixoticgeek Except it doesn't leak out of everything. It isn't even as hard to contain as helium. A lot of this are outdated misperceptions. Some of it were old propaganda from the fossil fuel industry. Somehow, other types of critics are suddenly adopting these old lies.
Last I check, houses are wired for AC, not DC. HVDC means significant conversion losses. Add in local grid losses, you almost certainly lost more than 3%, and probably a lot more.
@quixoticgeek That's for transmission losses alone. It does not include conversion or distribution losses.
Also, these losses explode once you switch to renewable energy. Distance to power station dramatically increases, plus many more conversion steps (NOTE: photovoltaics are DC, but turn into AC once on the grid). Energy storage adds its own big dollop of conversion losses. And so on and so forth.
So the idea that you must suddenly ban the pipeline is clearly a crazy idea.
@Hypx I don't know where you're coming up with this ban nonsense. I'm not advocating banning of hydrogen. I'm suggesting there are better technologies. Also that 5% is transmission and distribution. So that includes your conversions.
As for distance to generation, I can see the wind turbines out of my window. And most solar is locally used, esp rooftop solar.
So stop accusing people of things they aren't, and close the DARVO playbook. You're not gonna get anywhere with that behaviour.
@quixoticgeek Best scenario for water electrolysis is very close to 100% efficiency.
Not to mention that at 5% difference, this becomes nearly irrelevant. I do hope you can recognize the absurdity of what you're saying. That a few percentage points obligates everyone to go with one solution over another.
@quixoticgeek Again, thermally-driven heat pumps exist, hydrogen pipelines work and there are not significant losses. Certainly, not enough to rationalize a ban on them. Even if you don't agree with the outright ban, that is the goal of the people who's rhetoric you are using. That's a major point to be aware of.
@Hypx the only person talking about banning things here is you. I've clearly stated I don't want to ban anything hydrogen related. A simple Google search for "EU ban hydrogen" shows no evidence anyone's trying that.
@quixoticgeek But if you google "UK boilers" they really are talking about banning hydrogen heating.
At least be honest about your own position. You are clearly siding with people who want to ban alternative zero emission solutions, simply because it is not their solution. And they are absolutely willing to lie about it.
@Hypx I'm not. I have clearly stated I am not advocating the banning of anything other than the extraction of fossil fuels. I'm not even advocating the banning of gas boilers. You have accused me of things I am not.
Creating net-new hydrogen piping infrastructure to every home of which 0 currently have connection, will be cheaper to implement than the electrical infrastructure that's already in place in 99.99% of homes/businesses?
Hell, maybe you're right, but it sure doesn't seem like it. I'd love to hear the justification for it.
@sb@quixoticgeek That's a strawman argument. The point is that certain people want to fully ban the alternatives to electric-only heating. And they are totally lying to people about the merits of their position. No one is suggesting that everyone go out and get hydrogen heating.
@Hypx@quixoticgeek
No, but we're talking about solutions that deploy at scale, and are ready today.
The conspiracy you're talking about to undermine hydrogen is off topic, but interesting. I don't think any of us on this thread would argue that there are not also certain green commercial interests that are unscrupulous or outright liars. We know there are. I report on them regularly.
I look forward to finding out more about it. Liars and scammers and anyone else who is trying to steer us away from the goal need to be exposed and removed for the discourse.
@sb@quixoticgeek Which is what blending hydrogen into gas pipelines is all about. It is doable today.
It's very likely that there is a cult of electrification or batteries going on. Likely motivated by financial gain, and very secondarily any actual green benefits. The real goal is about getting people to pay many thousands of dollars for flashy products. Basically an elaborate marketing campaign. Real environmentalism is being undermined by it.
Heat pumps are an amazing technology. They are essentially a very large fridge run in reverse. If you want to know more about them, Technology Connections on Youtube has some great videos explaining how they work. They are absolutely brilliant, and combined with better insulation, they are going to allow us to heat our homes and offices with 100% renewable electricity cheaply and efficiently. Alas there's a lot of FUD out there from those who make a living from boilers.
But their main drawback currently is they are expensive to install. This is a political problem that is easy to fix with subsidies and simple economy of scale. .NL installed 100000 heat pumps in 2023. They hope to install another 120000 in 2024. Still tiny numbers, but a great start. You can also run a heat pump in reverse, solving cooling too. This is a great technology. It's mature. It works. It's understood. And it's really unevenly distributed.
So that's 4 technologies. Ammonia, Steel, Cement, Heating, that between them could help us reduce our emissions by over ⅓rd. Something that is going to be critical to the chances of our society surviving beyond 2040. And with all bar cement, we have solutions for them now. We just need the political will to roll them out more. But we also need the renewable energy sources to support them. That means thousands, if not tens of thousands of wind turbines.
The largest turbines now are able to generate upto 16Mw of energy. There's a lot of offshore wind resources we're not yet making use of. Ditto solar. Every suitable surface in our built environment needs to be covered in solar panels. Solar has come down so much in cost now, and will only get cheaper. there's little excuse now. Think of all the big warehouses and apartment blocks and shopping centres. Cover them all with solar.
@quixoticgeek and parking lots. Covered parking is more valuable than uncovered so you get a double benefit. Also it's a whole lot easier to retrofit solar car ports on an existing concrete pad than haul them up to a roof.
@SkipHuffman nah. Just get rid of parking lots. Private cars are ridiculously inefficient, they destroy cities. Deploy public transport, cycling, and walking. Either use the parking lots as places to build new buildings, or convert them back to nature.
@quixoticgeek parking lots exist, as does significant private car ownership. Changing that is far more complicated than just sticking solar roofs over big patches of concrete and asphalt.
@quixoticgeek I've got plenty of hope there. In a century from I expect it to be as much of a specialist hobby as airplane ownership is now. And all the old "parking lots" will just be solar farms with weird lines on the concrete underneath.
With energy from renewables we can power the industrial processes (ammonia, cement, steel), heat our homes and offices. All without destroying our environment. There's no excuses anymore. We know what we need to do. We have the technologies we need to do it (OK, except for cement). As William Gibson said. The future is here, it's just not evenly distributed. It's time to distribute things a bit more evenly. Some technologies won't save us. But these ones. These are critical to our survival.15/15
@quixoticgeek I want to contradict you on cement. We have the technology to build without cement. We can even build right now climate positively with clay, lime, wood and strawball. You sink CO2 as opposed to emitting it while building
@quixoticgeek@BurchertMichael 20 storey stuff probably not that „ecological“. Individual houses on steel anchors well doable. 5 story buildings such as this one will still need a bit of concrete in the basement indeed!
I guess in our shrinking society, maybe it would be a good idea to reuse already poured basements and walls instead of building new 100%?
@Labruunt@BurchertMichael actually quite the opposite. By putting people closer together you get an efficiency of scale. Suburbia and single family homes are incredibly inefficient. There's a sweet spot. I'm not sure where it is, balancing land use, population density, etc... but with people closer together in medium rise buildings, you get a more efficient use of space, and public transport works even better.
@BurchertMichael@Labruunt I'm not suggesting every building be 20 stories high. I agree that the sweet spot is somewhere in 5-10. But I think that we are gonna always have a need for the occasional taller building.
@kim@Labruunt@BurchertMichael exactly. In a way, homes and offices are the easy one to build without cement, or with minimal cement. But a railway bridge, or the foundation for a 200m tall wind turbine. That's a different kettle of fish.
@quixoticgeek I really appreciate threads like this because "we have the technologies" is believable to folks without an incentive not to believe, but non-obvious. Actually enumerating the individual things we need to change with what we already know about how to change them makes the problem feel a lot more tractable and gives ppl grounding to counter narratives that we can't.
@quixoticgeek It doesn't actually have to be expensive to install a heat pump. We installed a heat pump in our house in NL at very low cost because we couldn't afford to do it otherwise.
Unfortunately it's only possible to get a grant from the Dutch government for a heat pump if you have a commercial company come along to do an expensive install of a bigger and less efficient system than we now use to heat our home.
@hembrow@quixoticgeek
Very interesting report. One question: how much noise does the outdoor unit generate, and could it be a problem for the neighbours?
@dpflug no harm In asking. @TechConnectify if I'm doing a thread and I mention your videos. Would you prefer to be tagged so people can find you, or untagged so as to be kind to your notifications?
@quixoticgeek For folks interested in the science, or in sources to convince skeptics that overhauling our ammonia production is possible, an approach that looks really promising is described in this paper: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abg2371
@dalias@quixoticgeek And we could also get vastly more efficient at how we use fertilizer. Real time sensing of how much of it the crops need and when, instead of carpet bombing the fields with stuff that mostly ends uppolluting the waterways. A rare example of an IoT thing that actually seems to solve a problem that existed before the solution 😉
@twobiscuits@dalias oh yes. There's lots of room for "smart farming". But given that the vast majority of crops worldwide are grown by small scale subsistence farmers, I'm loath to promote such things as a panacea. We're seen the impact GM crops have had on the likes of India. It's not good.
@quixoticgeek@dalias someone will find a way to fuck it up, for sure, but on the face of it, it seems better than GM crops, many of which were conceptually silly and/or evil from the outset
@dngrs unfortunately not. It's something I learned about a while back and all the links are dead cos bookmarks no longer work. I'd start with the Wikipedia page on GM crops and see where you were end up. Follow the references.
@crashglasshouses currently. Yes. So called grey hydrogen. But green hydrogen can be produced with electrolysis, and the amount being produced this way is increasing. My thread talks about what we can do. Not necessarily what we are doing right now.
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