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The frequent thread among the many disparate issues within the title is hydrogen, whether or not inexperienced, grey or pitch black. What, you would possibly ask does hydrogen must do with forklifts, cryptocurrency and inexperienced fertilizer? Learn on.

Let’s begin with forklifts. Just lately they splashed throughout screens once more, as Amazon put in a hydrogen electrolyzer from Plug Energy at one in every of its Colorado distribution facilities to make hydrogen for 225 hydrogen forklifts that it’s oddly utilizing. It’s price unpacking this a bit.

Are hydrogen forklifts a factor? Nicely, probably not. There are about 50,000 of them in operation globally because the first was constructed 64 years in the past. That’s about eight a yr, so that they actually aren’t flying off the cabinets. In the meantime, 1.2 million battery electrical forklifts had been bought in 2021 alone. That’s a homeopathic resolution of hydrogen forklifts.

The place are these 50,000 forklifts? Nearly solely within the USA, with handfuls in Europe and Japan and one in South Korea. Why does the USA have just about all of them, or in truth greater than a handful of the lifeless finish expertise? Nicely, as I used to be unsurprised to search out when digging by means of Ballard’s historical past of shedding a median of $55 million a yr since 2000 with its governmentally funded and failed trials of assorted hydrogen autos, it goes again to the US Division of Vitality. The DOE gave a bunch of warehouse operators together with Amazon some huge cash to put in hydrogen refueling and purchase forklifts.

The US DOE continues to rely this as a win in current publications, saying that it’s been a business success since nearly half had been purchased with out governmental largesse, however evaluation makes it clear that it’s nearly solely corporations which had backed hydrogen refueling and forklifts that bothered to purchase extra of them. Nothing like inertia, even with one of many lightest molecules on the earth.

The opposite factor that was apparent from wanting on the historical past of hydrogen autos together with forklifts is that they just about all are operating on grey and even black hydrogen, with 11 to 35 kg of CO2e per kg of hydrogen gas. Nothing virtuous about that, it simply meant that diesel wasn’t stinking up the within of warehouses, one thing that the remainder of the world quietly achieves with batteries and no large handouts of taxpayer cash.

However the Amazon warehouse goes to be operating on inexperienced hydrogen, isn’t it? No, under no circumstances. It’s going to be operating the electrolyzer off Colorado grid electrical energy, which has a carbon depth of 512 grams of CO2e per kWh. That turns into 23 kilograms of CO2e per kilogram of hydrogen. That’s not inexperienced, that’s pitch black, with a carbon depth twice that of grey hydrogen and naturally three to 4 instances extra than simply utilizing the electrical energy straight in battery electrical forklifts.

Oh, and there’s no pathway from hydrogen forklifts to hydrogen freight vehicles as some headlines insisted. Hydrogen forklifts have tanks which are pressurized to 350 atmospheres of stress, not the 700 to 800 required for giant vehicles. Having a one MW electrolyzer on web site will imply that as a substitute of paying doubtless US$11 per kilogram for delivered hydrogen, they’ll pay about $6.00 per kilogram only for the vitality at Colorado electrical energy charges.

That electrolyzer in all probability value effectively north of the most cost effective alkaline electrolyzer it’s attainable to purchase, which the IEA signifies presently prices US$400 per MW. At a extra doubtless $800 per MW, that’s $800,000 for that little bit of equipment within the warehouse. The 225 forklifts require about 300 kg of hydrogen a yr every, and the electrolyzer could make about 22 kg an hour at peak manufacturing. That tells us they’re planning to run it about 35% of the time. Assuming it lasts 10 years — I do know, beneficiant — that will add about $1.20 to each kilogram of hydrogen. Add a bit for different bits of equipment just like the dehumidifier and it’s maybe $8-$9 per kilogram hydrogen as a substitute of $11 hydrogen.

There’s no proof that the US DOE or different governmental company is funding this in any of the press, however frankly it wouldn’t shock me.

Regardless, not a sign that we’ll be bowing to our hydrogen-powered overlords, only a bizarre US legacy cruft use case that’s remarkably even much less inexperienced than what it was earlier than.

Which brings us to bitcoin and fertilizer.

Late final yr somebody identified {that a} inexperienced hydrogen play for Shawinigan, Quebec, hometown of a former Canadian Prime Minister and a string of deeply suspicious lodge fires, wasn’t for something helpful, however was truly being promoted by a hydrogen van firm, First Hydrogen. I assessed that and arrived at a reasonably totally burdened value of producing hydrogen at Quebec industrial charges, together with steadiness of plant, electrical energy charges and a few financing and income, of about US$3.24 per kilogram.

That’s excellent, doubtless near the absolute best worth for manufacturing inexperienced hydrogen anyplace on the earth. That’s undelivered, simply sitting in a tank on the facility a good distance from any off takers, as there’s nothing within the steadily declining retirement group that wants hydrogen. The plans to construct 25,000 hydrogen vans in Shawinigan to create demand for the stuff make completely no sense, and in any occasion First Hydrogen is deeply undercapitalized, has three CEOs in a 16 individual agency and a UK case examine that makes it clear that their van is economically lifeless within the water.

The hydrogen was additionally very low carbon, round 0.08 kilograms of CO2e debt per kilogram of hydrogen, effectively below the Hydrogen Science Coalition clip stage of a kilogram of CO2e per kilogram of hydrogen. Low-cost and low-carbon hydrogen is certainly required.

Nevertheless it begged the query of me: if it had been low cost and inexperienced, what’s an truly helpful use case for the stuff in Quebec, even when not in Shawinigan.

That led me to work out the associated fee implications of manufacturing inexperienced ammonia for fertilizer in Quebec, and it was solely 66% dearer — roughly — than grey hydrogen manufactured elsewhere in Canada per ton. Too excessive, however truly fairly shut as soon as Canada’s 2030 carbon worth is added to the grey hydrogen, nonetheless under the price of importing ammonia from the USA and positively within the cash in 2030 with the EU’s carbon border adjustment mechanism. Fertilizer and commodity manufacturing and distribution giants Yara and Trammo are already working in Quebec, and there’s a detailed set of plans for a grey hydrogen ammonia fertilizer plant in Becancour that may be dusted off and reprinted on truly inexperienced paper.

All that required was about 400 MW of electrical energy 24/7/365. I acknowledged that there was a drawback of additionality with out stepping into it a lot, and was promptly known as on it by a few individuals. In spite of everything, as I famous across the inane hydrogen vacationer prepare three month trial within the province, the low carbon electrical energy was totally subscribed already. The Minister accountable had rejected 9 GW of inexperienced hydrogen requests for electrical energy, so there’s none left over for inexperienced ammonia.

Right here’s the place bitcoin enters into the image. All of that beautiful, secure, dust low cost and (apart from the purpose for them) inexperienced electrical energy had attracted plenty of bitcoin miners. A part of the oversubscription of Quebec’s energy meant that they’d very publicly determined to cease offering electrical energy to bitcoin miners. However probably not.

What they actually did was cease allowing new business crypto mining operations for substantial electrical energy attracts. They didn’t shut down the previous ones.

And on condition that bitcoin mining within the province dates again to no less than 2018 and the mining operation I might discover information on was pulling 98 MW, 1 / 4 of what can be required for a 1,000 ton a day inexperienced ammonia plant, there’s an apparent resolution.

Therefore, my up to date advice to Quebec. Get Yara and Trammo on board, flip Yara’s terminal on the St. Lawrence into an ammonia export terminal, arrange an built-in inexperienced hydrogen and ammonia manufacturing facility at Becancour, and take away electrical energy rights from 400 or extra MW of bitcoin miners to energy it.