Join day by day information updates from CleanTechnica on e-mail. Or observe us on Google Information!

In current months it’s turn out to be clear that there’s a distinctly non-cottage business in Germany producing unintentionally and deliberately deceptive stories about hydrogen for power. At present one more important and revered group crossed my display screen, dena, or the German Vitality Company. (Decrease-case is their branding and it’s an acronym of a German language title.)

It’s a assume tank that was arrange by governmental and business actors in 2000 to be a competence heart for utilized power transition and local weather safety. Its governance physique is usually governmental representatives. It has about 550 workers per its web site and 460 per LinkedIn. German teachers and governmental varieties basically regularly don’t think about LinkedIn a platform to be engaged with or represented on, it appears.

Some pink flags begin to seem pretty rapidly, not less than a far as hydrogen for power is worried. The primary, in fact, is that it’s the German Vitality Company. By definition it views the molecule via the distorted lens of power, not via its true function as an industrial feedstock. Confusion ensues.

The second is that it’s not inventory filled with STEM and economics literate employees. It’s, from the surface trying in, a coverage, regulatory, and legally targeted group. Its high two employees are attorneys. Nothing flawed with attorneys in any respect. I’ve large respect for lots of the occupation I’ve labored with. But when I’m speaking about power and hydrogen, a lawyer isn’t who I might flip to.

And so to what triggered me to have a more in-depth look, which was a LinkedIn submit by Dr. Robert Stüwe, Lead Knowledgeable, Hydrogen, Overseas Financial Coverage, EU, per LinkedIn. He’s dena’s high hydrogen man, it appears.

#Hydrogen bridge between Australia and Germany struggling delay as soon as once more exhibits the necessity to take parallel efforts to get #H2 pipeline initiatives over the ending line that join sources nearer to Europe. This could in the long run repay by way of provide safety and guarantee a larger diversification of sources. #H2Importkorridore

This was a head-scratcher. Hydrogen pipelines, which I’ve checked out quite a few occasions with out them making any financial sense. Delivery hydrogen from distant areas, which as soon as once more is absurdly costly and uncompetitive with options.

To not get too advert hominem, however what are Stüwe’s credentials for being a hydrogen professional? STEM chops? None obvious. Financial chops? Nope. Sociology, legislation, and political science. This by no means makes him a slouch or somebody to not respect, nevertheless it signifies that in terms of hydrogen and power, he’s most certainly operating off of obtained knowledge, not bottom-up value estimates and power balances he’s executed himself. He’s lacking a bunch of background information — as soon as once more from what’s offered in his public profile — to have the ability to decide hydrogen as an power service.

And so, he’s much like the Chair and Managing Director in being targeted on power from a distance and never targeted on operating the numbers himself. As soon as once more, this isn’t a nasty factor if the obtained knowledge he’s operating on is aligned with empirical actuality. However that is hydrogen for power we’re speaking about.

So what does dena do? It researches, writes, and publishes stories and papers. It recommends insurance policies, frameworks, subsidies, and laws to align with a decarbonized power system. Its employees does media interviews about identical. It influences. It’s a assume tank. That’s okay. There’s a requirement for organizations who do all of this stuff. Except they’re misaligned on empirical actuality.

Stüwe’s submit recommended that they may not be aligned. So I went and checked out a handful of their publications about wasserstoff, which is the phrase for hydrogen in German.

What was that about initiatives? Effectively, they appear to get most of their funding from conducting what are greatest described as consulting engagements to write down stories on behalf of and paid for by varied of their shareholders and different organizations. Their shareholders are governmental ministries and dena itself.

However 13% of their funding comes from non-public firms. 2021 funders included artificial gasoline producers, biogas companies, BP, Daimler aka Mercedes Benz Group, LNG liquifiers, Lufthansa, Shell, the German Gasoline and Water Affiliation — foreshadowing –, gasoline utilities, ExxonMobil, electrolyzer companies, hydrogen companies, cement companies, industrial warmth associations, and compressor companies.

And a bunch of different companies and organizations that are targeted on varied facets of the power transition together with transmission, renewables, and different organizations. Maybe my favourite was the Decrease Bavarian chimney sweeper cooperative eG.

However that first checklist is regarding. It signifies that a bunch of organizations which aren’t aligned with empirical actuality regarding the transition as a result of they’re dealing with extinction are paying for stories which dena is producing. And people stories are shaping German coverage.

As soon as once more, to be clear, I seemed on the first 4-5 publications that got here up out of apparently 1,500 initiatives that they’ve executed, particularly in search of hydrogen-focused efforts. I’m positive a lot of their initiatives, particularly these funded by electrical utilities, transmission organizations, and probably even automotive OEMs are extra aligned with the truth of deep electrification and renewables.

What’s Up With Germany & Hydrogen?

Earlier than diving into just a few odd dena stories, let’s step again and survey that German non-cottage business associated to hydrogen.

For a little bit of context, hydrogen is a part of an ongoing political scandal round power that’s concerned a few Chancellors. Gerhard Schröder, Merkel’s predecessor, was tight with Putin and Russia and has obtained one million a 12 months since 2005 for sitting on the Board of Nord Stream, Russia’s gasoline export pipeline enterprise and a subsidiary of Russia’s state-owned Gazprom. He’s turn out to be a pariah for his a long time of selling shut power ties with a Russia which was clearly trending away from being world actor even then.

The present Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Merkel’s successor, and one with out something remotely like her STEM chops, has been half and parcel of this, establishing hydrogen diplomacy workplaces in Moscow, Riyadh, Luanda, and Abuja, with one supposed for Kyiv as of simply earlier than the Russian invasion.

That highest degree political engagement round hydrogen as an power service pervades the nation, to its detriment and to the detriment of Europe really decarbonizing. I’ve been observing the signs of this irrational deal with the flawed resolution in my assessments of analysis and assume tank organizations for the previous few months.

Let’s begin with the Worldwide Council on Clear Transportation. Wait, it’s a US assume tank established by American philanthropical organizations, together with each the Hewlett and Packard foundations. What does it should do with Germany?

Effectively, in November of 2023 it printed a remarkably odd whole value of possession research on heavy freight highway trucking in Europe which made the false case that hydrogen vehicles would have power prices per kilometer not rather more than electrical vehicles. This was brutally clearly flawed, but they tried to defend it and nonetheless haven’t acknowledged how credibility-destroying flawed they have been.

What does this should do with Germany? The lead researcher and creator on that research is predicated in Berlin.

Hmm. Removed from definitive. What else?

Effectively, there was the German working group established to determine pathways to highway freight decarbonization that equally low-balled hydrogen trucking prices. As soon as once more, they did not make hydrogen-powered trucking pencil out, however they put lots of thumbs on the size, together with hard-to-believe assumptions of an enormous community of hydrogen gasoline utilities and dirt-cheap inexperienced hydrogen imports. They actually tried to make hydrogen pencil out. Nonetheless failed. The working group targeted on artificial fuels for trucking, one which was overloaded with automotive business representatives, fared higher at pretending that very costly fuels can be match for objective and inside combustion engines would proceed to dominate.

Then there was the PIK Potsdam Institute for Local weather Impression Analysis research I checked out just lately. That’s a German analysis group as effectively. It was funded by the governments of Germany and the German state of Brandenburg, based in 1992. They’ve a few fashions that they look like too reverent of, LIMES-EU and REMIND, which have terribly low costs for hydrogen embedded in them, €1.67 client value per kilogram in LIMES-EU and €2 and €3.50 client costs in REMIND.

The researchers, inside reviewers, and peer-reviewers missed this utterly as a result of all the client power costs have been normalized into MWh and nobody has a benchmark in thoughts for hydrogen in MWh. It seems the researchers thought that placing in assumptions for electrical energy costs would routinely result in inexperienced hydrogen made with these electrical energy charges, however weren’t capable of spot that the fashions had no relationship between electrical energy costs and hydrogen costs. Dangerous items led to dangerous outputs.

The EU JRC’s 2022 hydrogen transportation research, which I assessed just lately, actively packed underlying assumptions with unrealistically low prices associated to the manufacturing and distribution of hydrogen, then fastidiously wrote the coverage transient to offer the deceptive impression that inexperienced hydrogen can be accessible at vastly decrease costs than any life like numbers.

Any life like value work-up for transport hydrogen finds that it could be vastly dearer than LNG or coal imports and as such cripple the importing nation economically.

Then there’s Daimler Trucking, a subsidiary of Mercedes Benz Group. Certainly one of its Board of Administrators, Dr. Andreas Gorbach, often posts about Daimler’s hydrogen trucking initiatives.

As occurs with hydrogen for power varieties, Daimler’s hydrogen trucking efforts bumped into the brick wall of 700 bar hydrogen compression failures and drivetrain issues. As an alternative of accepting that it was a nasty power selection and pivoting absolutely to battery-electric, Daimler adopted a well-worn path into liquid hydrogen.

They’ve simply arrange a liquid hydrogen refueling station to go along with their liquid hydrogen fueled freight truck. As a reminder, hydrogen is simply a liquid at 20° above absolute zero, 17° above the temperature of deep area. To make liquid hydrogen requires a full third of the power within the hydrogen. To maintain it liquid lengthy sufficient requires huge, globular, extremely insulated tanks.

Security necessities for dealing with it are very excessive as a result of absurd chilly which might flash freeze an individual uncovered to it and the huge quantities of extremely flammable gasoline it could instantly flip into.

Liquid hydrogen is shipped by truck as we speak, however solely the place it actually is the one possibility for the tip use case and it’s not financially viable to construct a hydrogen manufacturing and liquification plant on the website. NASA nonetheless makes use of it for getting rockets into orbit, however the area business as a complete is shifting away from it as a result of it’s so onerous to deal with.

But German establishment Daimler thinks it’s going to be at lots of of truck stops and truckers are going to be pumping it safely. And Daimler thinks lots of of tanker vehicles filled with the stuff on European highways with texting drivers and college buses is an affordable concept.

That is par for the course for organizations and people who decide to hydrogen. In some unspecified time in the future they lose monitor of goal actuality and assume {that a} new dangerous concept will resolve the issues that they discovered in all places else in hydrogen. I wrote about all of the hydrogen pathways and their useless ends extensively just lately.

However Gorbach and Daimler’s hydrogen lead promote and defend liquid hydrogen trucking pretty always, committing Daimler to a useless finish as a substitute of specializing in constructing a battery-electric truck from the bottom up. It’s a nasty technique based mostly on an incapability to get away from hydrogen. It’s going to finish badly for Daimler. However to be clear, it’s changing into apparent that Daimler is caught in an echo chamber of German power varieties. They aren’t robust sufficient to withstand it. That received’t assist them, however possibly it’s an excuse.

Proper now, Daimler is leaving the standard ladder body of their vehicles alone and jamming diesel, hydrogen, and battery-electric drivetrains in. That is simply as dangerous an concept for environment friendly battery-electric vehicles as it’s for each different automobile, but Daimler’s adherence to hydrogen is stopping constructing an actual semi tractor skateboard structure.

The hydrogen lead in Daimler might need an excuse. They aren’t a STEM-focused individual per their instructional and profession historical past so won’t have the ability to do the technical due diligence required to comprehend how dangerous an concept that is. They’ve their job and they’re doing it to the perfect of their potential. I’ve some sympathy for that.

However Gorbach, who’s on the Board of Administrators, has hardcore STEM credentials. He has a PhD in chemical engineering and a masters in system dynamics and controls. He ought to know higher. As an alternative he’s a significant cheerleader for hydrogen publicly and undoubtedly internally. To be truthful, he’s additionally a promoter of their battery-electric trucking efforts, that are delivering vehicles to clients as we speak.

Has dena Misplaced The Plot On Hydrogen As Effectively?

So there’s a niche between actuality and the dena hydrogen professional’s public assertion famous above. However that might be a blip, a misstatement, the consultant getting out over their skis, or just a mistake. What do a sampling of dena’s stories associated to hydrogen say?

A dena paper from Might 2023, Enterprise fashions for decentralized hydrogen ideas (translated from German), consists of this gem.

… seasonal hydrogen storage within the neighborhood and in houses

We’re now at 54 impartial research that discover zero use for hydrogen in houses. Oh, wait. A number of days after the meta-analysis was printed, a fifty fifth research surfaced. And seasonal storage? Properties can be storing hydrogen in the summertime for these chilly winter days?

That’s true for industrial buildings as effectively. No hydrogen can be concerned in residential or industrial heating of water or air. No heating, no gasoline distribution pipeline community. There merely received’t be an financial case for hydrogen gasoline utilities except there’s huge residential and industrial demand for it.

There may be actually no want for hydrogen cogeneration for district heating with district geothermal warmth pumps and heating networks. Vastly cheaper per unit of power coming and going. Different elements of dena seem to know this, so as soon as once more, it is a subset of the company, not the whole lot. However they’re publishing stories which affirm the bias of policymakers and traders as a substitute of being an really considering tank.

Later in the identical distributed enterprise mannequin research, including hydrogen manufacturing co-located with a repowered onshore wind farm is taken into account. It posits 7.6 MW of electrolyzers operating roughly 80% of the time that the wind farm is operating, as wind generators generate electrical energy about 85% of the time, however simply not at nameplate capability. To date so good, one would assume.

However what precisely goes to be executed with the hydrogen?

7.6 MW is simply about 150 kg of hydrogen an hour. That’s far too little to place a pipeline in for. It’s not like there can be an enormous client hydrogen distribution community if it’s not utilized in a big share of buildings. So onsite storage and compression.

Then vehicles present as much as switch it. And hydrogen trucking prices of €7.50 to €10.50 apply per US DOE research of actual world experiences.

The identical decentralization report talks about mixing hydrogen into gasoline networks as if that’s going to be broadly executed, although it admits brazenly that 20% hydrogen can be solely 7-8% of power. What it doesn’t say is that the hydrogen can be vastly dearer than gasoline per gigajoule, so clients can be hit twice within the pocketbook.

First, they’d solely be receiving 87% of the power for a similar quantity of gasoline, and second they’d be paying much more for it. It’s a nonsensical concept cherished solely by the pure gasoline utilities. What’s actually occurring with gasoline utilities is that they’re being confronted with the utility demise spiral and can be closing up store.

Utrecht has the fitting concept. It’s shutting down its gasoline distribution community sub-isolation community by sub-isolation community and offering a mix of district heating and warmth pumps for all buildings.

Later, in fact, the report asserts that pure hydrogen distribution networks will exist and that current pipelines might be repurposed cheaply. Clearly the report didn’t learn the German pipeline research fastidiously. Vastly decrease volumes of hydrogen would circulate via repurposed pipelines to allow them to final quite a lot of years.

Strain adjustments and hydrogen embrittlement at joints and welds make for radically decrease lifespans except a lot decrease pressures are used, as a substitute of the 3x strain required for a similar quantity of power within the type of hydrogen.

Dena thinks that repurposing current gasoline pipelines is reasonable and straightforward and that the quickly escalating prices of proposed hydrogen pipelines from and to nowhere aren’t a difficulty. Paul Martin, a chemical engineer who labored professionally with hydrogen for many years and a co-founder of Hydrogen Science Coalition, has learn the stories fastidiously.

Underneath the hydrogen design code, the design strain of an current fossil gasoline line would must be de-rated to maybe 1/2 to as little as 1/3 of its unique score if it have been switched to hold hydrogen. That’s going to have a really giant affect on the power carrying capability of these strains, probably necessitating both twinning or alternative of any transmission line switched to hydrogen.

However they’re in all probability influenced by dangerous research on hydrogen vs HVDC transmission, that are additionally rife in European circles. These research share lots of dangerous assumptions and framing.

The report does love the concept of creating small quantities of hydrogen regionally for storing electrical energy, positing native 2,000 MWh per 12 months storage. As a reminder, turning electrical energy into hydrogen after which again into electrical energy is deeply inefficient, returning a few third of the electrical energy it began with and requiring a full industrial electrolysis, hydrogen dehumidification facility, hydrogen purification facility, compression, storage, and gasoline cells which require pure hydrogen and HEPA-grade air filters.

That facility would have excessive upkeep prices, as hydrogen compressors are very excessive upkeep and gasoline cells are finicky beasts.

All for two,000 MWh of storage per 12 months, one thing a few Tesla Megapacks can do, which might be delivered on a trailer, haven’t any shifting elements, and simply sit there with out upkeep.

On the scale envisioned, the hydrogen electrolysis amenities are vastly below the financial scale of an industrial facility, so stability of plant and operations can be rather more costly as a ratio. The value factors of hydrogen manufacturing aren’t life like, in different phrases.

The report then assesses versatile electrolyzers for absorbing extra demand.

This, in fact, requires electrolyzers which really can scale up and down flexibly, in order that’s PEM electrolyzers, not less than in concept. In actuality, PEM electrolyzers are not almost as versatile as has been extensively assumed, with solely the most costly having the ability to ramp up and down rapidly with out important degradation.

As soon as once more, fundamental assumptions don’t stand as much as scrutiny.

Even then, the report finds: “It’s due to this fact not attainable to construct a enterprise mannequin for versatile electrolysers based mostly on the supply of management power.”

Yup. All that capital, operation, and upkeep value can’t be paid off with solely a 3rd return of electrical energy even when they promote waste warmth too, though in fact they wouldn’t have almost as a lot with variable load PEM electrolyzers anyway.

We’re now onto p.66 of the report and the chickens are coming house to roost. Dena’s copyright steerage is obvious that reusing graphics or materials from their stories with out specific permission isn’t allowed, in any other case I might seize a screenshot. The report is linked above for anybody .

There are three charts of the price of distribution of hydrogen. For low quantity customers, aka houses and industrial buildings of their context, the prices of distribution are extremely excessive, €2 to €4.39 per kWh.

Sure, per kWh. That’s a unit of electrical energy that’s ten to twenty occasions cheaper than the hydrogen supply value when it’s delivered via wires.

That’s vastly greater than any constructing or small enterprise goes to pay for power. Solely a lot bigger demand facilities for hydrogen, i.e. current industrial customers who’ve pipelines already, will see remotely cheap hydrogen supply. As soon as once more, dena authors lean into the incorrect concept that it will likely be dust low cost to repurpose current pure gasoline strains.

These are euros per kWh of power within the type of hydrogen by the way in which, which is to say warmth power, which is to say that they’re double that for really helpful electrical energy if that’s the use case. Whether it is for warmth under 200° Celsius, warmth pumps would require a 3rd the power within the type of electrical energy and at a fraction of the price. Hydrogen for power is already out of the operating with out these distribution prices.

On condition that a lot of the industrial facilities which have a enterprise case for grey hydrogen pipelines have already got them, and small and medium companies received’t be utilizing hydrogen for power, as soon as once more, the gasoline distribution community can be shutting down and restricted to industrial customers.

These customers don’t eat hydrogen for power as we speak and received’t sooner or later. We’re effectively into multiples per kWh of delivered warmth power already in comparison with utilizing electrical energy immediately and extra multiples with warmth pumps. Who precisely goes to pay for very costly power after they may simply use handy electrical energy?

And on p.76 we discover the idea behind the foolish concept of seasonal hydrogen storage in neighborhoods. The electrical energy grid which has been efficiently and massively scaled can’t scale per the report, so that they’ll add a lot increased load electrolysis machines to degree the demand. They usually’ll be in houses in neighborhoods.

buildings with native hydrogen storage

Electrolysers for home use can retailer as much as 1,500 kWh.

That is such a cockamamie idea and so vastly understated by way of precise capex, opex, and upkeep for the hydrogen power practice that nobody would significantly do that as soon as an precise design had been labored out and costed.

Hydrogen worth chain elements have very poor imply time between failure statistics. That hasn’t modified a lot in a long time. Very excessive compression of very tiny molecules is extremely robust and demanding, so compressors are very costly and fail often. Gasoline cells require pure hydrogen and HEPA-filtered air and nonetheless degrade.

It is a case the place a paper research by individuals with no HVAC, building, or operational expertise makes one thing very complicated and inefficient seem to be a good suggestion. I’m positive that the researchers are well-meaning, however that they have been really proposing and learning manufacturing hydrogen in houses with summer time sunshine to supply winter power in … checks publication date … 2022 is astounding. That is the sort of factor present in gee-whiz tech and fanatic websites over 20 years in the past. It’s very troublesome to take the report significantly in any respect when it consists of this type of factor.

After which we get to industrial course of warmth.

45% of commercial warmth is under 200° Celsius. That’s totally viable with warmth pumps that are at minimal 3x as environment friendly as hydrogen or different burnable fuels.

Vastly extra of the rest of commercial course of warmth can electrify than the report assumes. There’s a humiliation of riches of applied sciences which aren’t used as we speak just because burning fossil fuels with out abatement is dust low cost.

If an industrial website can’t hold burning dust low cost fossil fuels and its solely possibility is burning very costly hydrogen or derivatives, it merely received’t be financial and can fail as a enterprise. That is Economics 101.

Assuming that an current industrial facility can’t radically electrify heating is a nasty assumption. Assuming that if they will’t electrify that they’ll be aggressive with vastly increased power prices is a nasty assumption. New amenities which can be constructed for electrical energy will eat their breakfast, lunch, dinner, and people further snacks they don’t inform their partner about.

The place burning is required for the traits of flames, it will likely be biomethane most certainly. A lot simpler to work with and cheaper. Hydrogen can’t and received’t compete.

In fact, dena loves hydrogen pipeline infrastructure. How can it not when so a lot of its stakeholders are Europe’s pure gasoline transmission and distribution companies?

Within the report, How can the hydrogen community infrastructure be arrange in Germany and Europe?, innumerable bald-faced assumptions about huge hydrogen demand are made that don’t stand as much as a lot scrutiny.

Dena recommends a crash course of constructing 1000’s of kilometers extra hydrogen pipelines, as much as 8,500 km by 2032.

The report is all concerning the regulatory, coverage, enterprise mannequin, and subsidy constructions essential to make this pipe dream a actuality. Extra wasted digital ink.

As a reminder, Europe assumed inexperienced hydrogen might be low cost to make and low cost to ship. BCG known as it a ‘consensus’ of €3 per kg by 2030. That consensus was solely amongst STEM- and economics-illiterate hopeful varieties, not individuals with the fundamentals of each who had executed precise value workups.

And lo, as BCG introduced just lately, it was certainly an phantasm, with €5-8 per kg being the manufacturing value level in Europe within the 2030s. Inexperienced hydrogen offers that truly reached last funding choice in 2023 common €9.49 per kilogram. That strike value isn’t going to return down simply due to the economics of producing hydrogen. And that value is earlier than transmission and distribution.

Within the report, Hydrogen initiatives in Germany, dena lovingly lists lots of of hydrogen initiatives within the nation, with out indicating what their standing or probability of success is.

However as BCG once more reported from their information set of about 1,300 hydrogen initiatives, solely 0.2% by quantity had reached operation and the overwhelming majority weren’t going to achieve last funding choice. Not that they put it that method, however that’s what the information reported says even when they have been detest to say it.

In the meantime, solely 10% of hydrogen initiatives deliberate for 2030 even had an off-taker, per BNEF.

And the IEA makes it clear that solely 7% of the theoretical variety of hydrogen initiatives goes to be on-line by 2030.

Dena’s tables are undoubtedly filled with initiatives that received’t attain last funding choice.

And now we get to the report, Sustainable heavy-duty transport from Nov 2023. Contemporary off the press.

Bizarrely, two of the three authors are from DVGW, Germany’s gasoline and water affiliation. Certainly one of them is explicitly a pure gasoline and LNG professional. The opposite is a younger city planning and coverage individual. Neither have any background in transportation. The dena consultant as soon as once more lacks STEM and economics credentials, however has been doing advertising, coverage, and regulatory work associated to transportation for some time.

My coronary heart sinks once I assume what this report is prone to say. Let’s discover out.

Naturally, hydrogen performs a starring function: “The usage of hydrogen in heavy-duty transport could make a significant contribution to lowering greenhouse gasoline emissions (GHG emissions) within the transport sector.”

For context, no credible whole value of possession finds hydrogen vehicles are aggressive with battery-electric. As David Cebon of Cambridge, founder and director of the Centre for Sustainable Street Freight discovered, gasoline cell vehicles may have double the capital expenditure and 3 times the operational expenditure of battery-electric freight vehicles. And gasoline cell buses are proving to have 50% increased upkeep prices than diesel and double that of battery-electric, per my printed evaluation of California fleet information.

Unsurprisingly, subsequent up are pure gasoline and biomethane. The DVGW people are exhibiting their colours. Naturally that is all very accessible and all match for objective — for gasoline distributors. Naturally it’s nonsense, as battery-electric vehicles are less expensive to function and keep, with whole prices of possession at present trajectories below these of diesel by 2030. Apparently identical to maritime ships, numerous vehicles appear to be burning LNG in Europe, a part of the nice success of the gasoline business at pretending that it was a greater various.

Professional-tip: methane is an enormous local weather change downside and any widespread use and distribution of it contributes to that downside.

Amongst different issues, there are over 500,000 electrical vehicles on China’s roads, together with in all probability 700,000 electrical buses. Street visitors is a solved downside. Methane, whether or not fossil or bio, shouldn’t be required.

The completely huge public electrical energy charging community, the high-speed charging community, and the megawatt-scale chargers which can be accessible now are ‘virtually nonexistent’ infrastructure. The just about 20,000 excessive pace charging stations in comparison with the 18 heavy automobile hydrogen stations that they doc within the report ought to have been a clue as to what was really going to happen.

To be clear, the huge, swift, and cheap rollout of high-speed charging, in comparison with the costly, sluggish, and fraught rollout of hydrogen refueling stations must be an abject lesson.

And there are their assumptions about battery-electric vehicles and power density.

“It’s anticipated that batteries with capacities of 600 to 850 kWh might be made accessible for 700 km routes by 2030”

Tesla Semis have already got 800 km ranges as we speak. CATL is delivering batteries in 2024 with twice the power density of Tesla’s, enabling 1,600 km of vary. The US NACFE Run on Much less in September of 2023 noticed Teslas run 1,600 km in a day with quick charging, and different distributors’ electrical vehicles run 800 km in a single day of loaded service.

But once more a hydrogen-focused trucking report ignores the truth of battery power density and electrical vehicles as we speak.

And, in fact, they downplay the issues of hydrogen pumping stations and make it appear as if megawatt scaling charging stations are deeply unlikely to be viable because of grid limitations.

As a reminder, I just lately assessed California’s hydrogen pumping stations in the identical interval once I was their public information on bus fleets. The final six months that they reported upkeep information have been the primary half of 2021. The 2022 report I assessed confirmed that the stations have been out of service for upkeep 20% extra hours than they have been actively pumping hydrogen into automobiles, a full 2,000 hours extra, in actual fact. The most important problem was compressor failure.

My preliminary methodology means that this represents a 30% of capital expenditure spent on upkeep yearly, not the 3-4% assumed in whole value of possession research. It aligns with the advice of 10% of capital expenditure yearly {that a} contact had been given by a vendor promoting decrease strain 350 bar refueling stations.

I’ve shared these outcomes with a world group of highway transportation researchers and recommended that they discover funding to recreate the research with any methodological enhancements and information that they see match to incorporate. In any case, there are lots of hydrogen refueling stations in Europe, South Korea, and Japan as effectively.

So What’s Going To Occur With Germany?

The nation has wrapped so a lot of its main tutorial and analysis organizations across the axle of hydrogen power that it’s unclear how they’ll ever see straight once more. Tutorial reputations are already struggling. Beforehand credible and revered organizations are being discovered to be non-credible, with their work of a number of years topic to retrospective doubt.

German politicians appear to be sunk into this morass and decided to guide Germany into an period of extraordinarily excessive power prices. When different nations are embracing electrification, constructing fashionable industrial amenities that run totally on inexperienced electrical energy and avoiding all the unfavorable externalities related to burning something, however particularly with burning fossil fuels, they will be having less expensive worth chains.

German firms are falling into the identical pit. Daimler is only one of many. BMW continues to be losing time on hydrogen gasoline cell mild automobiles. In 2024. Whereas gasoline cell automotive gross sales are plummeting globally.

And so to that odd phrase within the title of this piece, gruppendenken. That’s German for groupthink.

Groupthink is a phenomenon that happens when a gaggle of people reaches a consensus with out essential reasoning or analysis of the results or options. Groupthink is predicated on a standard need to not upset the stability of a gaggle of individuals.

Sure, the rational Germans, usually held up because the epitome of hard-headed and disciplined engineers, have a societal failure of essential reasoning or analysis of penalties and options. Their cognitive biases are main them to misinterpret stories on hydrogen pipelines to see what they actually need to see. They keep away from value comparisons.

If this was Lichtenstein or Andorra, this wouldn’t be as consequential. However Germany is a really highly effective pressure within the EU. It’s the most important financial entity by far, with a GDP €1.4 trillion greater than the second greatest, France. It’s been driving hydrogen for power insurance policies which can be opposite to empirical actuality for a very long time. An excessive amount of Europe’s confusion about hydrogen might be laid at Germany’s door.

And as famous early on on this dialogue, quite a lot of that leads again to German political alignment with Russia over power of all sorts. Main strategic errors have been made for over 20 years which have led thus far. It’s not, nevertheless, too late.