Comment on Know thy enemy
skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 13 hours agono we can’t make hydrogen everywhere, there will be regions with large excess of renewable energy compared to population. these places could export hydrogen. you also don’t need a lot of transport if crude is extracted near place where it’s used, like for example heavy crude from alberta
Spaceballstheusername@lemmy.world 8 hours ago
The problem with the comparison is hydrocarbons are the energy source, hydrogen is no it’s just the energy carrier. It is very inefficient to convert energy to hydrogen then convert it back again. Something like 60% round trip efficiency. Not to mention the cost and loss in loading into containers and shipping it around the world. It’s also not a very dense fuel per volume especially compared to oil. It’s just way easier and cheaper to have cables that run from one place to another. They are already building one from Australia to Singapore and if it’s successful that will probably open the floodgates. There aren’t many places that are more than 2000 miles away from large sources of renewable energy even if your thinking places like Alaska which could do hydro if there ever was dense enough populations anywhere that would consume it.
skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.de 4 hours ago
this is less of a problem when you don’t use it for energy, but instead as a feedstock like in synthesis of ammonia or steelmaking. you can make ammonia in many places, but it’s not the case for steel