America's Clean Hydrogen Dreams Are Fading, Again (nytimes.com)
- Reference: 0178644604
- News link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/25/08/11/1814206/americas-clean-hydrogen-dreams-are-fading-again
- Source link: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/11/business/energy-environment/hydrogen-clean-energy.html
Energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie estimates three-quarters of proposals will not meet this deadline. Woodside Energy and Fortescue have scrapped projects in Oklahoma and Arizona respectively, citing cost increases and policy uncertainty. According to McKinsey, fewer than 15% of low-emission hydrogen projects announced in the United States since 2015 have reached final investment decision stage.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/11/business/energy-environment/hydrogen-clean-energy.html
Superficially appealing with a predictable fate. (Score:2)
SSL.
Solar (Score:1)
Hydrogen is an unnecessary middleman.
Solar is the future.
Re: Solar (Score:2)
Partially right. Solar makes a form of energ... Gha, it's electric. I can run electric shit off of nukes, the sun, gasoline, burnt hair. It don't care! Even hydrogen cars turn fuel into electricity to run an electric motor.
Clean hydrogen is a trojan horse by big oil (Score:2, Flamebait)
Absolutely nobody actually focused on sustainable energy gives hydrogen even a second of thought. Big oil has been pushing hydrogen forever as you can make it with fossil fuels, and requires siloing and pipelines and refineries - all stuff oil companies have in spades.
Other than Japan (which has no significant fossil fuel resources domestically) nobody is actually spending a dime on this stuff. It's a total red herring. Do yourself a favor and just forget about hydrogen. It barely made sense in the
Hydrogen support (Score:2)
The only hydrogen I support at this point is for industrial chemical processes like refining steel and other metals.
Turns out that we can produce pure iron, ready for alloying to make steel and other alloys, by using hydrogen instead of coke, drastically reducing the energy cost and CO2 production.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah there are valid uses for hydrogen. Powering Karen's mini van is not one of them.
Re: (Score:2)
> Big oil has been pushing hydrogen forever as you can make it with fossil fuels, and requires siloing and pipelines and refineries - all stuff oil companies have in spades.
Well we do need something to replace fossil fuels where batteries are not ideal. Long haul trucking, rail, shipping, stationary generation, aircraft, etc. Given the choice between e-fuels and hydrogen though the former seems like a better plan, not least of which specifically because it is a drop in replacement for the existing distribution and fueling infrastructure. That is actually a feature, as anyone who has trouble finding a place to charge can attest.
Re: (Score:2)
- Continent wide dunkelflautes exist (only a problem for renewables, not nuclear).
- Biofuel based on arable land can only provide tiny amounts.
- Biofuel without arable land makes electrolysis based fuel look cheap.
- People would like continuing to fly planes.
- People would like shipping to continue to be possible.
- Direct air/ocean capture and sequestration is very expensive.
People focused on sustainable energy would unlikely be the type to go "well, we can just use a little fossil fuel without offset emiss
screw em (Score:3, Insightful)
Good, it's just natural gas with extra steps and I die a little inside every 4 or 5 years when somebody makes hydrogen a buzzword again. Everything about it is worse than what we already have.
H2 was always a distraction scam (Score:2)
Sure hydrogen makes sense for very long distance heavy shit like semis, maybe trains, and airplanes. Everything else is wildly impractical, and shocker, did not catch in the consumer market.
Not a fuel (Score:3)
Hydrogen isnâ(TM)t a fuel. Wood, coal, oil, those are fuels. Hydrogen is at best a chemical battery.
Re: (Score:2)
Wood isn't a significant fuel, at best it's just something to burn while you deforest the earth.
It's fine for a couple people, it's useless for everyone.
Wonderful concept, major problems to implement (Score:4, Insightful)
It takes considerable power to break down water to hydrogen and oxygen. But, the next major issue is transport and storage. Hydrogen is difficult to store except at cryogenic temperatures, and even then it is difficult. Try doing this in a plane or vehicle.
Re: (Score:2)
Sign me up for the Hydrogen powered Ford Pinto.
Re: (Score:2)
Vehicles, no. But places like Japan with a persistent energy supply problem? Quite possibly, importing from e.g. Australia. If it's economically feasible, we'll see it somewhere outside the USA first.
Re:Wonderful concept, major problems to implement (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a total nightmare to transport and store, it can pass through solids, embrittles steel on the way out, burns with an invisible flame, and was only available from a small handful of stations in a few states in the US. It's also so far been about as expensive as gas and almost purely produced from fossil fuel sources (moreso than today's common E10/E15 gas). Filling a hydrogen car is also not much faster than quick-charging an EV. So remind me what was so wonderful about the concept?
Re: (Score:3)
Don't forget that batteries have long passed fuel cells, price wise, as well as durability.
IE with a fuel cell hydrogen car, you'd still need a battery to take advantage of regenerative braking (a major mileage increase), meanwhile the fuel cell to power the car costs drastically more than a similar battery would, and would need to be replaced more often. While killing realistic ways to recharge/refuel at home.
All to save maybe 5 minutes when refueling.
Re: Wonderful concept, major problems to implement (Score:2)
It was always a distraction, by design. Toyota had an EV lab in southern california over a decade ago, then they fired everybody, shuttered the place and went all in on the mirai. How'd that turn out? It's always been a time waster put on by the petro industry IMO to distract/harm EVs
Re: (Score:2)
Even then unless something has changed last I checked the majority of hydrogen sold is actually produced from natural gas rather than electrolysis so it may not be as clean as expected.
AFAIK there are no consumer vehicles storing it in a liquid state
Imho the ideal way to do it would be to produce it on site from water and electricity thus avoiding the shipping issues.
Still I think that at least for consumer vehicles it's missed its chance.
EVs already beat it in most every category, only things that need a m