this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2025
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most people do not know that in my experience.
why should we use renewables to produce hydrogen (not to mention develop an entirely new hydrogen infrastructure) when we could just use that renewable energy as it is? That's just adding extra steps and inefficiency for very little benefit, if any.
agreed.
Because hydrogen isn't trying to replace the source of energy, it is trying to replace the storage of it, at present batteries are not nearly good enough for the EV only transportation boom, but hydrogen works and only really needs to deal with the volatility issue
H2 is the smallest molecule there is, and among the worst to contain. It's also quite reactive. And the production of H2 for storage is not wonderfully efficient, nor is the whole lifecycle from production to consumption.
The only real reason for hydrogen is to repurpose rather than scrapping the existing gasoline supply chain. That benefits nobody but the fossil-fuel companies. And that's why it's being endlessly hyped, despite being a profoundly suboptimal solution.
yes, but the point is renewables>battery storage is a more direct and efficient storage system than renewables>hydrogen which then has to be contained, shipped, and distributed for every refill/charge. Batteries you make once and recharge thousands of times which you can do with distribution through the grid from your local power utility (or even right at home if you have solar).
it's not just volatility that's an issue. Even setting that aside, Hydrogen is difficult to contain because it's such a small molecule, and it weakens/corrodes metals. These are not trivial challenges at all.
the other thing you can’t do with hydrogen is energy recovery via braking, so you’d have to build cars with a battery or some other kind of hybrid system for fuel cost efficiency.
It's true that batteries present their own challenges but we are making much more progress in battery tech than we are with hydrogen.
Didn't they just start shipping grid size salt batteries too?