Mastodawn

Ketan Joshi Mar 28, 2023

Me and a few other climate folks on Twitter have noticed a very clear new prominence of climate deniers and delayers

So with some help, I gathered up some data and checked - it turns out that denial/delay, pro-fossil disinformation accounts have seen massive growth in their audience, while pro-climate-action accounts have either stagnated or shrunk.

Elon Musk is reshaping Twitter into a safe space for right-wingers, and in doing so, empowering climate change deniers, delayers and pro-fossil advocates more than ever before.

New post:

https://ketanjoshi.co/2023/03/28/musk-is-remaking-twitter-into-a-climate-denier-sanctuary/

Musk is remaking Twitter into a climate denier sanctuary

I got some data that analyses how climate deniers have changed their audience size, relative to pro-climate accounts, on Musk’s Twitter. It’s….not good.

Ketan Joshi

serklarvel Mar 29, 2023

@ketan ironically, Elon's fortune comes from a company that sells electric cars, which is supposed to reduce carbon gas emitions

@serklarvel @ketan Battery electric cars are just a greenwashing exercise. The real future will be #hydrogen powered cars.

serklarvel Mar 29, 2023

@Hypx @ketan agree, I don't believe electrical cars are the solution

Blake Leonard Mar 29, 2023

@serklarvel @Hypx @ketan The future is going to be (or maybe just should be) good public transportation, and "small" vehicles like bikes, skateboards, and scooters :)
As for hydrogen fuel, I feel like it's best suited for use as backup power, but not as the primary power source since it's inefficient and costly (it takes way more power to produce than it puts out).
I don't have any idea what a good primary power source for civilian vehicles like cars should be, if not batteries (which blow up).

Hypx Mar 29, 2023

@blake @serklarvel @ketan The point of hydrogen is that it neither depends on fossil fuels nor excess raw materials. If we are going to have civilian vehicles (which face it, we will), it must be something like hydrogen cars.

The counterarguments are really just FUD from battery car companies. They don't even want you to know that a fuel cell is an electrochemical cell, and that FCEVs are EVs too. There's very little downside compared to other EVs.

Grassroots Joe Mar 29, 2023

@Hypx @blake @serklarvel @ketan
Re: fossil-fuel dependence
It's true that H2 production doesn't have to depend on fossil-fuels, but it currently does.

It's important to state that H2 as a green fuel requires a very large increase in renewable electricity to use to produce green hydrogen.

Building a retail hydrogen distribution system is also needed to be the auto fuel solution. Easier or harder than charging stations?

Hypx Mar 29, 2023

@joeinwynnewood @blake @serklarvel @ketan Let's just say BEVs will never be the solution for everyone and there must be an alternative.

Grassroots Joe Mar 30, 2023

@Hypx @blake @serklarvel @ketan What is undoubtedly true is that hydrogen will/must be instrumental in the decarbonization of heavy industry, air and sea transportation.
Beyond that I think is very much up in the air depending on how much green hydrogen is available how soon.
EV adoption could go much faster than H2 availability depending on several factors.
There is also the future grid stability benefit of distributed energy storage in millions of garages to be considered.

Hypx Mar 30, 2023

@joeinwynnewood @blake @serklarvel @ketan BEV adoption does not follow green electricity FYI. In many cases, they are just being powered by fossil fuels. We should not have a double standard here.

Using car batteries as a way to stabilize the grid is an incredibly dumb idea. Those batteries are not designed for that. Meanwhile, hydrogen for grid energy storage completely solves the problem.

Blake Leonard Mar 30, 2023

@Hypx @joeinwynnewood @serklarvel @ketan Hydrogen production and storage is highly inefficient. It costs about 5 times more energy to make (and contain?) it than it produces.
Plus, the production of hydrogen, especially now, will likely use fossil fuels.

Hypx Mar 30, 2023

@blake @joeinwynnewood @serklarvel @ketan It helps to not swallow BEV propaganda on this subject. The efficiency between hydrogen and lithium is not significant, and both are vastly more efficiency than conventional internal combustion engines. This becomes more obvious once you realize the need for grid energy storage and the cost and raw material problems of li-ion batteries.

ckfinite Apr 22, 2023

@Hypx @blake @joeinwynnewood @serklarvel @ketan Lithium batteries are extremely efficient on a columbic basis (you get in about 99% of the energy out what you put in https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-0648-z). The main loss of energy is in the charger itself, and modern SMPS design can get that to around 90% efficiency. Hydrogen is considerably worse than this.

Understanding and applying coulombic efficiency in lithium metal batteries - Nature Energy

Coulombic efficiency (CE) has been frequently used to assess the cyclability of newly developed materials for lithium metal batteries. The authors argue that caution must be exercised during the assessment of CE, and propose a CE testing protocol for the development of lithium metal batteries.

Nature

ckfinite Apr 22, 2023

@Hypx @blake @joeinwynnewood @serklarvel @ketan

Hydrogen production is at best about 80% efficient (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589299119300035), the fuel cell is about 60% efficient (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1364032111004709) and then you have another voltage conversion (another 90%ish efficient step). This doesn't include compression or liquefaction for transport.

All-in, then, hydrogen is only around 40% efficient (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360319908015061) at delivering electric energy to a motor vs. the 80-90% offered by BEVs.

ckfinite Apr 22, 2023

@Hypx @blake @joeinwynnewood @serklarvel @ketan
Compressing or liquefying H2 for transportation requires another step of between 80% and 60% efficiency to be added on top (https://www.hydrogen.energy.gov/pdfs/9013_energy_requirements_for_hydrogen_gas_compression.pdf).

Thus, on a kWh-for-kWh basis, the hydrogen car is considerably less efficient (by about a factor of 2 to 3) compared to a BEV. The main advantage would be if you can make hydrogen without needing electricity.

Hypx Apr 22, 2023

@ckfinite @blake @joeinwynnewood @serklarvel @ketan This is mostly just propaganda. A fuel cell is an electrochemical system. It has more or less same rules governing it. Theoretical efficiency is 100% at every step. Real world analysis will also find that batteries have huge efficiency issues of their own (weight, production, parasitic losses, cold weather, etc.), and in practice there is little to no difference in efficiency.

ckfinite Apr 22, 2023

@Hypx @blake @joeinwynnewood @serklarvel @ketan When you say 100% efficiency, what's that in relation to? Is it realized efficiency of the process compared to maximum theoretical performance or in terms of overall thermodynamic efficiency?

ckfinite Apr 22, 2023

@Hypx @blake @joeinwynnewood @serklarvel @ketan I'm also sort of generally interested in why these papers that I've cited are propaganda.

Hypx Apr 22, 2023

@ckfinite @blake @joeinwynnewood @serklarvel @ketan Your citations are not supporting your claims. They are just pointing out current levels of technology. Future technology progress will eliminate the efficiency problem. Even today, it is already mostly irrelevant. Batteries are heavy and expensive, and fuel cells are already efficient enough to justify replacing the former with the latter.

ckfinite Apr 22, 2023

@Hypx @blake @joeinwynnewood @serklarvel @ketan You specifically claimed that they were propaganda - I'm still interested in why. These papers clearly lay out why there is a current 2-3x efficiency gap between FCEV and BEV. To cite a modern paper, take for example Aminudin et al (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360319922048534) who identifies electrical efficiency of the fuel cell itself (not including electrolysis) of 72%. Are you saying that 72% thermodynamic efficiency is ~100% of theoretical?

ckfinite Apr 22, 2023

@Hypx @blake @joeinwynnewood @serklarvel @ketan Beyond these efficiency questions, what's your preferred hydrogen storage and transportation modality?

Hypx Apr 22, 2023

@ckfinite @blake @joeinwynnewood @serklarvel @ketan It literally isn't an issue because once you are creating hydrogen at nearly 100% efficiency, and converting back to electricity at a similar rate, the storage and transportation mechanism just becomes the equivalent of the electric grid. Losses are comparable and not something to worry about. This is arguably already true with 100% renewable electricity, since there are way more sources of losses with all electric solutions.

ckfinite Apr 22, 2023

@Hypx @blake @joeinwynnewood @serklarvel @ketan Okay, so you're suggesting point-of-delivery hydrogen generation, so a filling station would do electrolysis from the grid to refill its storage? How does the car store the hydrogen, in that case?

Hypx Apr 22, 2023

@ckfinite @blake @joeinwynnewood @serklarvel @ketan I cannot access the whole paper, but he is factually wrong if he is making that claim. The theoretical limit is 100% efficiency, as in 100% conversion of chemical to electrical energy.

https://www.dynamictidalpower.eu/resources/Documenten/Maximum_conversion_efficiency_of_hydroge.pdf

ckfinite Apr 22, 2023

@Hypx The 72% thermodynamic efficiency is of a *realized* PEM fuel cell; the theoretical 100% efficiency is a lot like carnot-ideal efficiency: you don't get particularly close to that.

In that paper they note that even the idealized efficiency with real gases is not 100%:
> The lowest value of the maximum efficiency is 82.1%, 75.7%,
and 79.3%, respectively, for CH4-air fuel cell, H2eO2 fuel cell,
and H2-air fuel cell and the corresponding highest maximum
efficiency is 92.7%, 82.7% and 82.7%.

ckfinite Apr 22, 2023

@Hypx A real fuel cell is going to have losses that aren't included in this idealized process model; achieving 87% (72% vs. 82.7%) of the maximum theoretical performance is actually pretty good for a thermodynamic process!

Hypx Apr 22, 2023

@ckfinite By the time you reach something like 90%, the conversation about this subject is simply over. That is more than good enough to silence all doubters.

You are reading the paper wrong. It is clearly stating that the maximum efficiency is 100%.

Hypx Apr 22, 2023

@ckfinite @blake @joeinwynnewood @serklarvel @ketan In relationship to energy efficiency. You are just confusing yourself. As electrolysis and fuel cell reactions are electrochemical processes, they work the same way as li-ion batteries. People are simply creating an elaborate fiction for why only some electrochemical systems are possible and others are not.

ckfinite Apr 22, 2023

@Hypx @blake @joeinwynnewood @serklarvel @ketan Not all electrochemical reactions work the same way? The chemistry that li-on batteries use is fundamentally different than the chemistry that's happening in electrolysis. A simple example of how different chemistry begets very different performance is to compare alkaline batteries to lithium ion batteries. They're both electrochemical processes, but their realized performance is very different!

Hypx Apr 22, 2023

@ckfinite @blake @joeinwynnewood @serklarvel @ketan Just so you are aware, alkaline batteries and li-ion batteries have almost the same columbic density. The only difference is voltage. The energy density difference comes almost entirely from this fact.

Grassroots Joe Mar 30, 2023

@Hypx @blake @serklarvel @ketan No, EV adoption does not follow green electricity, but EV use gets more green with each increment of renewable generation.
Hydrogen production can only get green when there is a lot more renewable electricity to support it.
EVs and incremental renewable production is here now.
Using car batteries as grid storage is anything but dumb.
Distributed batteries in appliances as well as EVs will play an important role.
This is from 2 yrs ago - https://www.volts.wtf/p/rooftop-solar-and-home-batteries#details

Rooftop solar and home batteries make a clean grid vastly more affordable

Distributed energy has often been seen as a more expensive alternative to utility-scale power plants, but new modeling reveals that it is actually a vital complement. (If you don't want to read, you can listen!)

Volts

Hypx Mar 30, 2023

@joeinwynnewood @blake @serklarvel @ketan That's the double standard I'm talking about. The exact same thing is true with hydrogen. In fact, it is more true since you can immediately switch to green hydrogen for fuel even when it is still a small part of production.

If you think using car batteries for energy storage is a good idea, you will be dumbfounded by what is possible with hydrogen. The word "petawatt-hour" suddenly becomes a real thing.

Grassroots Joe Mar 30, 2023

@Hypx @blake @serklarvel @ketan
It's all about marginal cost and adoption.
Let me know when there are tax incentives to buy a fuel cell car and I can put a hydrogen tank in my garage for about the cost of a 220V outlet - no, wait, nevermind...
As for distributed grid storage, including EVs, think whatever you like, it won't be here overnight, but it is definitely coming.
https://www.iea.org/commentaries/distributed-energy-resources-for-net-zero-an-asset-or-a-hassle-to-the-electricity-grid

Distributed energy resources for net zero: An asset or a hassle to the electricity grid? – Analysis - IEA

Distributed energy resources for net zero: An asset or a hassle to the electricity grid? - A commentary by Doyob Kim, Alyssa Fischer

IEA

Hypx Mar 30, 2023

@joeinwynnewood @blake @serklarvel @ketan You are not being serious about the topic. A hydrogen refueling station will refuel thousands of cars, but a home charging station just one or two.

Grid energy storage will just be hydrogen for the most part. The economics of hydrogen will continuously push against BEVs.

Grassroots Joe Mar 30, 2023

@Hypx @blake @serklarvel @ketan No, I was being hyperbolic. The point is that hydrogen requires substantial infrastructure investment that has not started to be made and I've not seen evidence of it being planned for personal transportation. If you have, I'm all ears.

As for distributed grid storage, I've provided a couple of sources showing both research and early deployment of solutions to integrate distributed battery storage into the grid. Below is another. It's definitely not just EVs ...

Grassroots Joe Mar 30, 2023

@Hypx @blake @serklarvel @ketan but it is also EVs.

Maybe H2 will end up more cost effective and win that market, but right now there is much more attention to H2 for heavy industry and commercial air transportation.

"Electrical vehicles (EV) and EV chargers—Since they use batteries, electric vehicles can either draw electricity from the grid or provide stored electricity back to the grid to help balance resources. Several utilities are testing these capabilities on their systems through ...

Grassroots Joe Mar 30, 2023

@Hypx @blake @serklarvel @ketan pilot programs. One estimate projects the market for grid services provided by EVs will exceed $3 billion annually by 2020, focusing on demand response programs."

https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/us/Documents/energy-resources/us-er-grid-integration.pdf

Hypx Mar 30, 2023

@joeinwynnewood @blake @serklarvel @ketan Right now, society is wasting billions on an idea that is showing serious limits and likely isn't even sustainable. It is like going back 10 years and trying to convince everyone that the ICE car is the answer because "right now" there aren't many EVs.

Grassroots Joe Mar 30, 2023

@Hypx @blake @serklarvel @ketan Show me evidence that hydrogen is being advanced as a personal transportation solution & I'll be happy to acknowledge it as a possibile solution.
To be clear, I've not argued that it shouldn't be, nor that EVs are the holy grail, only that there isn't a drive to towards hydrogen for personal transport & there definitely is a drive for it for other sectors.
And I've documented active work to incorporate EVs into grid storage.
Is there something that says different?

Hypx Mar 31, 2023

@joeinwynnewood @blake @serklarvel @ketan Both hydrogen personal cars and refueling stations exist. These are fully viable cars right now. You are simply not aware of the progress. It mirrors anti-EV skepticism from a decade ago.

Grassroots Joe Mar 31, 2023

@Hypx @blake @serklarvel @ketan
So there are 3 FCEVs models currently available, there is an FCEV dealer 700 miles away in Cookeville, TN & the nearest place to fuel up is 500 miles away in Quebec, the 2nd closest 2300 miles away in San Diego.
The dealer looks like a (heavy?) truck dealer & another heavy truck dealer looks to be expanding to 51 locations.
Car sales sound like mostly to fleets in CA.

Hypx Mar 31, 2023

@joeinwynnewood @blake @serklarvel @ketan Just because the infrastructure hasn't spread to your local area doesn't mean it isn't happening. It's the same story with BEVs initially. Eventually, it will reach your area, and at some point the BEV will be driven in obscurity by superior technology.

Grassroots Joe Mar 31, 2023

@Hypx @blake @serklarvel @ketan
Another country and a portion of a single state on the other coast is a rather extreme version of "not my area". It's not like the Boston - DC corridor is a backwater.
I can see FCEVs having a market in rural areas & long haul trucking, but EVs (& ebikes too) are on the hockey stick world wide & will be around for a long time.

Hypx Mar 31, 2023

@joeinwynnewood @blake @serklarvel @ketan Even Boston-DC had zero EVs. For whatever reason, certain parts of the US did not invest in hydrogen. But this is changing.

Growth is exponential and happens much faster than what people think. Hydrogen will be available everywhere relatively soon.

Hypx Mar 30, 2023

@joeinwynnewood @blake @serklarvel @ketan Hundreds of billions of dollars are being invested in hydrogen. You're just not paying attention.

Hydrogen is multiple orders of magnitude larger than any conceive battery related energy storage solution. They only talk about battery storage because they never heard of the alternative.

clacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛Mar 29, 2023

@Hypx @serklarvel @ketan There are use cases for true green hydrogen as a fuel, but overall, the "hydrogen economy", and the current hydrogen hype as much as the one under W, is a bait-and-switch and a delay tactic to keep the fossil fuel industry relevant as long as possible with non-green hydrogen and obfuscated faux-green hydrogen.

Hypx Mar 29, 2023

@clacke @serklarvel @ketan Batteries are greenwashing. They are the true scam. We cannot make a battery powered society sustainable. It doesn't matter how many time this conspiracy theory is peddled. It will always be false. We must switch to a #hydrogen powered society in order to be sustainable.

clacke: exhausted pixie dream boy 🇸🇪🇭🇰💙💛Mar 29, 2023

@Hypx @serklarvel @ketan It is neither and it is both. Pitching either as a complete solution is misleading, but both have a role to play.

Hypx Mar 29, 2023

@clacke @serklarvel @ketan No one is pitching hydrogen as a complete solution. But the auxiliary solutions will be ideas like mass transit or denser cities. If battery cars still exist in the future, they will be in the form of short range commuter cars. The rest of transportation will be mostly hydrogen powered.

Ignius Mar 29, 2023

@Hypx @serklarvel @ketan don't forget hybrids at the very least hybrids are alot better than just gas powered. Looking to invest in hybrid in the near future. If not an ev.

Jon Mar 29, 2023

@Hypx @serklarvel @ketan
The real future won’t need cars.

Sir Willington Apr 22, 2023

@Hypx @serklarvel @ketan yeaaa but we need to refine the batteries and motors of an EV platform to use the electricity from a fuel cell

Cedar Fen Farm Cedar Fen Farm Jul 25, 2023

@Hypx @serklarvel @ketan the real future will be in staying local and not driving.