Last edited Sat Feb 1, 2025, 08:38 AM - Edit history (1)
Posting a misleading picture of wind turbine garbage doesn't mean that California makes hydrogen from it. It's just greenwashing fossil fuels.
California never stops burning natural gas to make electricity, even during those hours where all of our assholes claim that it's a big deal because for a few minutes or hours, it produced "100% renewable energy." (Nobody builds an economically viable plant that runs 15 hours a year.) It is a gas dependent state. Since the manufacture of hydrogen using electricity, already a thermodynamically degraded form of energy wastes energy, the point is simply to make the climate disaster worse faster.
The laws of thermodynamics are not overturned by slick marketing videos produced to greenwash fossil fuels.
The EIA puts it pretty fucking clearly how hydrogen is made in the US, even as they promote wishful thinking about so called "green" hydrogen, the "green" clearly standing in as a short cut for greenwashing fossil fuels:
USEIA Hydrogen explained, Production of hydrogen
Steam-methane reforming is a widely used method of commercial hydrogen production
Steam-methane reforming accounts for nearly all commercially produced hydrogen in the United States. Commercial hydrogen producers and petroleum refineries use steam-methane reforming to separate hydrogen atoms from carbon atoms in methane (CH4). In steam-methane reforming, high-temperature steam (1,300°F to 1,800°F) under 3 bar–25 bar pressure (1 bar = 14.5 pounds per square inch) reacts with methane in the presence of a catalyst to produce hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and a relatively small amount of carbon dioxide (CO2).
Industrial facilities and petroleum refineries primarily use natural gas as the methane source for hydrogen production. Several fuel cell power plants in the United States treat and use landfill gas (biogas) as hydrogen source. Biofuels and petroleum fuels are also potential hydrogen sources.
I added the bold. On this planet, the miserably failed solar and wind industries, where the word
failure refers to any environmental effects they have despite the denialist hype. The only effect on the environment for the trillions of dollars squandered on wind and solar only to make things worse faster. And no, there is no surplus to squander to make hydrogen; the natural gas industry is growing faster than solar, faster than wind, which of course is the purpose of marketing natural gas as "green hydrogen." So called "renewable energy" has been great for the gas industry, just like the "hydrogen is green" marketing program has been great for the gas industry.
A Giant Climate Lie: When they're selling hydrogen, what they're really selling is fossil fuels.
One thing I'll say for our marketing types coming here trying to rebrand fossil fuels as "green hydrogen" is that they're persistent. If one lies enough, one can hope to be believed. Look at our government as an example. They "green hydrogen" bullshitters are no different at all.
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