in message <
[email protected]>, Paul Murphy
('
[email protected]') wrote:
> "Simon Brooke" <[email protected]> wrote in message
> news:[email protected]...
>> in message <[email protected]>, Paul Murphy
>> ('[email protected]') wrote:
>>
> <snip>
>>>
>>> If you're saying electrolysis isn't a totally environmentally clean way
>>> of producing hydrogen we agree.
>>
>> Barring localised elevated concentrations of oxygen, I don't see any
>> other environmental damage inherently caused by large scale
>> electrolysis. Whether oxygen levels would be sufficiently elevated to
>> cause damage I don't know. What environmental damage do you see as a
>> consequence of large scale electrolysis?
>
> As below where does the electricity used in it's production come from and
> if it is from a 'green' source can it be used to replace other non green
> power plants instead?
Look, for the last time: the Earth has concentrations of freely available
renewable energy. Most of those concentrations are unfeasibly distant from
current centres of population to allow electricity transmission to be
efficient.
Britain - and continental Europe - have virtually no economically available
geothermal energy. We have quite limited available solar energy. We have
masses of wind, wave and tidal energy, but the most efficient places to
exploit it are far from the mainland making transmission problematic.
Where you have exploitable 'green' energy close to centres of population,
of course electrolysis doesn't make sense. Of course transmission and
battery storage make more sense. But by and large we don't have anything
like sufficient exploitable 'green' energy close to centres of population,
so we need ways to move 'green' energy from places where it can be cheaply
and efficiently produced, to places where it's in demand. Hydrogen looks
like being the most efficient available way to do it. That's all.
As with so many other things in life, one size does not fit all. I'm not
suggesting that everyone could or should use hydrogen fuels (my personal
preference is for us all to be more energy efficient and use less fuel of
any kind). But I'm suggesting that for many people, hydrogen offers an
efficient means of moving 'green' energy from where it can be produced to
where they are.
Or are you really planning to connect Iceland to the British national grid
by means of pylons across the North Atlantic?
>> Exactly, which is why this makes economic sense in places like Western
>> Sahara and Iceland where there is plentiful cheap clean energy and
>> access to sea water.
>
> But you're missing the point that by converting the power (and water)
> into hydrogen, it's an extra unnecesary step.
It's an extra step. There's 312,000 people living in Iceland. They have
more renewable energy - geothermal, hydro, wind and wave - than they can
possibly use, no matter how profligate they choose to be. So what do you
propose they do with the excess capacity? Just now they use some of it to
smelt aluminium, which is pretty sensible. But there's plenty more. Why
shouldn't they export it? The same applies to New Zealand, and, although
the power source is different, to Western Sahara.
> A limiting factor
> would be the cost of the transmission network, which in a dessert would
> be very high, but then so would the cost of providing and maintaining
> roads to any sort of energy production plant and the cost of hauling the
> chemicals produced.
Look, you cannot move energy long distances by road. It just isn't
efficient enough. You cannot move energy long distances by electricity
transmission lines, for the same reason. You either move it by sea, or you
don't move it.
--
[email protected] (Simon Brooke)
http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
;; Let's have a moment of silence for all those Americans who are stuck
;; in traffic on their way to the gym to ride the stationary bicycle.
;; Rep. Earl Blumenauer (Dem, OR)
