Hydrogen fuel cell in the $70k Toyota Mirai make use of $15 per gallon gasoline equivalent high pressure brown hydrogen made by the cheapest method of stream reforming natural gas. So why are these fueling stations so expensive / sounds like a business insider video on YouTube eh? Do the costs of run-away climate change justify funding the decarbonization technologies now?
Have you ever seen what it takes to make a 15,000 PSI hydrogen refueling station to refill hydrogen fuel cell electric vehicles like the Honda Clarity or Toyota Mirai ? In all seriousness they cost as much as VSMR or shipping container sized fission reactors made in medium volume series production. Speaking of which, since that has not been done yet, if a consortium developed a standard hydrogen fueling station, & then manufactured them with commercial partners, using volume production cost reduction techniques like Glock CNC's parts for their exceptional handguns, then the cost of these hydrogen fueling stations could be radically reduced.
Custom Made Low Volume Aerospace Costs
The expensive H2 fueling stations suffer from one-off custom designs & certifications & complex costly assembly & building techniques. Partly because hydrogen a very hard gas to contain without it sneaking its way through metals, making the metals brittle over time. Special expensive metal alloys & polymer seals & sealing liners & ion rejection charging can be used to keep H2 bottled up - storing it as a cryogenic liquid LH2 already a mature technology for aerospace, but energetically electrically costly, even though the cryocoolers used make use of the most efficient Stirling engines to pump heat away to make the extreme cold temperatures on the cold side to condense H2 gas into a liquid. That took a technological race during the industrial revolution to achieve, a very interesting history story in its own right, the competition to liquify hydrogen gas ///
Electric Vehicle Charging Tough Competition
A home or business L2 charger or L3 charger for electric vehicles so much less expensive & many EV's like the Nissan LEAF+ are not luxury cars & have been made by the hundreds of thousands. Sure, a small dent in the global vehicle manufacturing system where millions of passenger vehicles are made annually. Today, having regular people driving EV's more of a scaled proof of concept that electrifying transportation to decarbonize a real feasible possibility to enable humans to continue thriving without burning carbon as much & eventually phasing out combustion all together. Sounds odd given that fire was what game mankind its biggest advantage over other animals on Earth a long time ago.
Enabling Cheaper H2 Filling Stations
1. Optimize reference standard design with onsite water electrolysis & PV panels to energize it (roof)
2. Chinese style cost optimization & medium volume or high-volume production of components with Swiss analog watch movement precision.
3. Automated orbital welding of pipes & sub-assemblies to ensure weld qualities, or weld free high strength pipe joins.
4. Rebate program with automakers to fund initial volume scaling + government carbon credits, taxing carbon to pay for decarbonization technology development & commercialization / we owe it to future generations to not make climate change worse faster //
5. Working with the ESA & NASA & other international sciences in a development consortium to fully optimize a common reference design, like they did with gas station pumps & tanks, propane pumps & tanks, natural gas pumps & tanks, industrial gas pumps & tanks, Airgas & Linde - bring in commercial partners & industrial oil company scientists & pool the minds of brilliant people to make an exceptional low cost high performance standardized H2 filling station reference, just like NVIDIA does with its graphics cards & then let several manufactures in different countries build their own flavors with the core IP from the open source designs & plans given for free to help improve the technology.
Transportation energy decarbonization needed to help human society on Earth to stop releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, since dumping that many gigatons of a gas that forms acidic carbonic acid when it mixes with water in clouds + NOX & SOX released when coal, oil & natural gas are burned as trace emissions that add up because of the scale of combustion energy worldwide for billions of people.
Nuclear electric transportation + intermittent renewables like solar & wind enhanced with energy storage technologies to improve the respective capacity factor & load following, can energize electric transportation like electric & maglev trains, electric cars & trucks & busses, electric bicycles, scooters & motorcycles, electric boats & ships & maybe even passenger electric aircraft when batteries with radically improved energy density & lower mass become commercially available, like aluminum air batteries or sodium air batteries or titanium air batteries or lithium air batteries, or sulfur air batteries // there are actually hundreds of emergent battery technologies under development right now, that when applied will make even more compelling electric vehicles than the already exceptional Tesla Model 3.
Ask yourself, to move 400 lbs. of people (2 big American adults) + 250 lbs of groceries (big Costco run) do we really need a 5,000 lb. metal box with wheels & a wasteful inefficient gasoline or diesel engine? I do not think cars are good transportation model for the future because they are too resource intensive to make when carbon energy dominates world energy systems today.
Maybe in the future, when electricity made so cheap & abundant & clean that we can afford to be a little more liberal with energy for each person, but today with energy constraints from finite fossil fuels, we need to learn to live with less, how to thrive as people with lower energy levels, to be intelligently efficient, sleek, lean, fit, agile, stronger & smarter, living in the best ways possible with the best technologies available to upgrade everything & recycling systems to intelligently make use of metal, glass, plastic & paper instead of throwing valuable materials into a trash dump, especially recovering rare earth & previous metals from smart devices, magnets & other chipsets & logics boards & electronics.
** The next section copied from the UN website & pasted here so you can read it along with this posting easily.
Climate Change According to the United Nations
"Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. These shifts may be natural, such as through variations in the solar cycle. But since the 1800s, human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas.Burning fossil fuels generates greenhouse gas emissions that act like a blanket wrapped around the Earth, trapping the sun’s heat and raising temperatures.
Examples of greenhouse gas emissions that are causing climate change include carbon dioxide and methane. These come from using gasoline for driving a car or coal for heating a building, for example. Clearing land and forests can also release carbon dioxide. Landfills for garbage are a major source of methane emissions. Energy, industry, transport, buildings, agriculture and land use are among the main emitters."
"Greenhouse gas concentrations are at their highest levels in 2 million years"
"And emissions continue to rise. As a result, the Earth is now about 1.1°C warmer than it was in the late 1800s. The last decade (2011-2020) was the warmest on record.
Many people think climate change mainly means warmer temperatures. But temperature rise is only the beginning of the story. Because the Earth is a system, where everything is connected, changes in one area can influence changes in all others.
The consequences of climate change now include, among others, intense droughts, water scarcity, severe fires, rising sea levels, flooding, melting polar ice, catastrophic storms and declining biodiversity."
"People are experiencing climate change in diverse ways"
"Climate change can affect our health, ability to grow food, housing, safety and work. Some of us are already more vulnerable to climate impacts, such as people living in small island nations and other developing countries. Conditions like sea-level rise and saltwater intrusion have advanced to the point where whole communities have had to relocate, and protracted droughts are putting people at risk of famine. In the future, the number of “climate refugees” is expected to rise."
Every increase in global warming matters"
"In a 2018 UN report, thousands of scientists and government reviewers agreed that limiting global temperature rise to no more than 1.5°C would help us avoid the worst climate impacts and maintain a livable climate. Yet based on current national climate plans, global warming will reach 2.7°C by the end of the century.
The emissions that cause climate change come from every part of the world and affect everyone, but some countries produce much more than others. The 100 least-emitting countries generate 3 per cent of total emissions. The 10 countries with the largest emissions contribute 68 per cent. Everyone must take climate action, but people and countries creating more of the problem have a greater responsibility to act first."
"We face a huge challenge but already know many solutions"
"Many climate change solutions can deliver economic benefits while improving our lives and protecting the environment. We also have global agreements to guide progress, such as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement. Three broad categories of action are: cutting emissions, adapting to climate impacts and financing required adjustments."
"Switching energy systems from fossil fuels to renewables like solar or wind will reduce the emissions driving climate change. But we have to start right now. While a growing coalition of countries is committing to net zero emissions by 2050, about half of emissions cuts must be in place by 2030 to keep warming below 1.5°C. Fossil fuel production must decline by roughly 6 per cent per year between 2020 and 2030."
"Adapting to climate consequences protects people, homes, businesses, livelihoods, infrastructure and natural ecosystems. It covers current impacts and those likely in the future. Adaptation will be required everywhere but must be prioritized now for the most vulnerable people with the fewest resources to cope with climate hazards. The rate of return can be high. Early warning systems for disasters, for instance, save lives and property, and can deliver benefits up to 10 times the initial cost."
"We can pay the bill now, or pay dearly in the future"
Climate action requires significant financial investments by governments and businesses. But climate inaction is vastly more expensive. One critical step is for industrialized countries to fulfil their commitment to provide $100 billion a year to developing countries so they can adapt and move towards greener economies.
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