It doesn't matter if the fuel has carbon in it, if the carbon is part of the short-term carbon cycle. Biodiesel, for example, releases no net greenhouse gases even though it has lots of carbon in it.
The dirty secret of hydrogen is that the vast majority of it is made by cracking fossil methane. (My previous comment about combining hydrogen with carbon to make synthetic liquid fuel charitably presupposed it was made the right way, by electrolyzing water with solar power, but most hydrogen production is not like that)

In other words, anybody telling you that hydrogen is better for preventing climate change than biofuels -- despite them containing carbon -- is trying to hoodwink you.

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Ok. Because over here we've had a hydrogen station that's been producing hydrogen at the station itself via electrolysis using electricity from the grid. It's been working fine so far.

I'm gonna have to look into your claim about cracking methane being the way the majority of the hydrogen is created.

[–] grue@lemmy.world 4 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

From https://solaredition.com/green-hydrogen-production-paths/ :

Only "green hydrogen" (4%) is actually good. For the other 96%, it would be better to just use the source hydrocarbon as fuel directly.

In other words, for the most part, the entities pushing hydrogen are mostly engaging in greenwashing bullshit.

See also:

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Ah ok yeah I see what you mean. Thanks for providing that info.

Yeah for sure if it's just as dirty, or worst, there's no point. But, I feel like people forgot what my original comment was. I basically said that if we could find a better way of producing hydrogen, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles could potentially be better than EVs for many reasons. The main advantages being that you get better range and you can refuel in a couple of minutes instead of an hour.

Other than that, if we can't find a way to produce hydrogen in a clean efficient way, of course there's no point in continuing down that road.

This wasn't even a debate about which vehicle type is better, or what fuel is better or any of that. It was just a discussion about the pros and cons of EVs and HFCs.

I don't know why people got so riled up over it. Like you gotta pick a camp and defend it. Are EVs and hydrogen cars that polarising??

[–] grue@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I don't know why people got so riled up over it. Like you gotta pick a camp and defend it. Are EVs and hydrogen cars that polarising??

I think there are two main factors:

Differences of opinion among people legitimately trying to find the best solution (e.g. because they assign different amounts of importance to tradeoffs between batteries vs hydrogen, such as slow charging vs difficult storage).
People pushing particular technologies in bad faith because they're more interested in perpetuating the business model they already have than pivoting to what's best in the long term (e.g. fossil fuels companies greenwashing with "blue" or "grey" hydrogen, BMW wanting to keep making internal-combustion engines, etc.).

Frankly, hydrogen has enough challenges associated with it that it's easy to assume anybody advocating for it falls in the latter group.

The main advantages being that you get better range and you can refuel in a couple of minutes instead of an hour.

I still think biofuels or synthetic liquid hydrocarbon fuels burned in normal internal-combustion engines are better at those things than hydrogen ever will be, while also being much more convenient in terms of reusing the infrastructure and vehicles we already have.

The only way in which hydrogen is really superior is that it emits only water vapor, rather than the traditional pollutants like NO~x~, VOCs, and particulates that ICEs burning even carbon-neutral fuel would continue to emit, but that mostly matters in urban areas where battery EVs beat out hydrogen anyway.

In other words, I just don't think there's any niche where hydrogen is the best solution. Long-haul rural trips are better suited to carbon-neutral bio or synthetic liquid fuels (or, you know, trains), and short urban trips are better suited to battery EVs you can just charge at home (or, you know, bicycles).

[–] cyborganism@lemmy.ca 2 points 6 months ago

+1 for trains.

I wish governments put more effort in public mass transit than subsidizing private automobile manufacturing.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 6 months ago

Long rural trips for cars are fine on electric, as long as there is fast charging on the way. The car takes as long to top up as the human takes to take a break from driving

Trucks, ships, aeroplanes, off roading will need dense fuel. Trains might need fuel, but most of those should be electric