China's lead in Green Hydrogen

[OKIsItJustMe]

Presently, most hydrogen production in China (as in the rest of the world) “reforms" “Natural Gas”/Methane. (There are other methods; this is the primary one. We have been doing it for about a century now, and to date it is the least expensive/most profitable way to produce hydrogen.)

This is called “Gray” or “Grey Hydrogen”because “Greenhouse Gases” are produced at the same time. In theory, the GHG's could easily be captured and sequestered. Typically, they are not (since that means more expense and fewer profits.)

Importantly, as natural gas prices rise, producing hydrogen through steam reforming of natural gas becomes more expensive, making other methods of hydrogen production (i.e. “Green Hydrogen”) more cost competitive.

The key to "Green Hydrogen” at this point is electrolysis of water. Electricity from clean sources is used to split H₂O into H₂ and O₂. (Many of us saw this demonstrated in a high school science class.)
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=electrolysis+of+water&ia=videos&iax=videos

There are other possible ways to produce “Green Hydrogen,” but, for now, electrolysis is far-and-away the chief method.

In October of 2024, the International Energy Agency published their Global Hydrogen Review 2024. Since it was published in October of 2024, figures for 2024 are estimates. The following figures are taken from that publication.

In this first figure we can see the phenomenal growth of electrolyzer capacity just since 2020:


We can also see that China’s capacity in 2024 was greater than all the rest of the world combined. In a distant 2nd place was the whole of Europe, followed by the US.

To increase electrolyzer capacity requires manufacturing (or purchasing) electrolyzers. Here too, China has the lead, although the US and Europe are not as far behind.

[NNadir]

1. Why should the rest of the world worry about "being behind" in wasting energy?

There isn't a "race" to be stupid, is there?

The "green hydroggen" fraud is now half a century old, and for the whole time the laws of thermodynamics have applied, which means hydrogen is inherently dirty.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. I don't believe the world should worry about China's lead.

I thought it best to document it.

According to the World Nuclear Association:
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/hydrogen-production-and-uses

Hydrogen Production and Uses
UPDATED FRIDAY, 17 MAY 2024

• Hydrogen is increasingly seen as a key component of future energy systems if it can be made without carbon dioxide emissions.


• It is starting to be used as a transport fuel, despite the need for high-pressure containment.


• …


• Hydrogen also has future application as industrial-scale replacement for coke in steelmaking and other metallurgical processes.


• …


• The energy demand for hydrogen production could exceed that for electricity production today.

…

But, then, they’re all a bunch of “anti-nukes.” What do they know?

[NNadir]

3. Thanks for the "Appeal to Authority" fallacy.

In the 50 years of ongoing hydrogen bullshit, it's become an element of public mythology, stupid public mythology, that hydrogen is a clean fuel.

Recently in a Nature Journal, a new one, Nature Clean Technology, Vol 1 page 351-371 there is a review of the subject of which the abstract begins with the statement "Hydrogen has been promoted as a revolutionary fuel for 50 years, yet usage is confined to oil refining and fertilizer production."

One of the authors is from the Berkeley Department of Nuclear Energy.

I don't have any use whatsoever for the reading level of antinukes, but the open sourced paper lists all of the standard objections to this scam.

The nuclear industry is cleaner and safer than any energy technology, but until it has eliminated the use of dangerous fossil fuels, wasting it for stupid bourgeois fantasies - dangerous fantasies given hydrogen's horrible physical properties noted in the article - it is stupid to waste clean energy to make it.

Happily for the antinike cults, the authors demonstrate the requisite genuflection toward the useless so called "renewable energy," industry as if it were a serios thing, something it isn't. Still, the authors suggest that the only reason to make hydrogen will be for the reasons it's already used, fertilizer and oil refining.

These points are made in the list of "key points" that precedes the text.

Personally I would like to see oil refining phased out to replace petroleum with methanol and DME but given my general perception of the power of ignorance i doubt that will happen in my life time.

In any case, I consider myself well enough informed to reject "appeal to authority" arguments. The fossil fuel industry has been spectacularly successful at marketing the hydrogen made from their products overwhelmingly, as "green." We never run out of fools to buy it, going way back to the assshole Amory Lovins in the 20th century. There are wiser uses for nuclear energy than representing it as suitable for a stupid idea built around hydrogen as a consumer product.

The authors note that the doubling of the so called "renewable energy" scam would be required just to make enough hydrogen for its current use, oil refining and ammonia synthesis, leaving nothing for anything else.

I do not control the marketing of the nuclear industry but I understand the use of such marketing by that maligned industry to get buy ins from credulous fools, who have been handing out hydrogen hype and carrying on insipidly about a putative "hydrogen economy," for half a century. In that period the concentration of the dangerous fossil fuel waste in the planetary atmosphere has risen by around 100 ppm to over 430 ppm. I guess "renewable energy" didn't save us any more than "green hydrogen" lies saved us.

The reality remains that the laws of thermodynamics still hold, which means storing energy wastes it. This is true for batteries as well as hydrogen. All these absurd bullshit fantasies rely on the publicly embraced belief that electricity is "green." It isn't, but the idea of marketing as such has worked spectacularly, as well as cigarette ads got people to smoke in the 1940s and 1950s.

Have a nice evening.

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. You use "Appeal to Authority" all of the time

Strictly speaking, it is an “informal fallacy.” Just because an “authority” believes something, does not logically prove that it is true. However, citing an authority on a matter makes much more sense than someone who is totally ignorant of the subject.

You like it, when it appears to support your position. For example, you like to (selectively) cite
IEA World Energy Outlook 2024
Table A.1a: World energy supply Page 296.

However, you do not cite Table A.3a

IEA World Energy Outlook 2024
Table A.3a: World electricity sector Page 299.


Why is that? (Here, I have focused on numbers of interest.)

[NNadir]

5. One cannot excuse the failure of so called "renewable energy" by hiding behind hydro

This is of course not true if anyone in the antinuke cults have identified new major river systems to kill, not that is a single fucking antinuke on this planet who gives a rat's ass about wilderness. This is why they cheered so lould for cheering for well over a thousand square miles of once pristine desert ecoststems rendered into industrial parks to make for wind turbines in California. All the wind turbines in California seldom of ever produce as much energy as The two Diablo Canyon reactors produce on a footprint of around 12 acres surrounded by beautiful untouched Chapparal.

Hydroelectricity, which the founder of the Sierra Club, John Muir, founded his club to oppose, at Hetch Hetchy should have been a warning that the "renewable energy" scammers were trying to sell us, the industrialization of vast ecosystems for no reason.

I note of course that, as usual, there is no attack on unabated fossil fuels. To this benighted set, their ignorance of engineering, thermodyamics and ethics on full display, don't care if we burn more fossil fuels to indulge their moronic fantasies about "green hydrogen." Nor do I express any surprise that the very people who don't give a rat's ass about fossil fuels take any responsibility for the four decades they railed against nuclear energy, doing all they could to destroy its manufacturing infrastructure, now want to complain that it grows "too slow." As I always say, arsonists complaining about forest fires...

It's the amusing when antinukes say they want to "focus" on something given their whole morally criminal mindset is based on selective attention.

By the way the Nature Journal Reference relating to a reflection on the 50 year history of the hydrogen bullshit that rears it's ugly head every decade or so was incorrectly cited, not that antinukes give a shit about going too far from their chanted dogma. I was writing on my phone, as i am now, and as a old guy with fat fingers I don't do well without a mouse. I don't have the fast thumbs of young people.

I might post from the full paper over the weekend, with the correct link. It won't of course prevent the fossil fuel industry from coming here to post slick ads to greenwash fossil fuels as hydrogen, nor will it prevent the gullible poorly educated acolytes from buying into the scam. It will however point out what might be useful for hydrogen which essentially is the purposes it's used now, the manufacturer of carbon based fuels (generally oil refining) and fertilizer.

It will be a separate post. Although I enjoy confronting antinukes on some level to obviate what they're really all about, it can get boring.

It would be fun though to get a list from them about what remaining rivers they think should be destroyed so we can all wax romantic about the hydrogen nirvana. Some such remaining free rivers in Norway were just discussed in such a light. Some people object as I would. I call those who so object "environmentalists," in the same sense I consider myself , a "John Muir" environmentalist."

Keep those bulldozers warmed up.

[OKIsItJustMe]

6. "Wind" rivals "nuclear" by itself

But I suppose that escaped your notice.

[NNadir]

9. No, what I noticed was the land and material cost and the moral cost to NEARLY equal one physically small plant.

I'm not an airhead saying "rivals." I look at the fucking cost of that failed pixilated garbage to the future of humanity

Keep those bulldozers running and keep the gas fracking going.

[OKIsItJustMe]

7. Figure 1.14

Last edited Fri Jun 13, 2025, 04:45 PM - Edit history (1)

IEA World Energy Outlook 2024
Figure 1.14: Global installed clean power capacity and electricity generation, 2010-2023 Page 46.

[NNadir]

10. Um, um, um, for decades, while setting the planet to flames, antinukes have been unable to distinguish peak...

...capacity with capacity utilization. It's among their many distortions and lies.

One thousand "Megawatts" of wind junk spread over vast areas of land that operates at 30% capacity utilization is NOT equal to a 1000 MW nuclear plant that operates close to 100% capacity utilization.

The 1000 "Megawatt" wind plant is the equivalent of a 300 MW gas plant, and a 1000 MW gas plant (in Germany a coal plant) is required to remain available to back the useless crap up.

In high school, they teach, or should teach, in a high school physics class the distinction between the unit the "Watt" which is a derived unit equal to one Joule/second and a Joule. The energy produced by any device is equal to the time it operates, which in the case of wind junk is considerably less than 50% - in Denmark 25% - depending on where that soon to rot crap is located, and the power output. P*t = E.

A "Joule" is a unit of energy.

There are some pretty good community colleges around. We could perhaps suppress this kind of ignorance if antinukes went to one to take an elementary physics course. If they were to do so, they might be disabused for cheering insipidly for the destruction of the planetary atmosphere.

[OKIsItJustMe]

12. "their many distortions and lies"

So, let me get this straight. You’re saying the IEA is not to be trusted? — I suppose they’re all a bunch of anti-nukes as well. Does that mean you will stop citing their work?

First: Notice that there are two graphs, one charts “Installed capacity” the second charts "Electricity generation”
Second: Let’s be clear, “Nuclear” “Installed capacity” is represented by a yellow “flat line” while the various “renewable” have growth curves, leading to corresponding increases in "Electricity generation”

[NNadir]

15. I'm saying the there are dunderheads who can't INTERPRET data. I trust DATA from the EIA, not the soothsaying...

...but then again, I'm literate and can tell the difference between a Watt and a Joule and know that the latter refers to time as in, for energy systems, available time.

If one does not know how to interpret DATA, then one is not competent to remark on how other people who do think interpret it.

The data that every fucking antinuke I've ever met can't get through their heads is that the STATUS QUO, throwing trillions of dollars at so called "renewable energy" isn't doing a fucking thing to reduce the use of fossil fuels.

Of course, antinukes are not interested in fossil fuels, the destruction of the planetary atmosphere or any such thing. It's why they attack infinitely expandable, energy dense, climate gas minimized energy, nuclear energy and then claim "success" because they've led a crowd of lemmings off a cliff.

Guess what? A fucking burning planet isn't "success." It's a fucking disaster.

Why is that so hard to understand?

What part of this picture that I repeat over and over and over and over and over is difficult to comprehend?



What part of this graphic and these numbers is incomprehensible?

The amount of money spent on so called "renewable energy" since 2015 is 4.12 trillion dollars, compared to 377 billion dollars spent on nuclear energy, mostly to keep vapid cultists spouting fear and ignorance from destroying the valuable nuclear infrastructure.



IEA overview, Energy Investments.

The graphic is interactive at the link; one can calculate overall expenditures on what the IEA dubiously calls "clean energy."

Does it take all that many brains to put these two graphics together to consider their relationship?

Got it?

No?

I didn't think so.

My country's falling into fascism; my planet's burning up; it rained like hell at today's protests, and personally, my cat's dying and still I hear this fucking nonsense. I don't really fucking need it.

For 22 years here, antinuke after antinuke after antinuke comes here oblivious to the burning world, calling it it a "grand success."

Again, I don't fucking need it. I'm sick of anti-intellectualism, anti-science and its results.

It's time to expand my ignore list.

[NNadir]

11. Oh, and do tell us all how all that installed wind and solar junk is doing at addressing extreme global heating.

Problem solved, or are we just pissing in the wind while enabling the growth of the use fossil fuels from vast to bigger than last year's vast?

Or was it just a useless idea to install so called "renewable energy" to do nothing? What is popular is often not wise. In fact, what is popular is often fucking stupid. There are some children - including those screwed for their lifetimes by antinukes - who can tell that.

I know that antinukes couldn't care less about this, but here's the state of affairs reported as of this morning at the Mauna Loa CO₂ observatory as of yesterday morning:

Week beginning on June 01, 2025: 429.96 ppm
Weekly value from 1 year ago: 427.20 ppm
Weekly value from 10 years ago: 403.37 ppm
Last updated: June 13, 2025

Weekly average CO2 at Mauna Loa (Accessed 6/14/25, 7:30 AM.)

Let me guess. This makes the antinuke community happy? No reason to change course? We're doing great?

No sense of decency, not a fucking trace of one.

[OKIsItJustMe]

13. It's addressing it about as well as nuclear power is

Well, better, since it's increasing.

Sadly, demand is increasing even faster.

https://www.iea.org/news/growth-in-global-energy-demand-surged-in-2024-to-almost-twice-its-recent-average

Growth in global energy demand surged in 2024 to almost twice its recent average

News
24 March 2025

Even demand in advanced economies is rising again after years of declines, with rapid growth of electricity worldwide driving up consumption of renewables, gas, coal and nuclear

Global energy demand grew at a faster-than-average pace in 2024 as the consumption of electricity rose around the world – with increased supply of renewables and natural gas covering the majority of additional energy needs, according to a new IEA report.

The latest edition of the IEA’s Global Energy Review, published today, is the first global assessment of 2024 trends across the energy sector. Based on the most recent data, it covers energy demand, supply, the uptake of new energy technologies and energy-related carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.

The report finds that global energy demand rose by 2.2% last year – lower than GDP growth of 3.2% but considerably faster than the average annual demand increase of 1.3% between 2013 and 2023. Emerging and developing economies accounted for over 80% of the increase in global energy demand in 2024. This was despite slower growth in China, where energy consumption rose by less than 3%, half its 2023 rate and well below the country’s recent annual average. After several years of declines, advanced economies saw a return to growth, with their energy demand increasing by almost 1% in aggregate.

…

[thought crime]

8. Floating Offshore Wind to Hydrogen

In China, an offshore wind turbine has successfully generated hydrogen without having to first desalinate sea water.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49639-6

[OKIsItJustMe]

14. Yes! This is a technology that's been in development.

https://www.rmit.edu.au/news/all-news/2023/feb/hydrogen-seawater

How to make hydrogen straight from seawater – no desalination required

Researchers have developed a cheaper and more energy-efficient way to make hydrogen directly from seawater, in a critical step towards a truly viable green hydrogen industry.

13 February 2023

The new method from RMIT University researchers splits the seawater directly into hydrogen and oxygen – skipping the need for desalination and its associated cost, energy consumption and carbon emissions.

…

Lead researcher Dr Nasir Mahmood, a Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow at RMIT, said green hydrogen production processes were both costly and relied on fresh or desalinated water.

…

“Our method to produce hydrogen straight from seawater is simple, scaleable and far more cost-effective than any green hydrogen approach currently in the market.

“With further development, we hope this could advance the establishment of a thriving green hydrogen industry in Australia.”

…

China has moved it from the lab into practice.