Shell has quietly closed down all its hydrogen filling stations in the UK

submitted by [deleted] from hydrogeninsight.com

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[–][deleted] 3 insightful - 3 fun3 insightful - 2 fun4 insightful - 3 fun -  (4 children)

Hydrogen makes alot of sense really it's just massively expensive when compared to simply pumping oil out of the ground.

It isn't. It would require rather large infrastructure investments, but a lot of hydrogen can be produced for next to nothing if it is in place. Solar and wind have very uneven power delivery, resulting in excess power sometimes that is wasted, and at other times, not enough, and coal or natural gas needs to burned to produce the energy. The excess power from peak solar/wind times can be used to apply current to regular water and split off the hydrogen gas and store it at no material cost other than the storage infrastructure and retooling all of our internal combustion engines to run hydrogen, but the source of the hydrogen itself is just water and another renewable electricity

[–]jet199 5 insightful - 4 fun5 insightful - 3 fun6 insightful - 4 fun -  (1 child)

Frankly if the government don't want to have a windfall tax for the profits made from the super high oil and gas prices then why not make Shell and others build some more infrastructure now instead.

[–][deleted] 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

I agree that would be the sensible solution

[–]Alienhunter 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Hydrogen itself is cheap as fuck yes because it's literally everywhere. Producing hydrogen fuel cells you can use in a car isn't cheap, and is currently more expensive than using regular gasoline.

Eventually gasoline will run out due to limited supply, centuries in the future, by which point the higher cost of fuel cells will be an irrelevant detail. They will also get cheaper as time goes on.

You can also just make gasoline from ethenol if you want. But again why bother when it's cheaper to pump from the ground.

I'm still waiting for a wind powered car.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Producing hydrogen fuel cells you can use in a car isn't cheap, and is currently more expensive than using regular gasoline.

I don't disagree, but HFC's arent the only option, hydrogen can be burned in a conventional internal combustion engine with no CO2 emissions