October 19, 2023

About $7B in USA hydrogen subsidies are in danger of not being spent unless they can reclassify nuclear energy as green. The producers of hydrogen fuels seem to have abandoned the idea that this much hydrogen can be produced through excess solar and wind.

Instead, major hydrogen fuel investors want to be able to use base load from nuclear facilities to produce hydrogen. An expensive prospect given that it is likely that nuclear energy will be needed to meet the electricity needs of the world. Producing hydrogen is less efficient than simply using electricity directly. The only way that green hydrogen makes sense is if it is produced using excess energy from solar and wind systems. The excess energy (when the wind blows at night but no one is using electricity) needs to be stored and hydrogen is one form of a type of battery for this.

However, building nuclear power stations to produce hydrogen instead of providing base load to grids is a rather expensive and odd way to generate a fuel that has questionable large-scale uses.

Hydrogen has been a major part of the supposed mix of oil and gas alternatives for heavy industry. Green hydrogen makes sense for the use in these niche industries (like steel production). However, using hydrogen produced from burning nuclear fuel seems like an odd way of fulfilling this need.

Non-green versions of hydrogen fuel is currently pushed by oil and gas companies as a way to green some of their fuels. Unfortunately, current processes for producing hydrogen from natural gas is much less efficient than just using natural gas directly.