Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
It hasn't. 95% of worldwide hydrogen comes from natural gas.
|
That still makes zero sense. As I said before, it makes as much sense as saying all electicity comes from coal.
Hydrogen stations in California have to dispense at least 40% of their hydrogen from renewable sources. And of those stations, currently both FirstElement and Equilon are procuring 100% renewable hydrogen for their existing 28 open retail stations. So if you buy a Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicle, like the Toyota Mirai, and live near a FirstElement or Equilon station, your hydrogen will be 100% renewable. And that's available today, right now.
Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
Pretty sure I understand you; that we should embrace much less efficient technology and become less prosperous for the greater good of reducing CO2 emissions.
I'm saying that just because something can technically be done doesn't mean it's the superior method. Things are the way they are because better alternatives haven't been discovered.
|
Everyone's idea of superior is different. No one has to embrace what others think is superior.
Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
We're in agreement here. Liberty means freedom to decide what's best for oneself. Forcing me to pay for Paul's solar panels is the opposite of liberty though.
|
I suppose. But that also works the other way around. I'm forced to pay for coal fired power plants I may not want.
Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5
Right, which is why the hydrogen Mirai has sold a few thousand examples.
Obviously progress requires change, but most new ideas are terrible. I'm not saying everything new is a failure, just the vast majority. After enough time, it becomes more obvious which of the new things has more potential.
H2 looks pretty dead from my understanding. Even with super cheap H2 from natural gas, it isn't widely adopted for transportation. How much less popular would it be if the fuel came from more expensive renewables?
|
Agreed that it looks that way. And I have no idea if Hydrogen will ever take off or not. On the other hand, as long as there's growth there's a chance it might. There are more hydrogen fuel cell cars on the road now than ever before. And although that growth may currently be artificial, possible only through grants and subsidies and the like, that doesn't necessarily mean it isn't getting slowly closer to becoming a selfsuficient profitable industry. The same can be said of EV's. And although EV's are still very expensive, many experts think they could actually become cheaper than ICEV's within the next decade.
That's the problem with numbers. Things can start very slowly, seemingly dead for quite some time, and then suddenly hit a growth spurt.
When GM's EV1 and several other California EV compliance cars were killed off back in 2004 I thought EV's were dead, never to become a thing ever again. Then companies like Tesla, Zap, Zenn and Aptera popped up and Nissan came out with the Leaf and GM with the Volt. And even though Aptera folded, Zap and Zenn disapeared, GM stopped making the Volt, Tesla always seemed to be holding on by a thread, and Nissan made really crappy batteries, now several companies are wanting to get in on a piece of the EV pie. So maybe the EV didn't die after all.
Could the same eventually happen with hydrogen? I don't know. But I'm not going to shout out to the world that another technology is dead again because you just never know when it might spring to life, especially when it still has benefits to offer over other technologies.