this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2024
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[–] Boomkop3@reddthat.com 100 points 1 year ago (3 children)

To my knowledge, with plenty of carbon emisssions

[–] CobblerScholar@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Is it less than using fossil fuels for power exclusively? If so then it's a step in the right direction. Yes I know it sounds like I'm shilling for BP now but we get lost in the doom spiral so fast we forget we are indeed making progress. We just have to keep their feet to the fire or...erm... solar panel?

[–] Boomkop3@reddthat.com 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unfortunately, no. It's not. However, there is some nuance here. Even though their approach is more polluting, it allows infrastructure down the line such as modern cars to be upgraded to use hydrogen.

The hydrogen factory can then later be replaced by a non-polluting one. Much like how a lot of places switched to electricity while the power was being generated by natural gas. Some places moved to using nuclear later, and poof, carbon neutral.

In the end a transition is easier to divvy up progress with small architecture changes, not small bits of absolute carbon emissions / pollution

[–] Lmaydev@programming.dev 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Boomkop3@reddthat.com 3 points 1 year ago

bp themselves still talks about "if we can decarbonise it's production" (it being hydrogen). They have published in more detail, but they've not made it as easy to find. If you do some searching you can find their approach in more detail tho.

For the rest: knowing an electric device does not care where the electricity came from. You can double check this by seeing if the same smartphone exists all over the planet.

https://www.bp.com/en/global/corporate/what-we-do/hydrogen.html

[–] Rhaedas@kbin.social 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In the spirit of the comic - how is the solar panel made?

[–] nxdefiant@startrek.website 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)
[–] Rhaedas@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Solar panels (PV) degrade over time and use and have to be replaced and disposed of. A better case would be for things like solar furnaces that are simpler, but most of the time solar implies PV panels.

[–] Sorgan71@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

how could hydrogen power possibly produce carbon dioxide

[–] m0darn@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 year ago

Using hydrogen doesn't emit carbon. But the principal way hydrogen is produced is called steam reformation. It's a process that turns methane (CH4) and water (2* H2O) into hydrogen (4* H2) and CO2 (i think, I'm not an expert). So all the carbon get emitted as co2. So it's not better, and there are a bunch of inefficiencies too. (The reformation process itself, and transportation challenges, and leakage). But theoretically, it does centralize the emissions which would make them easier to sequester so there's that.

[–] FiniteBanjo@lemmy.today 5 points 1 year ago

In the USA for example about 99% of commercial Hydrogen is a byproduct of Steam Cracking Petroleum refinement. We have the technology to create hydrogen via other methods, but so far we're not really utilizing them. Still, as a byproduct it's better to use it than to not.

[–] Boomkop3@reddthat.com 2 points 1 year ago

it's the production of the hydrogen that's done improperly. Similar to how electricity doesn't cause emissions, but coal power plants do