Toyota is moving and shaking on Hydrogen: having reached up the skirt of various media outlets two weeks ago, after committing to put a fairly small electrolyser connected to a glorified garden tap on the roof of its old car factory in Altona, in south-eastern Shitsville.
It’s a $4 million spend, allegedly, augmented by $3 million from another group of ace clean energy bullshitters, the Australian Renewable Energy Association, or ARENA. Pro Tip there: get a new branding consultant, because meaningless acronyms erode credibility. Just saying.
Toyota Australia President and CEO, Matt Callachor (11.5-12.1 out of a possible 10 as a bullshitter in my view) is reported to have said:
Right now, the biggest factor to the success of hydrogen being widely available is the lack of infrastructure. The sooner we move to a zero emissions society, the better, and Toyota is committed to making this a reality. - Matt Callachor
Let me stop you right there, Big Cheese of Toyota Oz. How, exactly, does the sale of 14,000 V8 diesel LandCruiser 200s, and 19,000 big belching Prados fit into this alleged zero emissions reality commitment of yours? Riddle me that, you greenwashing bullshitter. Personal opinion. How can you even say that with a straight face?
Also, inconveniently, as a point of fact, the biggest factor to the success of hydrogen, in the context of achieving this so-called commitment to a zero emissions society, is how friggin’ filthy hydrogen gas actually is to produce.
And I say this because an engineer and (personal opinion) Toyota Australia’s CEO is a corporate wonk whose main mission is to sell cars, not be a green evangelist. Because those two assignments (selling Landcruisers and green evangelism) are mutually exclusive engagements, in the real world.
So let’s get a few things straight: Hydrogen is manufactured as an industrial product. They use it in the manufacture of glass for flat screens, and for sintering metallic parts together. It’s also a common fertilizer base, when you mix it with nitrogen. They use it in textiles and plastic and foam.
And, liquefied (which is hard to do) it’s not a bad rocket fuel.
The point here is: you typically use hydrogen because you need hydrogen for its chemical properties. So you make hydrogen because you specifically need hydrogen. That’s not the approach when you need fuel. You make fuel because you need energy.
Ninety-six per cent of the world’s hydrogen is manufactured from hydrocarbons. Ninety-six. And those hydrocarbons on the input side are simply better fuels than hydrogen.
They take - say - methane, pump in a bunch of energy, decompose it in superheated steam and collect the hydrogen. And they throw away tonnes of CO2 as waste - because CO2 is the other salient output of the conventional hydrogen production process.
A lot of people gloss over this, conveniently. Claire Johnson, the CEO of Hydrogen Mobility Australia - not sleeping with Origin Energy; we’re just good friends - is reported to have said, in relation to the Toyota hydrogen announcement:
“[We] need governments to come on board and support the growth of zero emission vehicles in Australia, including introducing vehicle emissions regulation and coordinating infrastructure - Claire Johnson
Zero emissions? Really? The problem with conventional hydrogen production, in the context of transport, is … well, there are two problems:
Number one: You’re emitting a shitload of CO2. So they’re hardly zero emissions vehicles if scaled up to the extent that there are hundreds of thousands of hydrogen vehicles actually on the road.
CO2 is not not coming out of the tailpipes, but it is certainly erupting from the hydrogen factory. It’s intrinsic to the process and cannot be subverted. Despite the press releases from greenwashing hydrogen arseholes.
Number two: The second law of thermodynamics. However much energy you start with in your methane and other inputs going into the hydrogen factory, you get less in the hydrogen you produce. This cannot be subverted either.
The upshot of this is, of course, that you would be better off just burning the fucking methane in the cars. Because the ‘applied science/engineering’ application of the second law is: He who uses the fewest processes to get the end result wins.
And by ‘wins’ I mean ‘loses the least energy’. Steam reforming of methane - with all the possible industro-efficiency tweaks - means losing about 30 per cent of the energy on the way through.
