While not 100% a flat faced lie, this is intentionally misleading.
All energy production is heavily subsidised by the state, but of all methods of producing electricity as of Jan 23 2022, renewables are the cheapest.
Issues with storage, human rights, environmental impact, are a mixture of lies and red herring. How many human / environmental tragedies resulted from fossil fuel extraction?
People against battery storage don't actually care about that but they know that you do. "The card says moops"
That's not an honest assessment, because the major renewables are either geographically limited, or their production fluctuates heavily. To compare them against fossil or nuclear, we'd need to factor in the cost of the buffers, which completely changes the equation. If buffers + renewables were still cheaper, everybody would already be doing that and nothing else. People whose beliefs are challenged in this way tend to resort to conspiracy theories surrounding the fossil fuel lobby (disregarding the fact that renewables have a big lobby too).
> How many human / environmental tragedies resulted from fossil fuel extraction?
My point is purely economical.
> People against battery storage don't actually care about that but they know that you do.
I'm not against battery storage, but simple back of the envelope calculations show that production capacity is orders of magnitude away from solving just part of the problem (stabilizing the grid). Moreover, batteries do not last forever. It may well be the case that a combination of natural gas and renewables is the most effective option even from an CO2 perspective, especially if we have a way to turn surplus energy into negative CO2. Hydrogen happens to fit into that scheme, because natural gas plants can easily be converted to hydrogen plants. Then again, maybe there's a breakthrough in battery technology instead. You can't predict these things, it's therefore unwise to dismiss alternatives that don't check all the boxes of solarpunk fiction.
> The report outlines three key areas where the government’s strategy is severely flawed:
1) The selection of low-priority applications;
2) Prioritisation of fossil-fuel-based grey and blue hydrogen; and
3) The lack of focus on domestic green hydrogen production, leaving Japan lagging behind other nations.
If you could say a little more about this, I'd appreciate it. Sanyo (Panasonic) and Murata Manufacturing (Sony) still produce top quality Li-ion cells, among the best there are, and the best NiMH cells in the world are still made only by FDK Corporation.
Conveniently, a hydrogen fuel cell in a car replicates almost of that. The fuel cell is a hot, complex finicky source of power that needs maintenance and sophisticated manufacturing to create. Storing the hydrogen itself is very tricky as it tends to eat metals. It still needs normal brakes.
You can see why the CEO's of Japanese car makers could allow themselves to be deluded about how much better fuel cell technology is than EV tech. EV tech is just a battery, an electric motor and regenerating braking. This is technology from a hundred years ago and needs very little regular maintenance other than tires, a wall socket and wiper fluid.
"No maintainence" EV cars are just platforms for subscriptions.
Hydrogen vs battery isn't about farming dollars and cents, that can be done other ways.
I have not looked too deeply into Hydrogen myself, but even this [0] fairly critical post classes longterm storage as a B (scale A: very good, G: absurd). Even though there is other alternatives that are mentioned.
[0] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/clean-hydrogen-ladder-v40-mic...
Tropical solar farms synthesizing ammonia for export to high latitudes will be.
For example, renewables right now rely heavily on quick-to-dispatch gas plants - and that's fine as a stepping stone to a carbon-free future. Though the plan fo eliminating it is still vapourware - maybe better batteries, maybe larger grids, maybe something else.
But creating a hydrogen economy that somewhat relies on fossil fuels, with a clear pathway to eliminating the fossil fuel component? Anathema!
I have nothing at all against renewables and batteries, it sounds neat but remains incomplete here and now. But until it's clear it can replace all our uses of energy, I remain baffled by people who would like to shoot down any potential different path to that same goal.
1. That particular approaches don't work is irrelevant. TFA focuses on a particular Japanese policy, which may or may not be misguided. The article is light on discussion, but let's take it at face value. Should we say wind+solar is stupid because Germany is currently in an energy mess? I don't think so.
2. I don't think it's dumb at all to experiment with various synthetic fuels via fossil fuels initially. With both hydrogen and battery storage, the real devil is in the details, in particular in seasonal storage. If we can make battery, or hydrogen, or ammonia economies work, then we know how to produce things, and thanks to cheap intermittent renewables we can do it. Frankly, efficiency hardly matters at this point. If, as predicted by renewables evangelists, energy will be almost free soon, storage efficiency matters not. All that will matter is long term storage cost, an open question for any approach.
3. Regardless, my comment is aimed mostly at other comments. "Duh everyone knows batteries are better", "hydrogen is a dead end".
The part of my comment you tacitly ignored is that burning fossil fuels is somehow ok en route to renewables+batteries without a viable concrete plans on how to decarbonize fully, but not for other synthetic fuels such as hydrogen.
> For the past two years, FH2R has consistently been ranked as one of the world’s largest projects of its kind. According to project participants, FH2R uses a 20-MW solar PV array built on a 180,000-square-meter site along with grid electricity to power a single-stack 10-MW-class electrolyzer. Its developers say it can produce, store, and supply up to 1,200 Nm 3 /hr of hydrogen at rated power operation.
This is a "its not completely there yet but this is where its trying to go."
> There is a “common understanding worldwide that hydrogen should be limited to applications where it would be difficult to achieve decarbonisation with other methods”, says the report by the Tokyo-based non-profit think-tank Renewable Energy Institute (REI), but Japan has instead laid out a vision of a “hydrogen society where hydrogen is used in every sector”, while promoting and subsidising the use of highly polluting grey H2.
The "save the planet" bunch are unsurprisingly not fans of plans that don't "save the planet".
edit to add: batteries are now at the point where a new pumped hydro scheme from scratch (i.e. no pre-existing dam) would be challenged to be a viable business case versus spending the same amount on renewables and batteries, even if you have a suitable geographic site for the water.