Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Power

Oil Giant BP is Killing 18 Hydrogen Projects, Chilling the Nascent Industry (techcrunch.com) 37

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Tucked inside a 32-page earnings report, oil and gas giant BP revealed it was killing 18 early-stage hydrogen projects, a move that could have a chilling effect on the nascent hydrogen industry. The decision, along with the sale of the company's U.S. on-shore wind power operations, will save BP $200 million annually and help boost its bottom line. The hydrogen industry, which has relied on oil and gas companies both financially and through lobbying efforts, is preparing for a grimmer outcome.

BP has been a supporter of hydrogen. The company's venture capital arm has invested in several green hydrogen startups, including Electric Hydrogen and Advanced Ionics. Earlier this year, BP said it would develop "more than 10" hydrogen projects in the U.S., Europe, and Australia. Now, BP is scaling back those plans, saying it'll develop between five and ten projects. The company is keeping quiet about which ones will receive the green light.

Oil Giant BP is Killing 18 Hydrogen Projects, Chilling the Nascent Industry More | Reply

Oil Giant BP is Killing 18 Hydrogen Projects, Chilling the Nascent Industry

Comments Filter:
  • As if BP were the sole source of innovation & development in the hydrogen industry. GEEZ

    • As if BP were the sole source of innovation & development in the hydrogen industry. GEEZ

      Innovation in the hydrogen industry? They keep promising us some and then not delivering it. Seems like every year or so there's a new hydrogen storage technology we are supposed to believe in which turns out to be bullshit. Which is not a surprise, because the hydrogen industry is the oil industry.

      Hydrogen fuel has already been tried in California, the place in the world where it would make the most sense. It turned out not to make any and the number of filling stations has actually contracted since the pr

      • There has been innovation in greenwashing, and some innovative techniques to coax "green" subsidies out of naive (or corrupt, it's hard to tell) governments in Australia. But large-scale "hydrogen power" and "hydrogen energy storage" remain as far way as they did in the 1980s.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        Exactly, hydrogen as transportation fuel just isn't workable.

        It is to difficult to store or to difficult to control/use at the temperatures and pressure where storing it becomes less of a problem. I still think BEVs are fantastically stupid from a fit for use case standpoint, they ONLY make sense because they band-aide all the other dumb automotive choices we have made to this point. Heavy, excessively dangerous, and environmentally destructive to produce. Then H2 power trains come a long and make them look

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Megane ( 129182 )
          It's not even a great fuel for space transportation. It's got great Isp, but not great thrust, and then you have to add equipment to keep it cold enough, and the extra mass makes the extra Isp less useful. As a first stage fuel its lack of thrust is awful without boosters (hello Challenger!), and it needs insulation between the LOX tank to keep it from freezing the oxygen. Methane is second-best, but without all the annoyances of hydrogen. And hydrogen is an asshole to liquefy too.

          • To expand upon this a bit, hydrogen has the best energy density by mass. By volume, it actually has one of the worst. In order to fix this, you either need extreme pressure or extreme low temperature. As you mention, this imposes extra mass in the storage tanks and needs for insulation to keep the O2 from freezing.

            It actually works out that a methane rocket is lighter for a given amount of useful thrust. Methane is easier to obtain, easier to liquify, won't freeze O2 (O2 is more likely to freeze methane

        • As long as there is a generous energy supply to produce it with electrolysis, and a generous water supply, it's a very efficient chemical fuel. But it's not a net source of energy and should not be considered as such.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hey! ( 33014 )

        If you want an example of niche uses for hydrogen, fuel cell powered forklifts are used in very cold refrigerated food warehouses where ICE engines are undesirable and batteries would perform poorly. The hydrogen is made on-site using natural gas steam reformation (so-called "gray hydrogen").

        If you think back twenty-five years, the idea of using hydrogen as a medium to replace transportation fuels appeared to have a lot of merit and certainly was something that would reasonably interest the petroleum indus

  • Ride out into the sunset (Score:3)

    by BishopBerkeley ( 734647 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2024 @02:06PM (#64921771) Journal
    It is the more lucrative option for BP to ride out into the sunset with petroleum. Hydrogen, in the end, will have a far lower margin than the oil produced from their existing oil fields, many of which will produce for decades to come. Plus, there are many grades of hydrogen. Green hydrogen--one that doesn't come from petroleum and doesn't produce like CO2 like gasoline--is very hard to make.

    The disruption will come from venture capital once petroleum gets expensive enough. At $72/bbl (as of now), it's still way too cheap to yield a high margin for green hydrogen.

  • We've seen the market for solar panels and batteries explode over the last decade, and that has led to much lower prices, which in turn increased the explodiness (not a word) of those markets.

    I don't think we've seen anything similar in the world of hydrogen.

  • Good, hydrogen is dumb (Score:4, Informative)

    by GameboyRMH ( 1153867 ) <gameboyrmh.gmail@com> on Tuesday November 05, 2024 @02:18PM (#64921803) Journal

    Hydrogen as a fuel offers the best selection of the worst downsides. High fuel cost and currently almost entirely fossil-sourced like gasoline, slow filling and high up-front vehicle costs like an EV, needs to be stored at incredible pressures and passes through solids while embrittling steel on the way out like...hydrogen. It could only possibly be worse if a spill could kill a whole crowd of people like ammonia or it could cause stubborn self-reigniting fires like a li-ion/li-po battery.

    If you have a process that produces extra hydrogen, the best thing to do with it is convert it to safe, convenient electricity on the spot. The only reason the hydrogen economy concept has stuck around despite being a terrible idea is, again, that currently almost all hydrogen is produced as a fossil fuel byproduct.

    • What are the numbers like for aviation fuel versus battery?

      • If you want energy density from hydrogen you must store it cryogenically, which requires equipment which is heavy and bulky. If you have to use fuel anyway, you might as well use something more like normal jet fuel, which doesn't require that.

        Why ask slashdot about the numbers, surely there are studies. But you could probably just do a back of the napkin calculation to verify that it makes no sense. Don't forget to take into account that you need new airframes.

      • Battery is starting to be competitive for short haul commuter flights.

        That said, we don't have to go to hydrogen even if we want to go away from fossil fuels. It might not be practical for vehicles, but ethanol, methanol (sometimes called wood alcohol), other biofuels made from various reactions such as fermentation or thermal depolymerization are all options, especially if we go almost entirely EV for land vehicles and shorter flights.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dios ( 83038 )

      Agreed! Hydrogen is scary as hell. NASA has problems keeping the stuff contained, I don't want my neighbor trying.

  • BP has been doing plentt of kayfabe around green energy investment after the Deepwater Horizon disaster where they sprayed tons of the neurotoxic dispersant Corexit to disappear the problem and limit their own liability.

    The "Beyond Petroleum" rebrand was of course a lie from the beginning.

  • Mixed feelings (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ukoda ( 537183 ) on Tuesday November 05, 2024 @02:30PM (#64921835) Homepage
    While green hydrogen has potential, hydrogen in general has usually been used wrong, usually with ulterior motives. For example while hydrogen made sense for cars 40 years ago, when I first heard about it, it stopped making sense 20 years ago and is a joke today.

    I still think green hydrogen makes sense for some niches, yet there has been no progress made in those areas. For example large vehicles traveling long distances such as long haul flights and international sea freight. Yet the lack of progress there makes wonder if hydrogen is a dead end even for niche applications.

    In short it is a solution I would like have succeeded where it made sense, but it increasing looks like there is no applications where it makes sense.

    As for BP I wonder if the ROI on hydrogen FUD is no longer worth it for them.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sique ( 173459 )
      Someone once called Hydrogen the champagne of energy sources: very expensive and makes only sense under very special circumstances.
    • H2 will initially be a replacement for diesel. A lot of the big heavy duty truck manufacturers are continuing on with H2 development. It has not made much of a dent in the diesel long haul truck market yet, but neither have batteries. Another niche will be stationary generation. Say you have a hospital with multiple diesel or natural gas generators. What are you going to replace them with that can run that hospital for potentially days disconnected from the grid in a worst case scenario? Has to be som

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ukoda ( 537183 )
        I think trucks are currently a very borderline use case. I think the Tesla Semi and others now available mean H2 has already missed the boat on heavy trucking. I did wonder if there is a use case for H2 with trains as it will still be many years before tracks can be fitted with overhead power feeds. My guess H2 won't happen given H2's track record of being late to the party. Every H2 solution seems to appear just as it becomes redundant.

        I can't see it working for stationary generation as long term st

    • How did it "make sense" 40 years ago?

  • As simple as that...

    dropping prices of PV, wind and batteries make green hydrogen uncompetitive.... and they are much easier to use...

  • For a while it was my go-to, long-term solution for at least the "car" side of climate change problems. When I realized what the source of all of that easy-to-get hydrogen was going to be the same ol' fossil fuels, it felt more like a waste of time to consider for large-scale transportation needs.

  • From this, I guess its safe to say Hydrogen is less than optimal for storage. I've been looking at solar cells. I've got lots of room and to get enough power for the winter I may end up with double the capacity during the Sumner. That has me trying to think about how to save that "free" energy in something more scalable (and cheaper) than regular batteries. I don't live near a mountain, so elevated water storage isn't likely an option. Any other ideas?

  • ...research project with great potential
    It's NOT ready for widespread deployment in its current state

  • Well can you name another fuel that doesn't have any Carbon in it?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by sfcat ( 872532 )
      You know you can make hydrocarbons from other sources right? We have been doing so for a century by now. Hydrocarbons are a great fuel, we just shouldn't be getting them out of the ground. And Hydrogen is yet another dodge to get well meaning but scientifically illiterate people to not demand nuclear which is the only real solution here. Just more greenwashing. The extractors have won and the environmental movement is captured.

    • Ammonia, boron... um.. about it...

  • Hydrogen doesn't seem great as a transport fuel right now, but there are other interesting projects using hydrogen such as carbon free steel production [ssab.com].

    As for vehicles, there's one thing I like about the idea of hydrogen: you don't need a nasty mix of chemicals store it, and the tank doesn't wear out in the same way. In some ways it seems like simpler technology. If only hydrogen production weren't so inefficient...

  • The only way to deal with hydrogen's extremely low density and store a useful amount of energy that is practical and economical, rather than a PhD thesis or a plain fantasy, is to... ... bind it together with a heavier atom, like say, carbon, to form molecules that are liquid (or a dense enough gas) at - again - practical and economically achievable conditions.

    Liquid hydrogen is a nonstarter for a whole bunch of obvious reasons. Compressed hydrogen's energy density is even worse. Metal hydrides have almo

Slashdot Top Deals

He who has but four and spends five has no need for a wallet.

Close