German Power Company Dena Is Simply As Topic To Hydrogen Gruppendenken As JRC & PIK

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In latest months it’s develop into clear that there’s a distinctly non-cottage business in Germany producing unintentionally and deliberately deceptive studies about hydrogen for power. Right this moment one more vital and revered group crossed my display screen, dena, or the German Power Company. (Decrease-case is their branding and it’s an acronym of a German language identify.)

It’s a suppose tank that was arrange by governmental and business actors in 2000 to be a competence middle for utilized power transition and local weather safety. Its governance physique is usually governmental representatives. It has about 550 staff per its web site and 460 per LinkedIn. German lecturers and governmental sorts generally steadily don’t take into account LinkedIn a platform to be engaged with or represented on, it appears.

Some pink flags begin to seem pretty shortly, a minimum of a far as hydrogen for power is anxious. The primary, in fact, is that it’s the German Power Company. By definition it views the molecule by the distorted lens of power, not by its true position as an industrial feedstock. Confusion ensues.

The second is that it’s not inventory filled with STEM and economics literate employees. It’s, from the skin trying in, a coverage, regulatory, and legally targeted group. Its prime two employees are attorneys. Nothing unsuitable with attorneys in any respect. I’ve large respect for lots of the occupation I’ve labored with. But when I’m speaking about power and hydrogen, a lawyer isn’t who I might flip to.

And so to what triggered me to have a better look, which was a LinkedIn submit by Dr. Robert Stüwe, Lead Professional, Hydrogen, International Financial Coverage, EU, per LinkedIn. He’s dena’s prime hydrogen man, it appears.

#Hydrogen bridge between Australia and Germany struggling delay as soon as once more reveals the necessity to take parallel efforts to get #H2 pipeline tasks over the ending line that join sources nearer to Europe. This could in the long run repay when it comes to provide safety and guarantee a higher diversification of sources. #H2Importkorridore

This was a head-scratcher. Hydrogen pipelines, which I’ve checked out quite a few occasions with out them making any financial sense. Delivery hydrogen from distant areas, which as soon as once more is absurdly costly and uncompetitive with options.

To not get too advert hominem, however what are Stüwe’s credentials for being a hydrogen professional? STEM chops? None obvious. Financial chops? Nope. Sociology, regulation, and political science. This by no means makes him a slouch or somebody to not respect, nevertheless it implies that in relation to hydrogen and power, he’s more than likely working off of acquired knowledge, not bottom-up value estimates and power balances he’s finished himself. He’s lacking a bunch of background information — as soon as once more from what’s introduced in his public profile — to have the ability to choose hydrogen as an power service.

And so, he’s just like the Chair and Managing Director in being targeted on power from a distance and never targeted on working the numbers himself. As soon as once more, this isn’t a foul factor if the acquired knowledge he’s working on is aligned with empirical actuality. However that is hydrogen for power we’re speaking about.

So what does dena do? It researches, writes, and publishes studies and papers. It recommends insurance policies, frameworks, subsidies, and rules to align with a decarbonized power system. Its employees does media interviews about similar. It influences. It’s a suppose tank. That’s okay. There’s a requirement for organizations who do all of this stuff. Until they’re misaligned on empirical actuality.

Stüwe’s submit prompt that they won’t be aligned. So I went and checked out a handful of their publications about wasserstoff, which is the phrase for hydrogen in German.

What was that about tasks? Effectively, they appear to get most of their funding from conducting what are finest described as consulting engagements to put in writing studies on behalf of and paid for by numerous of their shareholders and different organizations. Their shareholders are governmental ministries and dena itself.

However 13% of their funding comes from non-public corporations. 2021 funders included artificial gasoline producers, biogas companies, BP, Daimler aka Mercedes Benz Group, LNG liquifiers, Lufthansa, Shell, the German Gasoline and Water Affiliation — foreshadowing –, fuel utilities, ExxonMobil, electrolyzer companies, hydrogen companies, cement companies, industrial warmth associations, and compressor companies.

And a bunch of different companies and organizations that are targeted on numerous points of the power transition together with transmission, renewables, and different organizations. Maybe my favourite was the Decrease Bavarian chimney sweeper cooperative eG.

However that first listing is regarding. It implies that a bunch of organizations which aren’t aligned with empirical actuality regarding the transition as a result of they’re going through extinction are paying for studies which dena is producing. And people studies are shaping German coverage.

As soon as once more, to be clear, I seemed on the first 4-5 publications that got here up out of apparently 1,500 tasks that they’ve finished, particularly searching for hydrogen-focused efforts. I’m certain a lot of their tasks, particularly these funded by electrical utilities, transmission organizations, and presumably even automotive OEMs are extra aligned with the fact of deep electrification and renewables.

What’s Up With Germany & Hydrogen?

Earlier than diving into just a few odd dena studies, let’s step again and survey that German non-cottage business associated to hydrogen.

For a little bit of context, hydrogen is a part of an ongoing political scandal round power that’s concerned a few Chancellors. Gerhard Schröder, Merkel’s predecessor, was tight with Putin and Russia and has acquired 1,000,000 a yr since 2005 for sitting on the Board of Nord Stream, Russia’s fuel export pipeline enterprise and a subsidiary of Russia’s state-owned Gazprom. He’s develop into a pariah for his a long time of selling shut power ties with a Russia which was clearly trending away from being a great international actor even then.

The present Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Merkel’s successor, and one with out something remotely like her STEM chops, has been half and parcel of this, establishing hydrogen diplomacy workplaces in Moscow, Riyadh, Luanda, and Abuja, with one meant for Kyiv as of simply earlier than the Russian invasion.

That highest degree political engagement round hydrogen as an power service pervades the nation, to its detriment and to the detriment of Europe truly decarbonizing. I’ve been observing the signs of this irrational give attention to the unsuitable answer in my assessments of analysis and suppose tank organizations for the previous few months.

Let’s begin with the Worldwide Council on Clear Transportation. Wait, it’s a US suppose tank established by American philanthropical organizations, together with each the Hewlett and Packard foundations. What does it need to do with Germany?

Effectively, in November of 2023 it printed a remarkably odd complete value of possession research on heavy freight street trucking in Europe which made the false case that hydrogen vans would have power prices per kilometer not far more than electrical vans. This was brutally clearly unsuitable, but they tried to defend it and nonetheless haven’t acknowledged how credibility-destroying unsuitable they had been.

What does this need to do with Germany? The lead researcher and writer on that research relies in Berlin.

Hmm. Removed from definitive. What else?

Effectively, there was the German working group established to determine pathways to street freight decarbonization that equally low-balled hydrogen trucking prices. As soon as once more, they didn’t make hydrogen-powered trucking pencil out, however they put lots of thumbs on the dimensions, together with hard-to-believe assumptions of a large community of hydrogen fuel utilities and dirt-cheap inexperienced hydrogen imports. They actually tried to make hydrogen pencil out. Nonetheless failed. The working group targeted on artificial fuels for trucking, one which was overloaded with automotive business representatives, fared higher at pretending that very costly fuels can be match for goal and inside combustion engines would proceed to dominate.

Then there was the PIK Potsdam Institute for Local weather Influence Analysis research I checked out not too long ago. That’s a German analysis group as nicely. It was funded by the governments of Germany and the German state of Brandenburg, based in 1992. They’ve a few fashions that they seem like too reverent of, LIMES-EU and REMIND, which have terribly low costs for hydrogen embedded in them, €1.67 shopper value per kilogram in LIMES-EU and €2 and €3.50 shopper costs in REMIND.

The researchers, inside reviewers, and peer-reviewers missed this fully as a result of the entire shopper power costs had been normalized into MWh and nobody has a benchmark in thoughts for hydrogen in MWh. It seems the researchers thought that placing in assumptions for electrical energy costs would mechanically result in inexperienced hydrogen made with these electrical energy charges, however weren’t capable of spot that the fashions had no relationship between electrical energy costs and hydrogen costs. Dangerous models led to unhealthy outputs.

The EU JRC’s 2022 hydrogen transportation research, which I assessed not too long ago, actively packed underlying assumptions with unrealistically low prices associated to the manufacturing and distribution of hydrogen, then fastidiously wrote the coverage temporary to provide the deceptive impression that inexperienced hydrogen can be out there at vastly decrease costs than any reasonable numbers.

Any reasonable value work-up for delivery hydrogen finds that it will be vastly dearer than LNG or coal imports and as such cripple the importing nation economically.

Then there’s Daimler Trucking, a subsidiary of Mercedes Benz Group. One among its Board of Administrators, Dr. Andreas Gorbach, usually posts about Daimler’s hydrogen trucking initiatives.

As occurs with hydrogen for power sorts, Daimler’s hydrogen trucking efforts bumped into the brick wall of 700 bar hydrogen compression failures and drivetrain issues. As a substitute of accepting that it was a foul power alternative and pivoting totally to battery-electric, Daimler adopted a well-worn path into liquid hydrogen.

They’ve simply arrange a liquid hydrogen refueling station to go along with their liquid hydrogen fueled freight truck. As a reminder, hydrogen is just a liquid at 20° above absolute zero, 17° above the temperature of deep house. To make liquid hydrogen requires a full third of the power within the hydrogen. To maintain it liquid lengthy sufficient requires large, globular, extremely insulated tanks.

Security necessities for dealing with it are very excessive because of the absurd chilly which might flash freeze an individual uncovered to it and the large quantities of extremely flammable fuel it will instantly flip into.

Liquid hydrogen is shipped by truck immediately, however solely the place it actually is the one possibility for the tip use case and it’s not financially viable to construct a hydrogen manufacturing and liquification plant on the website. NASA nonetheless makes use of it for getting rockets into orbit, however the house business as an entire is shifting away from it as a result of it’s so exhausting to deal with.

But German establishment Daimler thinks it’s going to be at a whole bunch of truck stops and truckers are going to be pumping it safely. And Daimler thinks a whole bunch of tanker vans filled with the stuff on European highways with texting drivers and faculty buses is an affordable concept.

That is par for the course for organizations and people who decide to hydrogen. Sooner or later they lose monitor of goal actuality and suppose {that a} new unhealthy concept will clear up the issues that they discovered all over the place else in hydrogen. I wrote about all of the hydrogen pathways and their lifeless ends extensively not too long ago.

However Gorbach and Daimler’s hydrogen lead promote and defend liquid hydrogen trucking pretty continuously, committing Daimler to a lifeless finish as an alternative of specializing in constructing a battery-electric truck from the bottom up. It’s a foul technique based mostly on an incapacity to get away from hydrogen. It’s going to finish badly for Daimler. However to be clear, it’s changing into apparent that Daimler is caught in an echo chamber of German power sorts. They aren’t sturdy sufficient to withstand it. That received’t assist them, however possibly it’s an excuse.

Proper now, Daimler is leaving the standard ladder body of their vans alone and jamming diesel, hydrogen, and battery-electric drivetrains in. That is simply as unhealthy an concept for environment friendly battery-electric vans as it’s for each different car, but Daimler’s adherence to hydrogen is stopping constructing an actual semi tractor skateboard structure.

The hydrogen lead in Daimler may need an excuse. They aren’t a STEM-focused individual per their academic and profession historical past so may not be capable to do the technical due diligence required to understand how unhealthy an concept that is. They’ve their job and they’re doing it to the perfect of their skill. I’ve some sympathy for that.

However Gorbach, who’s on the Board of Administrators, has hardcore STEM credentials. He has a PhD in chemical engineering and a masters in system dynamics and controls. He ought to know higher. As a substitute he’s a serious cheerleader for hydrogen publicly and undoubtedly internally. To be truthful, he’s additionally a promoter of their battery-electric trucking efforts, that are delivering vans to prospects immediately.

Has dena Misplaced The Plot On Hydrogen As Effectively?

So there’s a spot between actuality and the dena hydrogen professional’s public assertion famous above. However that could possibly be a blip, a misstatement, the consultant getting out over their skis, or just a mistake. What do a sampling of dena’s studies associated to hydrogen say?

A dena paper from Could 2023, Enterprise fashions for decentralized hydrogen ideas (translated from German), consists of this gem.

… seasonal hydrogen storage within the neighborhood and in properties

We’re now at 54 impartial research that discover zero use for hydrogen in properties. Oh, wait. A number of days after the meta-analysis was printed, a fifty fifth research surfaced. And seasonal storage? Properties might be storing hydrogen in the summertime for these chilly winter days?

That’s true for industrial buildings as nicely. No hydrogen might be concerned in residential or industrial heating of water or air. No heating, no fuel distribution pipeline community. There merely received’t be an financial case for hydrogen fuel utilities except there may be large residential and industrial demand for it.

There’s actually no want for hydrogen cogeneration for district heating with district geothermal warmth pumps and heating networks. Vastly cheaper per unit of power coming and going. Different elements of dena seem to know this, so as soon as once more, it is a subset of the company, not the whole lot. However they’re publishing studies which verify the bias of policymakers and traders as an alternative of being an truly pondering tank.

Later in the identical distributed enterprise mannequin research, including hydrogen manufacturing co-located with a repowered onshore wind farm is taken into account. It posits 7.6 MW of electrolyzers working roughly 80% of the time that the wind farm is working, as wind generators generate electrical energy about 85% of the time, however simply not at nameplate capability. To date so good, one would suppose.

However what precisely goes to be finished with the hydrogen?

7.6 MW is just about 150 kg of hydrogen an hour. That’s far too little to place a pipeline in for. It’s not like there might be an enormous shopper hydrogen distribution community if it’s not utilized in a big proportion of buildings. So onsite storage and compression.

Then vans present as much as switch it. And hydrogen trucking prices of €7.50 to €10.50 apply per US DOE research of actual world experiences.

The identical decentralization report talks about mixing hydrogen into fuel networks as if that’s going to be broadly finished, despite the fact that it admits overtly that 20% hydrogen can be solely 7-8% of power. What it doesn’t say is that the hydrogen can be vastly dearer than fuel per gigajoule, so prospects can be hit twice within the pocketbook.

First, they might solely be receiving 87% of the power for a similar quantity of fuel, and second they might be paying much more for it. It’s a nonsensical concept beloved solely by the pure fuel utilities. What’s actually occurring with fuel utilities is that they’re being confronted with the utility demise spiral and might be closing up store.

Utrecht has the proper concept. It’s shutting down its fuel distribution community sub-isolation community by sub-isolation community and offering a combination of district heating and warmth pumps for all buildings.

Later, in fact, the report asserts that pure hydrogen distribution networks will exist and that present pipelines might be repurposed cheaply. Clearly the report didn’t learn the German pipeline research fastidiously. Vastly decrease volumes of hydrogen would circulate by repurposed pipelines to allow them to final quite a lot of years.

Strain adjustments and hydrogen embrittlement at joints and welds make for radically decrease lifespans except a lot decrease pressures are used, as an alternative of the 3x stress required for a similar quantity of power within the type of hydrogen.

Dena thinks that repurposing present fuel pipelines is reasonable and straightforward and that the quickly escalating prices of proposed hydrogen pipelines from and to nowhere aren’t a problem. Paul Martin, a chemical engineer who labored professionally with hydrogen for many years and a co-founder of Hydrogen Science Coalition, has learn the studies fastidiously.

Below the hydrogen design code, the design stress of an present fossil fuel line would should be de-rated to maybe 1/2 to as little as 1/3 of its authentic score if it had been switched to hold hydrogen. That’s going to have a really giant affect on the power carrying capability of these strains, doubtless necessitating both twinning or substitute of any transmission line switched to hydrogen.

However they’re in all probability influenced by unhealthy research on hydrogen vs HVDC transmission, that are additionally rife in European circles. These research share lots of unhealthy assumptions and framing.

The report does love the thought of constructing small quantities of hydrogen domestically for storing electrical energy, positing native 2,000 MWh per yr storage. As a reminder, turning electrical energy into hydrogen after which again into electrical energy is deeply inefficient, returning a few third of the electrical energy it began with and requiring a full industrial electrolysis, hydrogen dehumidification facility, hydrogen purification facility, compression, storage, and gasoline cells which require pure hydrogen and HEPA-grade air filters.

That facility would have excessive upkeep prices, as hydrogen compressors are very excessive upkeep and gasoline cells are finicky beasts.

All for two,000 MWh of storage per yr, one thing a few Tesla Megapacks can do, which might be delivered on a trailer, haven’t any shifting elements, and simply sit there with out upkeep.

On the scale envisioned, the hydrogen electrolysis services are vastly below the financial scale of an industrial facility, so stability of plant and operations might be far more costly as a ratio. The worth factors of hydrogen manufacturing aren’t reasonable, in different phrases.

The report then assesses versatile electrolyzers for absorbing extra demand.

This, in fact, requires electrolyzers which truly can scale up and down flexibly, in order that’s PEM electrolyzers, a minimum of in idea. In actuality, PEM electrolyzers are not practically as versatile as has been broadly assumed, with solely the most costly having the ability to ramp up and down shortly with out vital degradation.

As soon as once more, primary assumptions don’t stand as much as scrutiny.

Even then, the report finds: “It’s due to this fact not attainable to construct a enterprise mannequin for versatile electrolysers based mostly on the availability of management power.”

Yup. All that capital, operation, and upkeep value can’t be paid off with solely a 3rd return of electrical energy even when they promote waste warmth too, though in fact they wouldn’t have practically as a lot with variable load PEM electrolyzers anyway.

We’re now onto p.66 of the report and the chickens are coming house to roost. Dena’s copyright steerage is evident that reusing graphics or materials from their studies with out categorical permission isn’t allowed, in any other case I might seize a screenshot. The report is linked above for anybody .

There are three charts of the price of distribution of hydrogen. For low quantity customers, aka properties and industrial buildings of their context, the prices of distribution are extremely excessive, €2 to €4.39 per kWh.

Sure, per kWh. That’s a unit of electrical energy that’s ten to twenty occasions cheaper than the hydrogen supply value when it’s delivered by wires.

That’s vastly greater than any constructing or small enterprise goes to pay for power. Solely a lot bigger demand facilities for hydrogen, i.e. present industrial customers who’ve pipelines already, will see remotely cheap hydrogen supply. As soon as once more, dena authors lean into the wrong concept that will probably be dust low-cost to repurpose present pure fuel strains.

These are euros per kWh of power within the type of hydrogen by the best way, which is to say warmth power, which is to say that they’re double that for truly helpful electrical energy if that’s the use case. Whether it is for warmth beneath 200° Celsius, warmth pumps would require a 3rd the power within the type of electrical energy and at a fraction of the fee. Hydrogen for power is already out of the working with out these distribution prices.

Provided that a lot of the industrial facilities which have a enterprise case for grey hydrogen pipelines have already got them, and small and medium companies received’t be utilizing hydrogen for power, as soon as once more, the fuel distribution community might be shutting down and restricted to industrial customers.

These customers don’t eat hydrogen for power immediately and received’t sooner or later. We’re nicely into multiples per kWh of delivered warmth power already in comparison with utilizing electrical energy immediately and extra multiples with warmth pumps. Who precisely goes to pay for very costly power after they may simply use handy electrical energy?

And on p.76 we discover the idea behind the foolish concept of seasonal hydrogen storage in neighborhoods. The electrical energy grid which has been efficiently and massively scaled can’t scale per the report, in order that they’ll add a lot larger load electrolysis machines to degree the demand. And so they’ll be in properties in neighborhoods.

buildings with native hydrogen storage

Electrolysers for home use can retailer as much as 1,500 kWh.

That is such a cockamamie idea and so vastly understated when it comes to precise capex, opex, and upkeep for the hydrogen power practice that nobody would significantly do that as soon as an precise design had been labored out and costed.

Hydrogen worth chain parts have very poor imply time between failure statistics. That hasn’t modified a lot in a long time. Very excessive compression of very tiny molecules is extremely robust and demanding, so compressors are very costly and fail usually. Gasoline cells require pure hydrogen and HEPA-filtered air and nonetheless degrade.

This can be a case the place a paper research by folks with no HVAC, development, or operational expertise makes one thing very complicated and inefficient seem to be a good suggestion. I’m certain that the researchers are well-meaning, however that they had been truly proposing and learning manufacturing hydrogen in properties with summer time sunshine to offer winter power in … checks publication date … 2022 is astounding. That is the form of factor present in gee-whiz tech and fanatic websites over 20 years in the past. It’s very troublesome to take the report significantly in any respect when it consists of this type of factor.

After which we get to industrial course of warmth.

45% of business warmth is beneath 200° Celsius. That’s fully viable with warmth pumps that are at minimal 3x as environment friendly as hydrogen or different burnable fuels.

Vastly extra of the rest of business course of warmth can electrify than the report assumes. There’s a humiliation of riches of applied sciences which aren’t used immediately just because burning fossil fuels with out abatement is dust low-cost.

If an industrial website can’t preserve burning dust low-cost fossil fuels and its solely possibility is burning very costly hydrogen or derivatives, it merely received’t be financial and can fail as a enterprise. That is Economics 101.

Assuming that an present industrial facility can’t radically electrify heating is a foul assumption. Assuming that if they’ll’t electrify that they’ll be aggressive with vastly larger power prices is a foul assumption. New services which can be constructed for electrical energy will eat their breakfast, lunch, dinner, and people additional snacks they don’t inform their partner about.

The place burning is required for the traits of flames, will probably be biomethane more than likely. A lot simpler to work with and cheaper. Hydrogen can’t and received’t compete.

After all, dena loves hydrogen pipeline infrastructure. How can it not when so a lot of its stakeholders are Europe’s pure fuel transmission and distribution companies?

Within the report, How can the hydrogen community infrastructure be arrange in Germany and Europe?, innumerable bald-faced assumptions about large hydrogen demand are made that don’t stand as much as a lot scrutiny.

Dena recommends a crash course of constructing hundreds of kilometers extra hydrogen pipelines, as much as 8,500 km by 2032.

The report is all in regards to the regulatory, coverage, enterprise mannequin, and subsidy buildings essential to make this pipe dream a actuality. Extra wasted digital ink.

As a reminder, Europe assumed inexperienced hydrogen could possibly be low-cost to make and low-cost to ship. BCG referred to as it a ‘consensus’ of €3 per kg by 2030. That consensus was solely amongst STEM- and economics-illiterate hopeful sorts, not folks with the fundamentals of each who had finished precise value workups.

And lo, as BCG introduced not too long ago, it was certainly an phantasm, with €5-8 per kg being the manufacturing value level in Europe within the 2030s. Inexperienced hydrogen offers that truly reached closing funding resolution in 2023 common €9.49 per kilogram. That strike value isn’t going to come back down simply due to the economics of producing hydrogen. And that value is earlier than transmission and distribution.

Within the report, Hydrogen tasks in Germany, dena lovingly lists a whole bunch of hydrogen tasks within the nation, with out indicating what their standing or probability of success is.

However as BCG once more reported from their information set of about 1,300 hydrogen tasks, solely 0.2% by quantity had reached operation and the overwhelming majority weren’t going to achieve closing funding resolution. Not that they put it that manner, however that’s what the info reported says even when they had been detest to say it.

In the meantime, solely 10% of hydrogen tasks deliberate for 2030 even had an off-taker, per BNEF.

And the IEA makes it clear that solely 7% of the theoretical variety of hydrogen tasks goes to be on-line by 2030.

Dena’s tables are undoubtedly filled with tasks that received’t attain closing funding resolution.

And now we get to the report, Sustainable heavy-duty transport from Nov 2023. Recent off the press.

Bizarrely, two of the three authors are from DVGW, Germany’s fuel and water affiliation. One among them is explicitly a pure fuel and LNG professional. The opposite is a younger city planning and coverage individual. Neither have any background in transportation. The dena consultant as soon as once more lacks STEM and economics credentials, however has been doing advertising and marketing, coverage, and regulatory work associated to transportation for some time.

My coronary heart sinks after I suppose what this report is prone to say. Let’s discover out.

Naturally, hydrogen performs a starring position: “The usage of hydrogen in heavy-duty transport could make a serious contribution to lowering greenhouse fuel emissions (GHG emissions) within the transport sector.”

For context, no credible complete value of possession finds hydrogen vans are aggressive with battery-electric. As David Cebon of Cambridge, founder and director of the Centre for Sustainable Highway Freight discovered, gasoline cell vans may have double the capital expenditure and 3 times the operational expenditure of battery-electric freight vans. And gasoline cell buses are proving to have 50% larger upkeep prices than diesel and double that of battery-electric, per my printed evaluation of California fleet information.

Unsurprisingly, subsequent up are pure fuel and biomethane. The DVGW people are displaying their colours. Naturally that is all very out there and all match for goal — for fuel distributors. Naturally it’s nonsense, as battery-electric vans are less expensive to function and keep, with complete prices of possession at present trajectories below these of diesel by 2030. Apparently identical to maritime ships, a number of vans appear to be burning LNG in Europe, a part of the nice success of the fuel business at pretending that it was a greater different.

Professional-tip: methane is a large local weather change drawback and any widespread use and distribution of it contributes to that drawback.

Amongst different issues, there are over 500,000 electrical vans on China’s roads, together with in all probability 700,000 electrical buses. Highway site visitors is a solved drawback. Methane, whether or not fossil or bio, is just not required.

The completely large public electrical energy charging community, the high-speed charging community, and the megawatt-scale chargers which can be out there now are ‘virtually nonexistent’ infrastructure. The just about 20,000 excessive velocity charging stations in comparison with the 18 heavy car hydrogen stations that they doc within the report ought to have been a clue as to what was truly going to happen.

To be clear, the large, swift, and cheap rollout of high-speed charging, in comparison with the costly, gradual, and fraught rollout of hydrogen refueling stations needs to be an abject lesson.

And there are their assumptions about battery-electric vans and power density.

“It’s anticipated that batteries with capacities of 600 to 850 kWh might be made out there for 700 km routes by 2030”

Tesla Semis have already got 800 km ranges immediately. CATL is delivering batteries in 2024 with twice the power density of Tesla’s, enabling 1,600 km of vary. The US NACFE Run on Much less in September of 2023 noticed Teslas run 1,600 km in a day with quick charging, and different distributors’ electrical vans run 800 km in a single day of loaded service.

But once more a hydrogen-focused trucking report ignores the fact of battery power density and electrical vans immediately.

And, in fact, they downplay the issues of hydrogen pumping stations and make it appear as if megawatt scaling charging stations are deeply unlikely to be viable as a result of grid limitations.

As a reminder, I not too long ago assessed California’s hydrogen pumping stations in the identical interval after I was their public information on bus fleets. The final six months that they reported upkeep information had been the primary half of 2021. The 2022 report I assessed confirmed that the stations had been out of service for upkeep 20% extra hours than they had been actively pumping hydrogen into vehicles, a full 2,000 hours extra, actually. The largest challenge was compressor failure.

My preliminary methodology means that this represents a 30% of capital expenditure spent on upkeep yearly, not the 3-4% assumed in complete value of possession research. It aligns with the advice of 10% of capital expenditure yearly {that a} contact had been given by a vendor promoting decrease stress 350 bar refueling stations.

I’ve shared these outcomes with a global group of street transportation researchers and prompt that they discover funding to recreate the research with any methodological enhancements and information that they see match to incorporate. In any case, there are lots of hydrogen refueling stations in Europe, South Korea, and Japan as nicely.

So What’s Going To Occur With Germany?

The nation has wrapped so a lot of its main tutorial and analysis organizations across the axle of hydrogen power that it’s unclear how they’ll ever see straight once more. Tutorial reputations are already struggling. Beforehand credible and revered organizations are being discovered to be non-credible, with their work of a number of years topic to retrospective doubt.

German politicians appear to be sunk into this morass and decided to guide Germany into an period of extraordinarily excessive power prices. When different international locations are embracing electrification, constructing fashionable industrial services that run fully on inexperienced electrical energy and avoiding the entire unfavorable externalities related to burning something, however particularly with burning fossil fuels, they’re going to be having less expensive worth chains.

German corporations are falling into the identical pit. Daimler is only one of many. BMW continues to be losing time on hydrogen gasoline cell mild automobiles. In 2024. Whereas gasoline cell automobile gross sales are plummeting globally.

And so to that odd phrase within the title of this piece, gruppendenken. That’s German for groupthink.

Groupthink is a phenomenon that happens when a gaggle of people reaches a consensus with out vital reasoning or analysis of the implications or options. Groupthink relies on a typical need to not upset the stability of a gaggle of individuals.

Sure, the rational Germans, usually held up because the epitome of hard-headed and disciplined engineers, have a societal failure of vital reasoning or analysis of penalties and options. Their cognitive biases are main them to misinterpret studies on hydrogen pipelines to see what they actually need to see. They keep away from value comparisons.

If this was Lichtenstein or Andorra, this wouldn’t be as consequential. However Germany is a really highly effective pressure within the EU. It’s the largest financial entity by far, with a GDP €1.4 trillion greater than the second finest, France. It’s been driving hydrogen for power insurance policies which can be opposite to empirical actuality for a very long time. An excessive amount of Europe’s confusion about hydrogen might be laid at Germany’s door.

And as famous early on on this dialogue, a substantial amount of that leads again to German political alignment with Russia over power of all kinds. Main strategic errors have been made for over 20 years which have led thus far. It’s not, nonetheless, too late.