Fuel cell (Hydrogen consumption) technology is ahead of low cost mass electrolysis deployments (hydrogen production). Batteries are doing very well in China, and still finding a way to be cheaper in the west too. Batteries help produce more electrolysis from renewables.

Article is saying that batteries are important too. It is a bit misleading in saying that cobalt is needed though. Cobalt and Nickel are needed for highest performance old tech batteries. For race cars. The price revolution in batteries is most pronounced for long lasting LiFePo chemistry batteries which avoids both metals, and used in value EVs, and grid storage. Batteries are not enough alone to exterminate oil/NG use.

Green H2 is inherently at a price disadvantage compared to green electricity.

Intermittent renewables are the cheapest. If you can consume electricity directly while it is produce, that is at cheapest rates. Batteries is one intermediate to get good power charge/discharge rates to absorb, even cheaper, surplus electricity that supports more renewables. H2 electrolysis is a way to absorb renewable production that would exceed 24 hour demand on some days, and allows for more renewables and batteries to keep the energy/batteries productive/monetized all of the time.

Even trucks and ships have a cost advantage in distributing H2 energy compared to electric wires. Pipelines even more. H2 distribution doubles as storage as well.

H2 is a few years ahead on horizon. Lowest hanging fruit is gasoline/diesel replacement, but alternative to electric grid expansion is real, with offshore wind the biggest gainer of going pure H2 electrolysis, and land based renewables expanding their footprints to have alternate sales options than an electric monopoly.

Big inroads for H2 perhaps starting in 5 years. Batteries are enough to progress until then. Solar deployments will need an H2 outlet to keep using up solar capacity. Very likely to be yet another China driven tech boom.

portable H2 is gateway to urban distributed H2. Appliances and refills either from home or from nearby businesses. Powerstations/backup/UPS power is a pretty universal application. Everything depends on green H2 retail prices though.

that seems to be Israel’s SOP

this is not binary solo :P

Also they may have spent $158B on stock buybacks, but company is worth $96B. They lost a lot of money on those buybacks. Down about 70% over last 3 years.

More demonic US empire BS, as they tried in Venezuela this year, and successfully did in Ukraine since 2014.

He claims Georgia is being controlled by a foreign “pseudo-elite” and that the opposition belongs to a “Global War Party” bent on dragging the country into conflict with Russia.

He is dead right, and no one in Georgia should want to become the next Ukraine. The sooner you realize that “democracy” only counts if it enslaves you to US empire, the sooner you can hope to be free.

H2 only FC ebikes are not well developed or popular yet. Drones with FCs are actively developed as density/weight is a huge factor for range. Very small fuel cells, 500w or 1000w have applications in powering a home (with solar supplement) because they can run 24/7 and charge batteries. Hooking up torches or burners to these cannisters can also provide clean indoor cooking or heating a box of sand/water in a room.

For an ebike, it is touring/camping applications that this really enables. Charging a battery when you need extended range, and it becomes worth the extra weight. Even a 100w fuel cell slow charging a spare battery while riding is big range extension, and provides overnight full charge. Combustion cooking and heating is fine for high supplementary energy.

A H2 economy would have these cartridges in similar locations to swappable propane tanks.

Now they just need to solve the energy consumption and cost parity questions surrounding green hydrogen.

Toyota research and products are ahead of their time relative to cheap green H2. This is an advance over using 300bar “paintball tanks” by going to 525bar, and it looks a bit like an apple product design. Needs far more electrolysis production capacity and deployments. The global project pipeline is long though, so we should get there. Current focus is on large scale electrolyzers with specific offtakers which is slow, but a step towards broader distribution.

PE pipes used for NG seem “good enough” https://www.pe100plus.com/PPCA/HYDROGEN-TRANSPORT-IN-POLYMER-PIPES-FOR-NATURAL-GAS-DISTRIBUTION-TEN-YEARS-OF-EXPERIENCE-p1737.html

PTFE is known to be better. Fiber reinforcement is mostly an outside layer to increase pressure resistance. Putting PE or PTFE inside existing steel pipes would also work.

Spoolable FRP pipes up to 4" in diameter can fit on a truck. Rated for 200bar. Pre covid, this was quoted as $50k/km as full deployment cost with 10s of km per day buildout rate. Spoolable pipe that can fit on ships has no diameter limit.

I don’t know details of manufacturing process, but spools, plastic pipe extrusion, and fiber reinforcement should be highly automatable.

Plastic/FRC pipes solve the leakage problem. They are also salt water resistant. Soft steel NG distribution pipes have low leak rates as well. Converting hard steel NG transmission pipes is possible by lining them in plastic. In any near future, H2 only new pipes would be built. H2 is more valuable when it is pure because it has higher efficiency electric conversion than NG, as well as being an ingredient to several important chemicals.

Green H2 does not benefit oil industry at all. It is only basis for a H2 economy because such an economy has to be 100% clean (FF derived H2 has less net energy content than original FF), and the essential rationale for an H2 economy is one where enough renewables to provide 100% of electricity every day needs to overproduce on most days, and H2 electrolysis is an automated way of providing transportable/exportable fuel that converts to electricity at high enough efficiency. The transportation cost advantage of H2 over electric transmission is enough to overcome the efficiency loss of creating it when the electric energy is cheap enough. 2-4c/kwh is enough for cheaper energy delivery by H2.

While Toyota has made great research/development in fuel cells, I agree that they have had a “don’t buy an EV until you see our next model of the Mirai”, and oil companies bs about “blue H2” potential as path to fish for more subsidies, the anti-H2 fan boys are actually EV/battery investors. H2 economy requires batteries, and does have vehicle applications, but the main reason for it is that it is only path to 100% renewable energy.

The good match for wind, and offshore wind especially, is that many places achieve full electric demand coverage from solar alone on some days. On those days, adding batteries with more solar could achieve solar coverage over 24 hours. If it is windy at the same time, no wind energy would get sold those days, and then no additional renewables would be economic in that region, and higher demand days would not get covered by renewables. H2 is path for, wind especially, to sell/monetize all of their energy produced, but also bypass, for all renewables, grid transmission bottlenecks that monopolies don’t mind being bottlenecks if it increases their discretionary power in providing energy permission.

And in 20 years, the climate change migration period will start in full.

It already has. Syrian instability started with droughts. The worse of it, is that war will always be a higher priority to oil interests and their captured governments than cooperating on human sustainability.

While every comment here seems to scream “end patents”, arm has less patent bs than other tech (rounded corners) meant to sue/prevent use. Arm works hard on developing and improving architecture and designs to offer licenses at a compelling price. Qualcomm paying as much as other licensees should be preferable to Qualcomm than bankruptcy.