What's all the Hype with Hydrogen? | Opinions 

The big drawback for batteries (in terms of transportation) is they are heavy, and realistically they won't get much lighter even with the best advances in technology. If weight is an issue rather than volume H2 will win out every time. So a hydrogen powered car doesn't make much sense, but for a truck carrying high density low volume cargo, or a plane, it makes much more sense. For a train, I guess it would depend on the use case, how much load can the tracks take and do you need a lot of acceleration? Generally volume is going to be less of an issue, since you can usually make the train a bit longer if you need to. The one thing I don't want to see is H2, Battery or Diesel/OHL hybrid trains being used as an excuse to scrap or curtail rolling electrification programmes (*cough* UK DfT *cough*). I think electrification for rail is always going to be the best option if the money is there, because once it's built you can run cheaper, lighter trains with lots of power.

My hometown of Frankfurt Germany is planning to switch to hydrogen (and battery) busses over the next few years. But we have the advantage that there is a large industrial area in the western part of the city which produces hydrogen as waste byproduct, so the city will buy the waste to use in busses.

Can we just get on with building proper electrified catenary network like every other modern intercity rail system in the world, instead of jerking around with hydrogen or hyperloop? I feel like all of these hydrogen studies are a deflection to get real electrification done in the GTA and the QC to TO corridor - though I fully respect Reece bringing up this topic.

great way to store energy from wind turbines and solar panels in tanks, that can power electric generators when needed instead of coal or oil.

Currently doing a PhD in energy engineering and have been studying hydrogen for years. I think you were absolutely spot on, very concise and accurate, great video!

Great video! Living in Europe I've always been sort of skeptical about hydrogen but I definitely see a better case for it in the Americas given how vast some countries are (vs having a catenary or other means of electrification I mean)

I'm starting to see a trend where Japanese and Korean manufacturers are going towards hydrogen whereas American and Chinese manufacturers are going towards lithium battery electric. I'm not quite sure yet where the European auto-makers will start to lean too, but in this corner in the world, it seems there's been some investment from the Japanese to start snapping up hydrogen produced from both green and dirty sourced hydrogen. I was thinking Australia might do a quick production from gas or some other fossil fuel, but the Japanese import market seems to be nudging it towards solar-based hydrogen. Will be interested to see how that will turn out. That being said, hydrogen refuelling stations are pretty much at an experimental stage here so it'll be a while before any cars appear on the road beyond R&D.

I think hydrogen could be most useful complimenting renewable energy to power the grid. Use excess solar power to produce hydrogen and then use said hydrogen as a backup power source if there isn't enough wind+solar capacity. spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/green-tech/fuel-cells/solar-panel-prototype-splits-water-to-produce-hydrogen

Fascinating video. It’s unfortunate to note that hydrogen vehicles haven’t gotten as much hype as its hybrid and electric counterparts. I hope this changes in the months and years to come. (-:

I'm from Ottawa and I would like it if line 2 went hydrogen powered. And the modals of trains available OC Transpo is already familiar with. Though in the technical documents for the phase 2 expansion there is thought of the installation of electric overhead lines later down the line. I guess I'll have to wait and see.

In my view the best use for hydrogen powered vehicles is police cars and semi trucks because they have to be used nearly constantly so battery charging is impractical and you can't run overhead wires like a bus or train. Ideally though we should replace as many long distance trucking routes as possible with rail and only use trucks for the "last mile" or in sparsely populated areas

great video 👍

You should do a video comparing Battery-Electric buses and electric trolley buses

“Hydrogen: the future of Oh! The humanity!” (Sorry... had to put in my Hindenburg rerefence... someone had to...😜) Seriously, interesting analysis! ⭐️ Bottom line, hydrogen is better for industrial uses anywhere where electricity is more expensive or produced by non-renewable means. But if I can play futurologist, could it be a good investment for places like Quebec, BC and Manitoba where we can make hydrogen by hydroelectricity?

Thanks for your measured opinion. I think that eventually H2 infrastructure going to be on par gas and electricity. There are so many applications besides road transport - aviation, maritime, agriculture (ammonia), storage, and potential in steel production. It must be the part of the solution. VRE and batteries will not solve all the problems. H2 + nuclear should be a part of it.

Hydrogen trams can be an idea. (It is planned to be built in tourist attraction sites and middle sized cities in Korea, like Jeju island)

The Mercedes-Benz GLC F-Cell was, as far as I know, the only consumer available (via leasing) plug-in hydrogen vehicle. It was an SUV that could be charged at home, as well as having a hydrogen fuel tank. (The Audi H-Tron Quattro was not offered on the market, unfortunately.)

I think VIA Rail's extreme low density Western Canada services could be an interesting candidate. I don't see us electrifying those routes for quiiiiiite a while.

the biggest challenge is not how to generate(either from the current fossil fuel like natural gas or methane to the future renewable electrolysis method) nor storage(composite material solves a lot, at least toyota and hyundai could make a tank in a controllable manner on leakage/fire hazard) but the cell itself, the PEM type cell consumes a lot more platinum than typical premium petrol car's spark plug, while the platinum-less SOFC still not fully commercialize yet, it needs more industry support in order to outrun typical rechargeable battery in long-range transport

8:50 There you overlooked something about Hydrogen, yes you can store it but it's very hard to store because it is the lightest element and also the samlles element, it can even escape a tank over time because it "just" goes through the tiniest gaps within the molecular structure ot the tank itself. Hydrogen is hard to store. Also as basically everyone ever does you limit your scope of a battery to chemical batteries, which ain't the only types of battery. flywheels are coming back. Just a big chunk of metal spinning around in a vacuum to have no air resistance. In the 1940 there where even flywheel powered busses. Maybe we can see a revival of this concept. Just intressting to look into it. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrobus

I have a brilliant idea - a trailer train car with a battery that can be easily unhooked 😂

Hydrogen might work here in NZ, as we have an abundance of renewable energy. But you're right, actually producing the hydrogen is not easy. It will be interesting to see how the technology progresses.

You should start a podcast

The question is ... is it really worth it for Ottawa to buy hydrogen trains when the current Stage 2 already puts the ground work for a future electrification ?

I'm so tired about all these people talking about hydrogen as a mean to fuel cars, when hydrogen really is nothing but a way to store energy. So glad to see you address it !

Here are a few good videos (the first couple are from Real Engineering the first is older but the other one builds on it) if you're interested in more info about hydrogen vehicles: - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-f7MzFfuNOtY.html (Real Engineering) - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-7ynupYBLlyA.html (Real Engineering and builds on the first one) - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-xU-LDZ0HTGc.html (Joe Scott) - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-nuLvohkOLNY.html (SciShow) If I think of more in the next little bit I'll add them Hydrogen (in cars) doesn't make sense it would require infrastructure which would be expensive, the cells are expensive and most importantly (from a financial perspective) is that the hydrogen itself is expensive as those vids say hydrogen is heavy and batteries have a better mass to energy ratio. But it would make sense for industries like shipping and would be good for peak power production and storage.

Well, the main problems of hydrogen are that it is energetically very inefficient (compared to batteries) and it is very expensive. The only upside is the higher energy density than batteries. I think that hydrogen is a little too late and only really useful as a way to handle grid parity (using it to store overproduction of energy). If we take busses, batteries are already efficient enough that they already can beat diesel busses in total cost of ownership (because electricity is cheaper than diesel). Here in the Netherlands, the government capitalised on this by incentivising new concessionaires to buy electric instead of diesel (I believe mainly by taking the costs of charging infrastructure and providing financing). In late 2016 the first real fleets of electric busses entered service (around 100 in total) and right now around 900 of the 5200 busses in the country are battery-electric with another 400 expected to enter service within the next few months. Meanwhile, only a handful of hydrogen busses are in service and they need a lot of subsidy to even run them. By now, most urban lines can be operated by charging at a strategically located place, while 'rural' lines can be operated by charging overnight. Only the lines that use coach-like busses on the highways have not yet started electrifying, but battery technology is improving fast. As for trains, battery-electric trains are coming soon. Considering that the Flirt Akku can already reach 80km at 140km/h and that most diesel trains already reach an electrified station at one end of the line, I think by the time hydrogen trains are a realistic option battery-electric will already be a better option. Also, many countries already have committed to electrify (using overhead wiring) many of their remaining diesel lines. One factor that probably helped the fast deployment of electric busses here is that the largest bus manufacturer in the country, VDL, was ready to produce electric busses right when they were demanded and they kept adding variants based on the operators' requirements.

Enjoyed the vid thank you and pretty much agree with most of your analogy on this. I will comment on one thing though; as a Tesla owner one of the main things I constantly hear from people is "well I would like an EV but I don't want to stop for hours every few hundred km to charge it". Unless you actually road trip with an EV nobody really understands how quick the DC fast chargers are. Filling up a car with gas takes on average 8 min by the time you get the pump working and pump and finish up and pay; most people think it takes "2 min tops"; that's not true; if you have a gas car time yourself next time. With the EV a DC fast charge stop can be 15 min or less each time; efficiency wise you run the lower half of the battery pack; then you top up with just enough to make it to the next DC fast charger; sometimes the stops are 20 to 30 min but sometimes they are 10 min. Also as you pointed out battery tech is exponentially getting better. I think hydrogen for land based transportation is dead in the water. I feel it's only practical application would be for ocean going vessels where electricity isn't available for days/weeks on end.

Interesting!

Lots of problems with hydrogen mainly that you need a lot of water to power an engine...... I don't see it really being that useful for transit cuz you can run overhead lines for electricity as you said reece. Water is very heavy too. Why not just have a battery that runs intermittently with overhead wires ie certain segments to charge and certain segments that run unwired ....... IDK

TTC should use hydrogen buses

Thank, when the hydrogen locomotive came in North American, I hope you can give a update.

No need for hydrogen surface transport. It is only needed for jets and ships.

hydrogen must be made through HV resonance without electrolytes instead of Faraday's constant dc current with electrolytes.

I think that it's a good technology, but relatively limited in scope. As far as rail is concerned, I see it best used on isolated branches that are too long to be operated by battery trains but don't need as much frequency to justify the cost of overhead lines, in places that already have sustainable electricity generation. For example, the line from Nîmes to Clermont-Ferrand in France is 327 km long, but as it receives only two or three passenger trains per day, it is not electrified. As France generates 80% of its electricity from nuclear, they could probably spare some to run hydrogen fuel cell trains on this line.

It all boils down to whether we are taking climate change seriously. If so, we will go the best route to combatting that which means hydrogen everything, including trains. In this case, factors like available hydrogen fueling depots becomes an urgency which (as was the case once with electric charging stations) and cost become irrelevant. It can all be done whatever the cost.