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Cake day: July 24th, 2023

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  • Hydrogen cannot supplant batteries in mass market cars. It doesn’t make sense, primarily for reasons concerning the laws of physics.

    It takes a tremendous amount more energy to power a hydrogen car.

    Use a lot of electricity to split water into Hydrogen and Oxygen, force the oxygen to react with another substance leaving pure hydrogen, siphon it away, spend more energy compressing it to bomb-like pressures (or alternatively cooling it until it becomes a liquid, at great energy cost), transport it to hydrogen stations, pump it into cars, do reverse hydrolysis (also incurring a large energy loss) to turn it back into electricity to charge a battery to power an electric motor. [Bonus: since the battery is tiny, it can’t supply a huge amount of power instantaneously - making hydrogen cars far slower than a typical EV.]

    OR:

    Take that electricity, send it over some wires with over 95% energy efficiency, charge a battery that powers an electric motor.

    Then there’s the safety considerations for the cars because they have highly compressed hydrogen on board, the same is true for hydrogen fueling stations which cost a fortune and have an unbelievable amount of red tape. Meanwhile it’s easy and cheap to add charging points everywhere, because practically everywhere already has electricity.

    Their range isn’t even much better, because not only is the energy density really bad compared to petrol or diesel, you’re also compromised on fuel tank size due to it having to be small, spherical, unlikely to be struck in a crash (ie must be put in an inconvenient place re: car packaging) and phenomenally structurally strong, all to prevent it from exploding like compressed hydrogen likes to do.

    There’s a reason why despite every manufacturer toying with hydrogen vehicles for decades, there’s basically only the Mirai that you can actually buy, for an awful price, and it’s a shit car, while there are several hundred EVs out there right now. One is a viable car technology, and one is basically an EV with a long list of compromises.

















  • I can’t speak for everywhere, but the UK has recently banned the approval of any more North Sea oil drilling, approved several zero carbon energy projects, and is changing planning permission so that people won’t be able to block onshore wind and energy infrastructure projects. They’re also doing an ICE car ban 5 years earlier than the EU (2030).

    Then there’s a bunch of new standards for new homes built (e.g. gas boilers not allowed anymore), grants for improving home energy efficiency, and a few other policies like that.

    The UK has done a pretty great job so far of decarbonising. Despite having more technology and a population 17% higher, the UK uses less energy now than in 2002. So the UK has been willingly using less energy for years now already. Additionally, the grid has went from being mostly coal and gas to 72% emission-free, with coal being completely eradicated.

    There will still be difficulty, though. Most homes in the UK use gas central heating, and since the UK has the oldest housing stock on planet earth by a considerable margin, most houses aren’t suited for air or ground source heat pumps. I truly don’t know what the answer is for that in regards to net zero.