Hydrogen and fuel cells are fossil fuel burn by another name?

Not so sure...our lungs are also using lots of air elements and our estomac do a lot worse when using red meat?

All living things are using elements produced by nature.

ICEVs, CPPs, NGPPs and many others are among the worst culprit?

sd:

You do not apparently differentiate between power which can be supplied on demand, such as hydrogen, and power which is not such as electricity from solar etc.

As EP argues here, nuclear power is a different matter, as it is 24/7.

Solar and wind however are not.

"The total hydrogen dispensed includes on-site production as well as hydrogen supplied by the Linde Group."

The Linde Group is one of the largest gas suppliers in the world...I'll bet their hydrogen comes from reforming natural gas.

This is the old 'foot in the door game' to get people to adopt clean energy buses, when in reality what they are accepting is something entirely different; in this case, it's hydrogen manufactured using fossil fuels.

We read about the good success battery buses are having in replacing diesel and CNG buses. Why not build on this success and not throw s**t in the game by slowing down progress with this lie. If you want to run buses off sunshine, it is easier to charge batteries directly rather that waste energy with the inefficiency of using hydrogen. Hydrogen makes no sense when compared to directly charging batteries.

sd said:

'We do not have a surplus of "renewable" power so it makes more sense to put whatever "renewable" power is available into the grid and back off the fossil fuel generation a little instead of going thru a number of inefficiencies of generating, compressing, and transporting H2.'

Run the numbers on hydrogen from renewables and they in the same ballpark as fossil fuels for efficiency even allowing for compression and so on.

There is not a straight cut off point for having a surplus of renewables, it often depends on the time of day, the season and so on.

Even should it often be more economic to produce hydrogen from NG, note the compression in this article from solar.

Reformation can also be done using solar thermal, which is inherently more efficient than pv as there is no change of state.

So the answers are not something clear cut, which an absolute determination can be made for what is most efficient or economic in all times and places, in all latitudes and geologies.

For instance landfill etc has enormous potential, as does agricultural waste.

With process heat supplied by renewables, then we can certainly start looking at energy including transport self sufficiency for vast areas of the mid west etc.

So lets see how it goes instead of jumping to conclusions.

and Davemart said:

"Run the numbers on hydrogen from renewables and they in the same ballpark as fossil fuels for efficiency even allowing for compression and so on."

So what? This is not an "apples to apples" comparison. You need to compare hydrogen from "renewable"
energy with batteries charged by "renewable" energy.

Nick,
The 100g per kg does not take into account the carbon used to make the drills, pumps, tankers, fuel and refining that goes into gasoline.

Roger, when you say the overall life-cycle energy consumption of BEV and FCV are comparable, do you mean the total energy consumption of manufacturing and operating the vehicle?

What size BEV battery? Are you including the carbon fiber of the H2 storage tanks?

@SJC: You wrote:

The 100g per kg does not take into account the carbon used to make the drills, pumps, tankers, fuel and refining that goes into gasoline.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, but in any case, the larger point is that life cycle analysis really needs to consider the full life cycle of an energy delivery system. For instance, solar panels can take years to 'repay' the energy required to make them, not even considering racking materials, construction, etc. etc. Then you have to consider how long they last before you need to replace them, ongoing maintenance, etc. Same goes for wind or nuclear or hydro or the various fossil systems. Just looking at 'well-to-tank life cycle' is not giving the full picture.

Seems to me you need to compare systems based on their full life cycle.

@ECI,
Let's discuss lifecycle energy consumption between a long-range BEV vs an even longer-range FCEV.
Source for how much it takes to make Li-ion battery include the following reference from CARB, on page 7,
environment.ucla.edu/media/files/BatteryElectricVehicleLCA2012-rh-ptd.pdf

On the graph on page 7, which shows that it takes 100,000 MJ of energy to make a 300-kg battery pack. A Tesla pack weighing nearly 600 kg would take 200,000 MJ to make.
Life-time electricity consumption is 380,000 MJ to power the vehicle. That is assuming 55%-efficient conversion of NG by NG power plant. A Tesla Model S at 3 kWh per mile will consume 60,000 kWh at 180,000 mile lifespan. 60,000 kWh x 3,600 kJ/kWh = 216,000 MJ of Solar or Wind energy.

By contrast, an ICEV only showed 10,000 MJ to make the engine and transmission.

So, a Tesla Model S would required 200,000 MJ to make the battery pack + 216,000 MJ of RE consumption + 30,000 MJ to make and to recycle, and transport the vehicle to the customer = 446,000 MJ for total lifecycle energy consumption.

A FCEV consumes 1.54 times the energy of the BEV, so 216,000 MJ x 1.54 = 332,000 MJ. Assuming that it takes twice as much to make the FC and the H2 tanks vs engine + transmission, so 20,000 MJ, plus the 20,000 MJ for recycling and transportation, and a FCEV would have a life-cycle energy consumption of 332,000 MJ + 40,000 MJ = 372,000 MJ. This is quite less energy consumed in its lifecycle to the long-range BEV with a Tesla-size battery pack of 90 kWh.
446,000 MJ - 372,000 MJ = 74,000 MJ less energy consumption in the FCV vs BEV.

The Tesla is made of aluminum, which is far more energy intensive than the steel in the Mirai, and that fact is not even considered in this comparison!

The Carbon-fiber tank should have an energy content similar to coal, at 24 MJ per kg. Assuming it would take twice this to make per kg, or 48 MJ per kg, then the 90 kg tanks would require 4,320 MJ to make.

Given the extraordinary cost of "renewable" H2 over the basic cost of its energy input, I think the losses in the system are going to be a lot higher than ~40%.  The LCA must be recalculated accordingly.

Because AC Transit is not claiming credits for its solar electricity, calculates a CI of 0.00 gCO2e/MJ for this pathway based on lifecycle analysis conducted using the CA-GREET 1.8b model.

o_0

Obviously this analysis does not include the energy investment in the PV panels or the electrolysis, compression and storage systems.  Since it is using obviously faulty system boundaries it must be considered bogus.

The gas is obtained from crude glycerol – a by-product of biodiesel production – at a dedicated pilot plant at Linde’s gases centre in Leuna.

The triglyceride feedstock is a very limited resource, so the ability of glycerol-derived H2 to meet prospective demand must be documented for any such claim to be taken seriously.  I'm sure you can build an engine to run on Chanel No. 5 as well, but you'd be a fool to do it other than as a joke.