I attended a training on the Inflation Reduction Act incentives. I’ll share what I took from it over the course of a few posts. One thing that I didn’t realize but was pleased to see is that many of the incentives are geared toward environmental justice:
Advancing Environmental Justice
Through the Inflation Reduction Act, EPA will improve the lives of millions of Americans by reducing pollution in neighborhoods where people live, work, play, and go to school; accelerating environmental justice efforts in communities overburdened by pollution for far too long; and tackling our biggest climate challenges while creating jobs and delivering energy security.
Here’s how the Inflation Reduction Act will advance environmental justice. (read here)
Probably the most important talk I listened to was one from Rewiring America.
Guess who is in charge?! This amazing woman:
Stacey Abrams rewires and inspires
“It has to be about people getting their fair share, having a better life, and having appliances that work. We need to be able to tell people why electrification matters to them.”
We could not be more excited to welcome Stacey Abrams to team Rewiring America.
=============
WASHINGTON, D.C., Tuesday, March 14, 2023 — Political leader, voting rights activist, and bestselling author Stacey Abrams is joining Rewiring America, the leading nonprofit working to electrify our communities. Abrams will take the role of Senior Counsel, helping launch and scale a national awareness campaign and a network of large and small communities working to help Americans go electric. She will also guide the organization as it builds the tools and capacity to connect Americans and their communities to machines, installers, Inflation Reduction Act incentives, and jobs in the clean energy transition.
I refrained from saying “we’re saved.” But I expect she’ll bring her ability to light a fire under folks’ asses to get things done.
There is so much information on this website it’s going to take me months to get through it. I suggest if you have questions, you will probably find the answers here:
My goal over the next couple of months is to get contractors to the house to give me estimates on what it would take to electrify my house – heat pump heat/cooling and electrify the hot water – I already had an electric cooktop. I’d love to move to induction, but that’s down the road. Maybe also see about upgrading to an actual charging outlet in my garage instead of using the 110 outlets.
The reason for getting estimates now is that the rebates and incentives have not quite been hammered out – some tax credits are available now, but most rebates won’t be ready until late 2023. And the thought is they will go fast – so if you’re ready to go when they are finally released, you can be first in line.
In the meantime, what can you do? Educate yourself on electrifying your community and talking with your representatives about how important it is. I’m planning on attending a Coffee with the Council in my town, to see where my council members stand on electrifying schools and public buildings.
Talk with friends and family about what’s available and how it can help them – reducing energy costs, improving health, etc, etc. I find that telling folks how it will save them money is often all they need to know.
More to come…I have so much bookmarked, I’ll try to weed through it and provide you with the bullet points. Until then, you can check out the resources linked in this post.
Obligatory pet photo (I know my audience). Sully is not as ferocious as he looks. He’s just annoyed I’m not petting him with BOTH hands. “Human, you have two hands, use them.”
noncarborundum
– Ze Frank, “Sad Cat Diary”
dmsilev
OK, so I have a question re: the various IRA incentives. I live in a condo building, and we’re contemplating some building-wide upgrades that, if we were a single-family house, might qualify for IRA-based rebates or credits. Electrical service upgrades to enable car charging, that sort of thing. However, I can’t seem to find any information on whether we would qualify for any rebates etc., either as a corporate entity or as individual unit owners. Any suggestions on where to look for answers?
(Some things are easy because they’re wholly-owned property of the individual condo unit owners. HVAC systems, for instance, and several of us just put in new units that do qualify for the tax credits. It’s the building-wide stuff like the master electrical feeds and the hot water heater and so forth that are the puzzle)
TaMara
@dmsilev: This is one of those things that your contractor should know – or should educate themselves on. Because my understanding is that many of the rebates will be applied to the bottom line by the contractor.
We had this with solar installations when I worked at the solar firm, we filled out all the rebate info, the rebate came to us and we applied it as part of the payment.
Disclaimer: Until the rebate rules are finalized that’s just my assumption.
Another Scott
I’ve had the RewiringAmerica.org IRA Calculator in a tab for months. Lots of helpful information there.
I also see that a heat pump water heater I’ve had my eye on has a $2400 rebate. (Kinda scary to think what it costs though.)
If the timing is ever such that I can get up on our dormer roof on a weekend without it raining, I want to do some measurements and baseline calculations of how many solar panels we could potentially put up there (there are some vent pipes we need to consider), and start getting quotes on stuff. Our electrical box is from 1963 (original), so we have lots of upgrades needed to go full electric.
I’ve got my eye on a Kia Niro PHEV to replace my 2004 VW and am scheming to try to battle with the dealers or go with CarBargains – I really don’t like playing games with people who work on commission. The all-electric range would be long enough for my commute, and it would have long enough total range for trips to see family in NC. And “free” electricity from solar would be a big plus! But, man, not having a car payment, and not shelling out a mountain of money at once is nice…
Thanks. And good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
H.E.Wolf
Congratulations to Stacey Abrams! As with blog favorite Xochitl Torres Small (hello, Geminid!), Abrams’s skills and expertise have many possible outlets – and neither woman has allowed electoral defeat to keep them from public service.
“Make the doors [shut] upon a woman’s wit, and it will out at the casement. Shut that, and ’twill out at the keyhole. Stop that, ’twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney.”
dmsilev
@TaMara: Well, with the electrical upgrade in particular, the primary contractor is actually the city (we have municipal power), and when I’ve put the question to them the response has basically been “we don’t know”. Which isn’t reassuring, because that particular corner of the city government has generally been pretty on the ball and responsive in my experience.
TaMara
@Another Scott: I have a Niro PHEV if you have questions.
TaMara
@dmsilev: To be fair…the instructions haven’t come out yet on rebates.This was my frustration with the training – it was good, but you can’t teach what the government hasn’t decided yet. Aaargh!. LOL
If it’s tax incentives, a good CPA might be able to guide you guys.
TaMara
I’m going to try to get some writing done, but I’ll check back to see what else I might be able to help with…
ETA: @noncarborundum: I love that so much
StringOnAStick
Starting this Monday, the local best reviewed energy savings company is starting 3 days of insulation upgrades to our house ($10,000; it’s a bunch of labor intensive work) and when I read about the IRA it should qualify, but when I ask them they tell me the program is through the states and it hasn’t been fully implemented yet. Plus the R’s want to remove all the energy upgrade funds from the IRA as part of their debt ceiling hostage negotiations. We’re going to change out the gas range for an induction one this year; I notice that the prices on the latter are slowly dropping. I used to love gas but there is no way to put a range hood in this house because the ceiling at that center location is 15′, and the fumes inside a well insulated and sealed house are seriously not good for you, plus I’d like to get rid of another gas using appliance. The existing one is 20 years old so you know it’s not efficient.
Kelly
The upside of the couple dozen over 100 foot tall trees we lost to the 2020 Beachie Fire is we get a LOT more sunshine. I had our home evaluated for solar panels about 10 years ago and we only received 2/3 of sunshine necessary to qualify for the tax credits and utility incentives. Time to schedule a fresh evaluation.
MomSense
I am spending earth day painting my bathroom. However I am using mostly public transportation for my commute which isn’t always convenient, but I have turned it into audio book/knitting time and it’s fine. Yesterday public transportation was free in honor of earth day so that was kind of nice.
My fare to work (about 25 miles) is $2 each way. That’s a lot cheaper than driving.
dmsilev
@TaMara: For stuff at the individual-owner level, tax credits are a big plus. Not so much for the HOA per se since the tax burden there is very minimal. For HOA-wide projects, rebates are more of interest. Thanks for the tips though.
Another Scott
@TaMara: Neato. I vaguely recall that you’ve mentioned that before.
It really seems to be about the only car that meets my wants/needs right now. (Just like my 2004 TDI VW wagon was about the only thing that met my wants/needs at the time.) A Prius Plus might be cheaper and get better mileage, but who knows when they’ll actually be available. And I want a wagon, not a swoopy sporty car or a giant heavy 4×4 truck-like SUV thing.
I assume the pooches like it, once you get them inside? :-)
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
TaMara
@Another Scott: Fits all three easily with the back seat down. Gas mileage is pretty good once you use up your electric charge. I’m usually 189 mpg on average trips, on long trips it’s about 55 to 65 mpg – I don’t recharge on the road, though I could.
And unless I’m traveling a lot, most of my trips don’t even use up my charge. Most weeks, I charge up once, maybe twice, using a 110 outlet, even though I drive almost every day.
Another Scott
@Kelly: My thinking about home solar is:
Electricity from utilities is never going to get cheaper. Home upgrade labor is never going to get cheaper either. After that, it’s a matter of figuring out how to balance your budget (now and in the future) with your concerns about energy usage.
Home solar panels are very good now, and probably aren’t going to get vastly more efficient in the near future. (There are multi-junction cells and concentrator cells and so forth that have much higher efficiency, but at much, much higher costs that are probably always going to be too high to justify compared to good silicon cells.) Prices may come down though… (Ack! LG has shut down their solar panel business!)
We’re fortunate enough to pay for upgrades without thinking too hard about it, so we need to get it done to help lessen our footprint, and to make it easier for people later on. But lots of details have to be considered before flipping the switch!
Cheers,
Scott.
trollhattan
Have two HVAC systems for main house and an addition. We swapped the older, larger gas-electric one for a heat pump system in January and the switch dropped our gas bill significantly while, of course raising the electricity bill, but by a lesser amount. Summer looms and we shall see how the AC side does versus the old one–I’m expecting a big efficiency gain.
That leaves us with two gas water heaters, one gas furnace and the gas stovetop, none of which I can see replacing “just because.” A combination of Vlad’s Big Adventure and PG&E avarice had us paying record high per-therm rates last winter, so the benefits of the new system are magnified. Summertime use is minuscule compared to heating season.
This nearly century-old house has had most windows replaced with dual-pane, insulation blown into the walls, rewiring, re-plumbing, swapping in LED lighting, etc. It’s vastly more comfortable than when we moved in and likewise, more efficient. Fighting climate change on a micro, or nano scale I guess.
Your CAISO weekend electricity supply report @9:30 a.m. has us at 60% renewables, 24% natural gas, 7% large hydro, 9% nuclear and enough surplus to have 1,500 MW exports to other states. The renewable fraction will rise as solar peaks midday.
Compare that against states getting most of their power from coal. That’s got to change.
narya
I didn’t really contemplate induction when I renovated my kitchen three years ago (though I did get a single burner to get me through the construction). I’m of mixed minds about it now: I’ve cooked on induction, both during the renovations and in pastry school, and there’s much to recommend it, and all of my pans would work. However, I’m pretty sure I’d have to pull more power into my unit for a stove, which is a non-trivial cost, and I’d have to pay the increased electric cost to use the stove (the condo association pays for gas but not electric for each unit). I also don’t really want to swap out a three-year-old stove, tbh. That, too, seems wasteful. That said, if I did need to replace it, I’d likely go for the induction. I also suspect they will increase in features, etc. over the next few years.
Burrowing Owl
A few weeks ago we replaced the gas furnace and water heater with heat pump versions, and installed a mini split for an outlying area. Much electrical work was required but the hvac company arranged for it.
The local utility group is offering hefty rebates on heat pumps right now. They are also offering a deal if the rebated work electrifies the house completely and removes the gas meter before September, those utility rebates are tripled. So no more natural gas and the rebate boost will cover costs for the electrical work.
dmsilev
@trollhattan:
It’s changing; nobody is building new coal plants in the US any more (despite Joe Manchin’s most fervent wishes) and old ones are being retired as they’re no longer competitive. Nation-wide, the amount of power generated from coal has dropped by about a factor 2 between 2011 and 2021 (DOE statistics; scroll down to the third or fourth table), and the trend is continuing.
Kelly
@Another Scott: When I first had a solar panel evaluation the total federal, Oregon and utility incentives added up to nearly my annual income tax. So the panels would have been close to free by moving all my income tax expense to the solar set up. The PNW has a lot of hydro so our utility power is relatively low carbon. PNW hydro possibilities are mostly tapped out. Solar here is a nice complement to hydro since the hydro is most available during the winter when rivers are high and solar is most available in the summer when rivers are low.
TaMara
@Burrowing Owl: Squee! If I had that option (which may still come about) I’d electrify in flash.
Congrats!!!
lowtechcyclist
I replaced my old heat pump with a new one last year. Didn’t even think about the possibility of rebates; this house has had heat pumps from the get-go. Did I miss out on something? (Maryland resident, BGE is our electric utility.)
Burrowing Owl
@TaMara: You might have it—it’s through Efficiency Works in Northern Colorado! Check https://efficiencyworks.org/homes/rebates/
Through Sept 30, rebates for all-electric homes in Estes Park, Fort Collins, Longmont and Loveland are tripled on certain upgrades.
Fingers crossed for you!
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: Last time I checked a few months ago, Honda was going to have a Honda CRV PHEV in 2023 or 2024. Have you looked at that?
My CRV is a 2005, so I am definitely thinking PHEV in a year or two, depending on incentives.
scribbler
@H.E.Wolf: I love this! Shakespeare?
Ruckus
@MomSense:
I have to travel across LA for my healthcare and driving there and back costs about $15 (or more) in my car that gets 30-40 mpg. The train and bus system costs me less than $4 and often is faster. In June it will get better because now I have to change trains twice and in June it will be reduced to one transfer, which will cut out 10-15 minutes and become quicker than driving, let alone removing the fun of driving in traffic for a total of 3-4 hrs.
TaMara
@Burrowing Owl: Oh, this is awesome – my utility does qualify, so now I’m going to spend the remainder of the day figuring out the rest. Thank you!
Other MJS
My FB algorithms send me a lot of EV news, and the electrophobe trolls are gobsmacking. Always the same stock phrases (“LOL fire”, “the grid can’t handle it”, “electricity comes from coal”, etc. etc.) as if they were genius-level astute to think of these.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: It looks like the fully-electric Prologue (made with GM) is due in “early 2024”. There’s a CRV hybrid now, and there are rumors of a hydrogen fuel cell PHEV CRV in 2024 which seems very weird (hydrogen fuel cells use chemistry to make electricity and don’t need to be plugged into grid electricity – they need hydrogen). Maybe they’re mixing 2 models, or are otherwise confused.
In either case, both are much bigger vehicles than I’m looking for. If there were a 2WD PHEV HRV, that would be very much worth looking at.
Like many others (Toyota, GM, etc.), Honda is late to the mass-production electric car game (though they had electric cars long ago). The next 10 years or so are going to be wrenching change for the world’s auto industry and we’ll have much better choices in the 2030s, but it is going to be annoying and stressful getting there.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
MomSense
@Ruckus:
LA traffic is so insane. It seems like really good public transportation would make the city so much more livable.
Taking the bus adds time to my commute but it is also much less stressful. When I get home I’m pretty relaxed and ready to deal with the evening routine – dinner dishes chores dog etc.
Geminid
@Ruckus: Have you noticed any hydrogen fuel cell powered buses yet? I read that Foothills Transit has 33 fuel cell powered buses operating in LA County now. That’s out of a fleet of about 360, with 11 being battery powered. I think most of the buses are natural gas/hybrid powered.
Burrowing Owl
@TaMara: You’re welcome! Feel free to get in touch because we just went through the process, and I was happy with the contractor we ended up using.
Stuart Frasier
@Geminid: Hydrogen is worse for the environment than just using natural gas (which is also terrible). It’s sad to see a local transit agency fall for it.
TaMara
@Burrowing Owl: I might have to…the entire process overwhelms me, though I will do it. LOL You know, saving the planet and all.
trollhattan
The long arm of the
lawfossil fuel industry knows no boundaries. “Berkeley, you hippie bastards, we’re coming! [stage whisper] Ratepayers, this is on you.”TaMara
Alright, I’ve written my 1000 words for the day on my next book, so time to close the computer and do anything else that’s not online.
Thanks everyone for the questions, information, and discussion!
Geminid
@dmsilev: Last month a DOE agency reported that in 2022, the share of electrical production contributed by renewables- solar, wind and hydro- exceeded that of coal generation for the first time. Most coal generation plants operating now will go off-line by the early 2030s.
trollhattan
@Stuart Frasier: Depends on the source, of course. “Green hydrogen” is possible but not yet a significant resource.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-fuel-basics
I’ve bicycled behind Toyota Mirais and while they sound like any electric car they have a tailpipe to discharge water vapor. I have no idea how complicated and expensive the fuel cell is.
Geminid
@Stuart Frasier: They’re not the only ones. The EU, Japan, Germany. South Korea, and the US plan major investments in green hydrogen production. There are hydrogen fuel cell powered trains running in Germany right now. Hyundai is producing hundreds of hydrogen powered trucks a year. And thanks to the Infrastructure Bill, there may even be a Hydrogen Hub coming to your area!
Burrowing Owl
@TaMara: Seriously, contact me, I’m happy to talk with you about it. I know so much more now at the tail end of the process!
The whole process was long, in part because it looks dauntingly expensive, and because we were slow. We got three bids last fall (one for geothermal but drilling is extremely expensive, the rest air-source), and then ended up doing an energy audit and getting another bid, which we used. They (HVAC) were scheduling about a month out but might be getting busier.
There is financing available through contractors, which helps with the up-front costs, and there are energy loans people can take out.
Waiting so long helped us because the triple rebates only just appeared in April.
Stuart Frasier
@trollhattan: “Green” hydrogen still uses about 3 times the electricity as battery electric. Depending on the grid, a Mirai can be putting more CO2 into the air per mile than a gasoline car, even using green hydrogen. In practice, most hydrogen is from steam reformed methane and is just a way to greenwash fossil fuels.
Stuart Frasier
@Geminid: We had a mini boom of Toyota Mirais here and have a number of filling stations (which are nearly always empty). Thankfully, they are becoming rare again, as people are waking up to the reality of $25/kg hydrogen (that is really just methane in drag).
Doug R
The good news-that line to your house is 208 or 240 volts-it gets split at the box. You may be able to go electric without much upgrading especially if you have some kind of smart box.
Geminid
@trollhattan: Hydrogen fuel cell power is unlikely to have a big impact on the automobile and light truck market. Fuel cells may have a large role powering buses and heavier trucks by 2035, though.
Stuart Frasier
@Geminid: It still doesn’t make any sense for buses. Long-distance trucking, maybe. We do need green hydrogen for industry, feedstock for synthetic liquid fuels (for aircraft and shipping), and probably for stationary storage.
Ruckus
@MomSense:
Depending on where you live in LA the Metro train system works great. All electric trains, clean, etc. LAPD or the LASO ride the trains pretty regularly so there is safety there and the vast majority of the riders use the trains to get somewhere. Now if you know LA you know there are homeless here, and not always in small numbers. But one sees very few obviously homeless on the trains. And the other day I actually saw the LAPD come on a train and announce anyone without a transit card had to get off. All fees are paid with a TAP transit card, so it doesn’t mean you swiped it boarding but you at least have to have one. About 1/3 of the slightly over fully loaded train got off. So they are serious about at least having the option of paying. I’ve been ridding the train now for a few years and it works well. But you have to live reasonably close but there is parking at every station. Some stations have 3-4 level parking lots. This system moves a lot of people.
trollhattan
@Stuart Frasier: But that’s today and the emerging technology and infrastructure seem likely to make hydrogen an important component of a future non-carbon energy portfolio, e.g., H2 production on site in lieu of battery storage at solar/wind hybrid installations. Hybrid sites are an emerging component of the California grid, offering a path to storing especially solar for distribution at night.
Burrowing Owl
@lowtechcyclist: I don’t know what your utility has (or had), sorry.
There is a list of policies and rebates by state here: https://www.dsireusa.org/ (Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency) that is a good place to start looking for anyone in the U.S.
It’s worthwhile to see what your utility says, and a good local contractor should know as well.
Stuart Frasier
@trollhattan: Generating hydrogen to use overnight would be extravagantly wasteful. Battery storage is far and away more efficient.
trollhattan
@Ruckus: We have a relatively small light rail system that is a great alternative to driving so long as one has easy access to a station and works where likewise, there’s a station.
I had that all of fourteen years at my current gig but then got transferred to an office in the burbs, the nearest LR station a couple ghoulish miles away. So I’m again car-commuting and am really impressed at the driving skill, road surface condition, how big pickups have become.
Ruckus
@Geminid:
Rode Foothill transit yesterday. Most busses are natural gas powered diesel type engines. Foothill has electric buses but I’ve never ridden one. At one station the Metro train stops in Foothill has a induction electric bus charging station. Have never seen a Foothill bus promoted as having hydrogen fuel cells to make electricity. Doesn’t mean they don’t exist.
trollhattan
@Stuart Frasier: Don’t believe you’re thinking this through–we need energy for transportation, construction, manufacturing, etc. in addition to the electricity grid, and hydrogen is a much lighter and more concentrated energy source than batteries, e.g., for heavy equipment and aircraft.
Hydrogen will be part of the portfolio. How to best generate, store and transport it is unfolding.
trollhattan
@Ruckus: Similar, our buses are CNG–they ditched the diesels more than a decade ago.
IDK how it pencils out costwise–do transit districts lock in the natural gas price by contract or is it as volatile to them as it is to consumers? Our price per therm has ranged from $1.41 to $3.24 in the last 18 months.
H.E.Wolf
Yes! Rosalind, in “As You Like It”, speaking for smart women through the centuries. :)
[Sorry for long delay; was offline.]
Ruckus
@Stuart Frasier:
I believe that the natural gas/diesel buses are crossovers from using diesel fuel. They are significantly cleaner. May not be great but all of our lives have to transition to different methods of transportation and there will likely never be one gigantic step from crappy to perfect, especially as perfect doesn’t exist. But better is better. I use to live on a hill at the west end of the 210 freeway and on a clear day we could see Catalina. That’s over 50 miles away. In the 11yrs I lived in that home, 1984-1995, I could see Catalina twice. Now it would be far, far more often. Shit can get better and it is. Our cars are more efficient, electric cars are here, our homes/businesses are getting cleaner, we are making progress. Not fast enough but far faster than I could have imagined when I was younger and the sky was brown every day.
Geminid
@Ruckus: Foothills Transit only brought its first fuel cell bus into service last fall, but they say they are operating 33 now. That’s out of over 350 buses total
I read that Alameda County has had fuel cell powered buses since 2003.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
It will and is working.
But.
First, it takes time and often longer than it ever should.
Second, we have to have replacements for the crappy old. Those replacements will never be fantastically great but the can be miles better. We just don’t have the technology for dramatically better. We can all switch to electric vehicles but the batteries use precious chemicals/minerals. We will also have to generate and store electricity and those batteries use precious chemicals and minerals. Yes there are better battery technologies being figured out that use more common materials and solar panels can and do help a lot but not everyone can have them. I live in an apartment complex with separate gas and electric service for each unit. Solar cells could only sell electricity back to SCE. Is that going to work? And solar cells are expensive and use chemicals/minerals.
We live in a world that works with what we’ve got and what we can pay someone to provide. And they have massive investments/upkeep in infrastructure. How do we square that circle?
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
I have no idea how complicated and expensive the fuel cell is.
It isn’t all that complicated but expensive it is because of what it uses and production. I built tools that made mostly consumer products for decades and the cost of the products the tools made was almost insignificant to the cost of the product to the end user. But the cost of production of a tool that makes millions of bottles or other products and the machines they run in was not anywhere near insignificant. I had one machine that cost $256,000. and another that cost $190,000. I had 5 other machines in a one person shop and that expensive machine could run 24 hrs a day – unmanned. A factory that builds cars costs just a bit more and the factories/employees that build the machines that build the parts are not in the least insignificant. Now we don’t all purchase a new car every 2 or 3 yrs and cars now work and last longer because they can be build better because of progress, such as that $256,000. machine that worked to extremely small tolerances necessary to build better products. Almost all of todays machines can build better products because they are built better because better machines and computers. It’s a circle, life always is and always will be.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
Will the rebates apply retroactively? I just got a hybrid electric (heat pump) water heater to replace my 15 year old gas one. I knew about the tax credit and the local utility has a $700 rebate. With those incentives it was only about $1,509 more than another conventional gas water heater (and was cheaper than gas tankless) so it was a no brainier. The energy cost savings should get the difference paid off pretty quickly and then it’s all savings. But I’d always take more money back if possible.
I would have replaced the water heater now anyway as it was on borrowed time. They can go anytime after 10 years so I’m lucky I made it as long as I did.
Stuart Frasier
@Ruckus: Yeah, the natural gas buses here in LA have made a huge difference. Metro has started replacing them with battery electric buses, but that will take years. The biggest deal is going to be zero emission vehicles at the ports. A staggering amount of our smog comes from diesel semis idling at the ports.
Stuart Frasier
@trollhattan: Hydrogen doesn’t really save you that much weight, as the tanks to contain hydrogen at 700 bar are very heavy. It’s probably impractical for anything other than short haul aircraft. We’re going to need synthetic liquid fuels for aviation. Perhaps we could use hydrogen for shipping and long distance trains.
Another Scott
@Stuart Frasier: I generally agree with you that hydrogen should probably only have niche uses in transportation, e.g. where nothing else works. Fuel cells were used on the Space Shuttle and probably will be used on similar large structures in space (where getting enough solar panels in place is difficult or impractical).
It takes a lot of energy to break water apart, and if you’re going to use whatever energy you get to power an electric motor anyway, it makes more sense to keep that energy as electricity than to convert into hydrogen to feed into a fuel cell to turn it back into electricity. (Magic catalysts that break up water depend on clean water, etc., and it takes energy to make clean water and energy to make the catalysts…)
Hydrocarbons are amazing things that have lots of uses. Burning them is hugely wasteful, in addition to destroying the planet. But if one needs fuel for combustion, it’s hard to beat the energy density and technological convenience of liquid hydrocarbons. Renewable hydrocarbons aren’t a panacea but are probably part of the solution (if we can take enough CO2 out of the air fast enough).
Hydrogen has lots of potential issues we’ve discussed here (e.g. inevitable leaks (hydrogen is a tiny molecule) changing the atmospheric chemistry and affecting how long methane acts as a greenhouse gas, etc.).
For aircraft, there could be lots of issues besides the need for cryogenic tanks in the fuselage:
Yeah, I’m not betting that putting more ice and water vapor in the atmosphere is a solution. The atmosphere has evolved over billions of years. Changing one component cannot help but cause ripple effects…
For sea transport, there’s increasing work being done to bring back sails.
Lots of outside-the-box thinking is going on, and that’s good.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Chris T.
@Another Scott:
One other important consideration: it’s a good idea to do this at the same time as replacing the roof. There are a number of reasons this is synergistic but the most obvious issue is simple: suppose the roof itself has 5 or 10 years left. You put a bunch of panels up and … 5 or 10 years later, you have to take the panels down first, then put them up again after. (The panels themselves have a 30+ year lifetime, like most roofing materials.)
Of course it’s not always possible to join these up at the hip, but if you can, do it.