this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2026
13 points (84.2% liked)

Germany - Deutschland, but in English

831 readers
1 users here now

The place to talk/ask about stuff in Germany in English.

No sock puppet discussions. (Accounts younger than 7 days which suddenly spawn in a discussion and all push the same agenda)

Please use sources for facts in discussions.

Wiki: https://lemmygermany.github.io/wiki/

Many thanks to @Vittelius@feddit.de for creating this!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
godless@feddit.org
viking@infosec.pub
Peter_Arbeitslos@feddit.org
13
Germany Is Trying to Rebuild Its Failed Russian Gas Strategy With Hydrogen (briefing.tfie.io)
submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz to c/germany@feddit.org
25 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Germany is paying for the station and paying for enough trucks to give the station some customers. That is more than solving a chicken-and-egg problem. It is buying the chicken, the egg and the first few breakfasts.

This would be less interesting if it were an isolated transport experiment. It sits at the end of a much longer effort to give Germany’s gas institutions, infrastructure and industrial constituencies a future after the collapse of Russian gas.

Gerhard Schröder remains the most visible symbol of how close the relationship became. Gazprom owned 51% of the original Nord Stream company and appointed four of the eight members of its shareholders’ committee. Schröder, who had just left the German chancellery, was one of Gazprom’s appointees and became chairman.

top 25 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] ShadowRam@fedia.io 14 points 3 days ago (3 children)

There have been 100's of years geopolitical fighting going on, (even today) over oil.

People have put out TRILLIONS in $$$ in large sophisticated long term projects like pipelines, oil-rigs, etc.

You know what has been absolutely abundant that entire time? Hydrogen.

Do you know what crazy physics technology has recently been created related to Hydrogen? None.

Hydrogen doesn't work. It's never worked, and its never going to work. The math isn't there.

Unless you are talking fusion, or some fundamentally new physics has been found that completely upends everything we know about chemistry.

Hydrogen will never be a thing. It's already being carried and store in the best possible manner. Through large chains of carbon.

[–] Einskjaldi@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

It can work for some things that need direct burnable gas. Otherwise EU will stop using polluting NG and go electric and electric only isn't good for some things. And no, there's no special reason that makes hydrogen impossible to use, it's just finicky with seals and needs more energy to produce. Green hydrogen is basically just solar power converted to chemical energy, and you can use ammonia as simple carrier liquid for long distance transit.

[–] hanrahan@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 days ago

its super hard to store, super hard to move about and is a dangerous GHG and fugitive emissions from processing and a storage are high.

it's just a distraction from the necessity of electrification and changed lifestyles

[–] FleetingTit@feddit.org 1 points 2 days ago

Hydrogen is needed for some porcesses. We just need to start producing real green H2, instead of extracting it from natural (fossil) gas.

[–] rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Is there suddenly a clean way to produce hydrogen? Because otherwise it's just extracted from natural gas, making it a fossil fuel.

[–] JensSpahnpasta@feddit.org 12 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Yes, there is. Search for green hydrogen or Power-to-Gas. It uses water and splits it into H20 and O2:

This takes a lot of energy of which a lot is wasted. But if you use renewable energy to feed the system, that's totally ok. The big problem is that those people in the german government pushing that are total fuckwits who are totally in bed with the fossil fuel companies. They will not build something that is actually green, but all of this shit is just a way to postpone the energy revolution

[–] remon@ani.social 6 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (6 children)

This takes a lot of energy of which a lot is wasted. But if you use renewable energy to feed the system, that’s totally ok.

That's just a battery but worse in pretty much every way.

[–] Wrufieotnak@feddit.org 5 points 2 days ago

As energy storage hydrogen is much worse than a battery, but where it could be a great, green replacement is as reducing agent for steel production. You need a chemical agent for the refining process in a furnace and currently carbon is used for that, producing CO2. In fact 25 % of global CO2 production is from iron and steel plants (that statistic includes all energy used in there as well though). So we definitely need a replacement for that carbon.

[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

It's useful for some things, e.g industrial applications, heating homes isn't one of them.

[–] geissi@feddit.org 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

There are steel smelters that don’t want to shut down and they don’t run on batteries.

[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

As @Wrufieotnak@feddit.org has mentioned, using a battery doesn't help much as, for producing raw iron, a reduction agent, carbon or hydrogen, is needed to absorb the oxygen contained in the ferreous oxides of the iron ore.

[–] geissi@feddit.org 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Yes?
That is the point I was making.
Did you mean to reply to someone else?

[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

I just want to emphasize that they don't run on batteries because they are unwilling to, but because they can't.

[–] Skyrmir@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

Hydrogen is a lot higher density than batteries, but nowhere on the scale of diesel.

Under about 150 mile range batteries are winning due to minimum equipment needs, above that hydrogen has a place in mobile storage.

[–] JensSpahnpasta@feddit.org 2 points 3 days ago (2 children)

It kind of makes sense: There are pipes delivering natural gas to a lot of homes here. So if you can somehow produce a lot of green hydrogen, you can just feed clean energy into the existing system without changing everything, installing heat pumps everywhere and so on. The problem is that I do not see them building that capacity to produce that green hydrogen. Those facilities are not being planned as far as I know right now

[–] lime@feddit.nu 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

there's a reason you don't see a lot of hydrogen pipelines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement

[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

According to the operators, the German gas pipelines are capable of transporting hydrogen.

[–] lime@feddit.nu 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

for a while, yeah.

[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Not really different than for natural gas:

The comparative analysis revealed that there is a high degree of agreement – including in quantitative terms – between the crack propagation relationships specified by ASME and those derived as part of the SyWeSt H2 project. To assess suitability for hydrogen service, a representative cross-section of the steels used in German and, in some cases, European pipelines was subjected to extreme operational and ageing conditions in a hydrogen environment and technically tested. Furthermore, it was found that there are no differences in terms of the fundamental suitability for transporting hydrogen compared with natural gas. The operational ageing and the required fracture toughness meet the expectations for safe availability over several decades.

https://www.ingenieur.de/technik/fachbereiche/energie/deutsche-gasleitungen-sind-fuer-wasserstoff-geeignet/

Ingenieur.de is the news outlet of the Association of German Engineers (VDI).

[–] lime@feddit.nu 1 points 3 days ago (1 children)

that's odd considering the difficulty of storing it. i wonder how they did the "extreme operational and ageing conditions" test.

[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 1 points 2 days ago

There is probably a model, like an advanced Fick's law, connecting temperature, pressure and diffusion of hydrogen into the metal lattice, that allows to accelerate the process that would take a long time in reality.

[–] Successful_Try543@feddit.org 2 points 3 days ago

It doesn't make sense, as the efficiency is gross. For heating purpose, battery storage and heat pumps are much better.

[–] Einskjaldi@lemmy.world 1 points 3 days ago

It can be stored as stable ammonia and move by tanker or pipeline, batteries are hourly to daily storage, only chemical storage can handle seasonal and annual level storage at much higher amounts. Good for winter heating or seasonal high power use. Now it is worse in ways and won't need to be used everywhere but in certain areas and uses it is great.

[–] rockSlayer@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 3 days ago

Very insightful, thanks! It still goes in a very disappointing direction politically, but it's cool that the tech is there

[–] supersquirrel@sopuli.xyz 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Certainly, are these methods efficient and practical?

... that is a different question