TeslaElon Musk, the CEO of Elon Musk reiterated his doubts regarding hydrogen’s role as part of the plan shift to a more sustainable world. 

Interview at the Financial Times Future of the Car summitMusk was asked Tuesday if hydrogen played a part in the acceleration of fossil fuels’ transition.

He answered, “No.” “I really can’t emphasize this enough — the number of times I’ve been asked about hydrogen, it might be … it’s well over 100 times, maybe 200 times,” he said. It is important to know that hydrogen is not a good choice for energy storage.

Musk continued his argument and stated that hydrogen would need to be stored in liquid form. Musk stated that if hydrogen were to be kept in liquid form, then “larger” tanks are required.

International Energy Agency calls hydrogen a versatile energy carrier. It can be applied in many sectors including industry and transport.

According to the IEA, hydrogen is “one the top options for storing power from renewables” in 2019. It looks promising that it will be a cost-effective option to store electricity for days, weeks and even months.

The Paris-based organization added that both hydrogen and hydrogen-based fuels were able to “transport energy from renewables over long distances — from regions with abundant solar and wind resources, such as Australia or Latin America, to energy-hungry cities thousands of kilometres away.”

Musk is a master of history. expressing strong opinions about hydrogen and hydrogen fuel cells.

When the topic was brought up in a conversation with journalists at Automotive News World Congress, the Electric Vehicle Magnate called hydrogen fuel cells “extremely stupid”

His tweets were published in June 2020 “fuel cells = fool sells,”  adding in July of that year: “Hydrogen fool sells make no sense.” Judging by his comments this week, he remains unconvinced about hydrogen.

According to him, “It doesn’t naturally occur on Earth. So you have either to split water using electrolysis or crack Hydrocarbons.”

“When cracking hydrocarbons you haven’t really solved the fossil fuel issue, and electrolysis efficiency is very poor.”

Most hydrogen production nowadays is done using fossil fuels. The other method is electrolysis. This involves the use of an electric current to split water into hydrogen and oxygen.

This process is called green hydrogen if the electricity comes from renewable sources such as solar or wind.

In recent years, major corporations and business leaders have shown interest in electrolysis-based hydrogen projects. However, Musk seems to be averse.

“The efficiency of electrolysis is … poor,” he told the Financial Times. It takes a lot energy to split the hydrogen and oxygen. Then you have to separate the hydrogen and oxygen and pressurize it — this also takes a lot of energy.”

“And if you have to liquefy … hydrogen, oh my God,” he continued. “The amount of energy required to … make hydrogen and turn it into liquid form is staggering. This is probably the dumbest thing I can imagine to store energy.

There are many points of view

Musk is dismissive regarding hydrogen’s contribution to the energy transition. However, other powerful voices believe differently. Anna Shpitsberg is the deputy assistant secretary for Energy Transformation at U.S. Department of State.

During a recent panel discussion moderated by CNBC’s Hadley Gamble, Shpitsberg called hydrogen “a game-changing technology that speaks to a variety of other sources … because it can underpin nuclear, it can underpin gas, it can underpin renewables, it can clean a good portion of it and so can CCUS [carbon capture utilization and storage].”

And elsewhere, Michele DellaVigna visited February. Goldman Sachs’The EMEA Region’s leader in commodity equity, highlight the important role he felt it would have going forward.

He stated, “If we are to get to net zero we cannot do so through renewable energy.”

DellaVigna said, “We require something that plays today’s role in natural gas, especially to manage seasonality and intermitency. That is hydrogen.”

According to him, the secret was “produce it with no CO2 emissions.” That’s why when we speak of green we also talk about blue hydrogen.

Blue hydrogen refers to hydrogen produced using natural gas — a fossil fuel — with the CO2 emissions generated during the process captured and stored. It has existed since. a charged debateBlue hydrogen’s role in society’s decarbonization.

DellaVigna stated, “Whether it’s with electrolysis or carbon capture, it is necessary to create hydrogen in clean ways.” And once we have it I believe we can create a solution which could be, in the future, 15% to 15% of all global energy markets. This would mean that it will be… over one trillion dollars annually.