> „Seit 2023 betreiben wir nun einen Bitcoin-Node und auch Bitcoin-Lightning-Nodes, und voller Stolz möchte ich ein kleines Geheimnis verraten: Wir werden bald in die digitale monetäre Photosynthese einsteigen“, so Röder.
deepl.com translation:
> "We have been operating a Bitcoin node since 2023 and also Bitcoin Lightning Nodes, and proudly I would like to reveal a little secret: We will soon be entering the digital monetary photosynthesis," says Röder.
> .. has a compact hydrogen generator in its product portfolio, which can produce 20 g of hydrogen from 200 ml of purified water in around five-to-six hours.
> .. that hydrogen is transferred to a 25-cm-tall (9.8-in) bottle-like container at an internal pressure of 1 MPa. Popping one of these containers into the frame of one of the company's HYRYD ebikes feeds the onboard 180-W fuel cell and offers up to 60 km (37 miles) of range. Then it's just a case of removing a spent container and replacing it with a fresh one, which is said to take just 3-10 seconds.
> .. by mining bitcoin you invest directly in money creation, that is, there's no hiring people, no new business creation, no research aimed at product development, therefore much less knowledge and by extension a lot less jobs.
IMO your point is somewhat valid, though "no new business creation" is obviously an exaggeration. Every application of some technology (Bitcoin mining, to mention just one aspect, is highly technological, as are other aspects of putting the equipment somewhere and operating it) involves a very deep supply/maintenance chain, which diffuses investments through society, in part local, in part elsewhere.
I would agree that with Bitcoin mining, there may be less local investment in broader ranges of businesses on average, than with many other kinds of investments. But local development of business/society is a complex topic with many many aspects generating all kinds feedback, so it's IMO very hard to make general and yet truthful statements about this.
There's another aspect that comes to my mind: in a way, letting people invest directly in money creation, as you put it, can be a benefit to the environment. How so?
Money being saved instead of being reinvested or spent immediately is effectively people taking their feet off the gas pedal of the economy. As long as the worldwide economy is still > 80 % fossil carbon based (energy wise that is, material wise it might even be more), deceleration should be mostly a benefit for the ecosphere/environment.
Assuming you can just store it as piles of iron dust (somehow shielded from air/oxygen) and assuming a gross density of 5 t/m³ for iron dust you'd get a volumetric energy density in the ballpark of 10,000 kWh/m³.
Methane appears convenient at first glance, yes. Can be burnt in regular turbines, stoves, even some cars.
But is it really the overall best way to store hydrogen?
Methane has a rather high climate impact, compared to CO2. So if you're taking CO2 to synthesize methane from hydrogen, any leakage afterwards is much worse than leaking CO2.
Why not use salt caverns (which are used to store natural gas and AFAIK can also store hydrogen directly) for seasonal storage at relatively low pressure?
And if you're going to synthesize some other molecule from H2, why not make ammonia instead?
There's already an ammonia powered FCEV semi (amogy.co).
> .., you are going to have a bad time competing with battery storage.
According to what I read here and there, battery storage won't be able to compete with chemical storage for the seasonal aspect, unless it becomes another order of magnitude cheaper or even more.
Also, for seasonal storage over months, batteries don't really make sense due to loss through discharge, right?
I think the big deal for power-to-gas methane isn't as energy storage, but as a feed stock for agrochemicals. There are just way too many cheaper and more efficient storage methods for electricity like pumped hydro and battery storage.
Ammonia is still only about 50% round trip efficient and I'm sure it would be a huge part of the demand for green hydrogen production. But once again, ammonia is more useful as an agrochemical than as an energy storage medium.
With regards to seasonal storage, it isn't as big of an issue as you would think. Especially since seasonal declines in solar tend to coincide with seasonal increases in wind power.
> There are just way too many cheaper and more efficient storage methods for electricity like pumped hydro and battery storage.
Pumped hydro is cheaper and more efficient. But AFAIK there isn't much potential for new capacity in areas where it'd be needed.
Batteries are more efficient. But cheaper per kWh stored for 6 months than power-to-gas-to-turbine? I don't think so.
At say USD 500 per kWh battery, 1 GWh would cost USD 500 MM.
But seasonal storage is likelier in the TWh magnitude. 500 billion then.
550 MW electrolyzers (* 0.5 a * gas turbine efficiency 0.4 = ~ 1 TWh electricity), methanation plants, 2.5 TWh salt caverns and say 5 GW gas turbine plants to store 1 TWh for the 6 months that have less solar+wind than the other 6 would cost a lot less than 500 billion I assume.
> .. ammonia is more useful as an agrochemical than as an energy storage medium.
I think this will change.
You don't transport/consume the petawatts of the world's deserts via HVDC to somewhere to 100 % immediately use them. You'll ship them in the form of some molecule. Which could well be ammonia.
> With regards to seasonal storage, it isn't as big of an issue as you would think.
The combination of PV/wind isn't perfect though. The more of it there is, the larger the storage needed to flatten the seasonal fluctuations.
It comes down to whether one assumes that either (A) electricity demand will adapt to some seasonal pattern (meaning that economic activity might fluctuate in synchrony) or (B) that economic activity will drive deployment of technology such that electricity consumption can be mostly even throughout the year.
> In its analysis of different zero-emissions rail technologies, Caltrans found that hydrogen trains, powered by onboard fuel cells that convert hydrogen into electricity, had better range and shorter refueling times than battery-electric trains, which function much like electric cars. Hydrogen was also a cheaper power source than overhead wire (or simply “electrification,” in industry parlance), which would cost an estimated $6.8 billion to install on the state’s three main intercity routes.
> Electrifying all 144,000 miles of the nation’s freight rail tracks would cost hundreds of billions of dollars, according to a report by the Association of American Railroads (AAR), ..
> Caltrans has a long-term plan to dramatically increase rail service and speeds, which might eventually require electrification by overhead wire, also known as a catenary system. But at least for the next couple of decades, the agency believes, hydrogen is the most feasible way to meet the state’s ambitious climate goals. The money, the political will, and the stomach for a fight with the freight railroads and utility companies just aren’t there yet.
It baffles me, how people pretend like they're not responsible. Sure, Exxon has probably done lots of damage that could have been prevented through how they operate. But how can one be so childish to try and put all blame on the company.
How about this comparison?
You buy a t-shirt at a local shop of some renowned chain. On the label it says "Sustainably produced .. responsibility .. fair trade ..". But in fact it's one of those garments that are sewn in some sweatshop in Bangladesh by underage children. Either your renowned chain is fooling you, or some other company further up the supply chain.
Now who's the bad guy here? Who's responsible for the bad outcome?
No, it's not you buying the t-shirt, since you had reason to believe everything is fine. Yes the company's the bad guy. Or the governement, because they apparently didn't do enough checks and apply sufficient fines. But it's not you, since you intentionally bought a product that specifically advertises being less harmfull.
--
Now compare this to the following case, where you buy something else, also with a bad outcome.
You drive your car to the gas station and fill up the tank with some regular gasoline. Supplied by Exxon. In this case the bad outcome isn't child labour but instead the damage done to the environment from the whole supply chain and also from you finally emitting the CO2 by putting your foot on the pedal.
See the difference between the two cases?
The difference is: with the t-shirt, you were acting in good faith, believing your purchase didn't do any harm you didn't know about. So the child labour is not really your fault.
When you drive to the gas station on the other hand, to get yourself some gasoline, you are 100% absolutely certainly aware of the negative consequences your purchase will have on the environment. There is no sticker there, claiming the gasoline will not burn to CO2. It is 100% YOUR decision to buy the gas and burn it in your car, producing the negative outcome for the environment. If you did not buy the gas and if everyone else didn't buy the gas either, Exxon and the other companies would have a hard time making a business out of it.
Let me put it differently: you as the customer specifically bought the gasoline. You know the gas isn't some carbon neutrally produced e-fuel. Still, you bought it. There's no mysterious other way that Exxon should have produced the gas so that it magically combusts CO2-free in your car. You're not being fooled into thinking that the stuff you buy just burns to rose perfume. You made the request "Please give me some of this liquid carbohydrate mixture that turns the engine of my car while releasing CO2" and Exxon fulfilled it. The emission of CO2 doesn't happen because Exxon coerced you to buy their gas. It happens because you chose to drive a car running on gas.
You could have chosen the bicycle instead. Not Exxon's fault you didn't.
> .. "no BTC, more energy storage and shifting existing production" ..
The underlying claim to this statement is: more storage could easily be built because it is economically feasible.
Which is - apparently - not the case.
Apparently, the end consumers of electricity (private households, businesses) are not willing to pay enough money for more storage. Or the other way round: storage is too expensive for it to be deployed at a significantly greater scale than it currently is.
Cheap electricity storage is a tough problem. If storage was much cheaper, we'd see much more of it being deployed.
As always, politics has all the levers to set the direction here. Subsidize storage massively and more storage is what you'll get.
What politics can not do through such policies: lower the overall cost of storage for the consumers of electricity (apart from stimulating effects such as economies of scale, ..). Why? Because the subsidies will still be paid by the consumers in their role as tax payers.
You don't get around the fundamental principle that everyone is sensitive to prices. If electricity storage were cheaper, we'd have more of it.
> Not if someone paid me to do it. That's the point. If there was money in hauling ACs around the US and running them on the cheapest electricity the local market could provide, we'd have exactly the same false economy.
How is such a purely hypothetical scenario useful as an argument?
It's like saying: "If nobody ever did physical harm to anybody, we could get rid of some part of law enforcement." Not useful because it's simply not the case and very likely never will be.
> They also appear to be sufficiently profitable on "retiring coal plant" prices[1], which undermines any kind of unique incentivization of renewals argument.
Bitcoin mining incentivizes any kind of generation that cannot be consumed by a more profitable process or use case.
If the price of electricity on a mostly fossil powered grid is low enough, then Bitcoin mining will be profitable.
Same goes for a mostly renewables powered grid.
There are two ways, politics can handle this:
A) Impose a high enough carbon tax on fossil generation. This will lead to higher electricity prices for the fossil grid, possibly making Bitcoin mining unprofitable. But it will also make other uses of electricity unviable.
B) Regulate that Bitcoin mining is prohibited under certain conditions (location, grid generation mix, ...)
B doesn't appear wise to me. Since it's highly subjective what kind of energy/electricity use one deems useful/legitimate. I personally find the use of a > 100 horsepower private car or a private jet totally illegitimate and would welcome regulation that drastically hinders these absurd uses of energy.
> „Seit 2023 betreiben wir nun einen Bitcoin-Node und auch Bitcoin-Lightning-Nodes, und voller Stolz möchte ich ein kleines Geheimnis verraten: Wir werden bald in die digitale monetäre Photosynthese einsteigen“, so Röder.
deepl.com translation:
> "We have been operating a Bitcoin node since 2023 and also Bitcoin Lightning Nodes, and proudly I would like to reveal a little secret: We will soon be entering the digital monetary photosynthesis," says Röder.