Letter: Hydrogen can be a useful energy carrier, but discussions about its benefits need to consider these three facts
Advanced Clean Energy Storage I, LLC will develop the world’s largest industrial green hydrogen facility in central Utah. The hub will use Utah’s unique geological salt domes to store green hydrogen across two massive salt caverns, each capable of storing 150 gigawatt hours of energy. The long-duration energy storage capability of the salt caverns will help improve resource adequacy and decrease costs by capturing excess renewable power when it is abundant and dispatching it back on the grid when it is needed. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office has closed a $504.4 million loan to the project. (Credit: Mitsubishi Power)
While the op-ed about hydrogen by Melissa G. Ballard, Roxana Bekemohammadi and Sarah E. Hunt in the Oct. 30 Tribune painted a rosy picture about hydrogen, it neglected three well known facts about hydrogen.
First, hydrogen may be the most abundant element in our universe, but it only occurs naturally on earth in compounds with other elements such as water (H2O) and hydrocarbons (coal, natural gas, and petroleum). It does not occur naturally as a singular element and must go through a production process to be in its native state on earth.
Second, hydrogen is an energy carrier (like a battery), it is not an energy source. It is not a green, renewable, environmentally sustainable source of energy, it is just a transportation carrier of energy. Third, it takes more energy to produce hydrogen (by separating it from other elements in compound molecules) than hydrogen provides when it is converted into useful energy. Hydrogen can be a useful energy carrier but that is all it is, not an energy source.
It is paramount that these facts be disclosed in any discussion of hydrogen. To not do so is a disservice to the readers of the Tribune.
Mark L. Jones, Draper
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