Hydrogen is a stop-gap resource that is being pushed by oil companies to continue both producing destructive energy sources and slowing our transition by wasting money on less efficient projects.
"As at the end of 2021, almost 47% of the global hydrogen production is from natural gas, 27% from coal, 22% from oil (as a by-product) and only around 4% comes from electrolysis."
Everytime someone hears or talks about or supports hydrogen we should cautiously assume oil companies are funding the project and it's worse than other already established solutions.
Will there be a place for hydrogen? Yes, probably in several niche or minority cases. But it won't be good for 90% of cars, trains, energy storage, etc because in each of those situations we have a clear path to full electrification or cheaper less harmful solutions that don't require an oil/gas byproduct.
I haven't been on that train for a while but I thought the entire line was electrified, the three stations and parts of the line definitely are. Either way it doesn't make sense to me to build up hydrogen infrastructure instead of electrifying the sections of rail that aren't yet. Can't be that much in Germany. In parts where it just isn't possible for whatever reasons why not install a few batteries?
Imho hydrogen on trains is only a good idea, for long distance trains running on not electrified track. Hydrogen is more energy dense and easier to refill then a battery so a good idea for say US freight trains.
However Germany has all its mainlines electrified. In this case all three towns have electrified main stations. Battery trains are a good solution for that relativly short sections of unelectrified track, as long as charging can be done in stations. This would be the case here, as in most of Europe to be honest.
Hydrogen will be very useful as an energy storage solution that can be transported. I don't buy it for this. It makes a lot more sense to electrify rail. It already requires infrastructure, and the destination of rail needs electricity, so it should be part of the electrical infrastructure and trains can utilize that.
Where it makes sense I think is shipping. It's already on the coast, where you have access to water to produce hydrogen, and you can easily load it onto ships to sell to places with an electrical deficit. It also only makes sense when you have an energy surplus.
The issue with hydrogen is it has very poor energy density. Even when liquid, which requires extra energy to cool and maintain and it's still not energy dense. Ship size almost doesn't matter, making it a great option for transporting it. Rail cares about this less than a car, but more than a ship. I don't know if it overcomes that issue.
Particularly that it only makes sense to generate hydrogen when electricity is in surplus - because otherwise we might as well use the electricity directly to offset use of other fuels.
I don't mind hydrogen as such a storage even if it's inefficient, but I do have 3 more reasons to dislike hydrogen:
It's going to be used to whitewash fossil fuels. Look at all the colours for hydrogen. These will be mixed up because it's impossible to tell from the end product. Hell, we can't even transport polluted dirt without someone suddenly classifying it as "clean". It will be completely impossible to keep track of dirty hydrogen through the supply chain.
It will keep users dependent on expensive physical fuel distribution that serves no purpose but to transport the fuel while keeping the supplier in charge of the price.
Refueling of any kind is a massive waste of time. Sure, it takes longer to charge batteries, but at least the users don't have to watch it happening. It makes no sense for grid connected trains of all things.
So it sounds like they had their hand forced in that instance to provide the data and got a court ruling that allows them in the future to not retain that data. I would trust them.
This is how they try to portray it after their choice to comply. Fully.
They also said in the clarification thingy:
The identity and location of the activist was already known to the French authorities...
It's only by them I heard this claim.
Proton gave the IP address, person got arrested is the story I know and it's the one presented in the euronews article.
...(they had already been evicted once before for squatting, and the nature of squatting means that their location is known).
What a weird statement to make to justify giving up an IP address. Actually, I find it weird in all contexts.
Cmon… It’s a sentence linked to the next one. They are not using that as a way to justify anything, they just explained...
This is precisely the reason why I used both quotes. For me, their "explanation" is pure nonsense. Even more so due to their claim latter on in this same text, saying that:
we are activists, too.
On your question on which email provider I'm using, I could say that my activity does not demand precautions like VPN but there are some providers that I don't use. Proton is one of them, because they promised to users and delivered for police. And what did they have to say on their promises?
We will be making updates to our website to better clarify Proton Mail’s obligations in cases of criminal prosecution and we apologize if this was not clear.
This sounds to me like "sorry for making false promises, we just wanted our statement to sound cool enough to convince you to use our services".
This is good, and hopefully for micromobility, too.
I want my current car to be my last ICE car. But my ebike has been so much easier than driving for downtown activities, I'm starting to wonder if I will even need to drive much at all.
I'd probably still want an EV for longer distance travel, but that isn't necessary for day-to-day commuting.
Will this make them stop spamming me for likes and referrals even though I'm a paying customer? Maybe they can even offer me that 6TB storage tier that I've been willing to pay for but only happens to people who spread the gospel and bring in referrals.
The tone around this company is too preachy and evangelical compared to other paid services.
Great catch. It seems that since the last time I've turned off email subscriptions, they've added three more at the bottom: Drive, Pass, and VPN to individually deselect. So it's opt-in until I manually opt out. Additionally, this is inaccessible from the mobile or desktop app and I'm not sure it will turn off the top right advertising banner that shows up sometimes.
All dehumidifiers and airconditioners can pull water out of the air when the air is very humid. This water isn't very clean whilst in the air, as there is a lot of airborne pollution and bacteria in there. But with some simple treatment and filtering you could drink it. However the tray where the water collects is super dirty, it's always moist and collects all the nasties in the air and the water. Those places are breeding grounds for all kinds of bacteria and if it doesn't drain properly it's a real health risk. Legionnaires disease was named after some old folk got sick due to a faulty aircon system. So getting water from the air is one thing, cleaning that water is a whole other ballgame.
Keeping devices like this clean is a hassle and usually requires a lot more water than it ever produces, not to mention the cleaner (usually some chlorine based thing) that goes down the drain and pollutes the planet. And if you don't keep it clean, you have a major health risk. Often there are parts that are hard to get to, but get dirty anyways and are a pain to get to and clean properly. Especially since they need max surface area for the thing to work, but that means a lot of surface area to clean. And when that surface area is crammed into a small device, that means poor access.
Then there's the simple fact it costs a LOT of energy to pull the water from the air and then more energy to clean that. It's much easier to simply collect dirty water (for example ground water, surface water or even collected rainwater) and clean that water. This is just as easy to do as with the water pulled from the air, but without expending a lot of energy to collect the water. With a proper setup you can even put in salty sea water and get out clean drinking water. This works so well, most smaller islands get their drinking water from these kinds of setups that simply filter seawater (usually some kind of reverse osmosis setup is used).
The next issue is that these tiny devices are usually very inefficient due to their small surface area, where a large aircon system can pull out a lot of water with relative ease, these smaller devices can't. And if you already have the aircon running, these devices can't really compete and simply produce nothing at all. But let's say you have a pretty humid home and don't run an aircon or dehumidifier. Then the thing uses up a lot of energy, but pulls that water out of the air. But then what? Now the air is dry, so it'll pull less and less water out of the air.
Then there's the cost. As said these things use a lot of energy and you still need to clean the water after. This means the price per liter can be much higher than even bottled water. If the water you get from the centralized system in your area isn't clean enough, consider a setup to clean that, it will still be cheaper than the water this thing gets. Even in places where there isn't any water nearby and a central system isn't available, it's cheaper to ship the water by truck (either in large containers like a 1000L IBC, or with a tanker truck). This costs a lot of money, but is still cheaper than getting it from the air.
These kinds of devices have been around for decades and never work. It's a dumb concept to begin with and often the marketing is even dumber.
Bonus dumb points for marketing these things for arid poor areas for people who don't have any water. Those people don't have the money to buy them, don't have the money to run or maintain them. And they don't even work in arid areas anyways, since there is no moisture in the air to pull out. And just a friendly reminder, the only reason those people don't have water is because they are poor. Because they are poor, they can't buy water, and since this world runs on capitalism: If there is no buyer there is no product.
See, this is exactly why I hate to post about technology like this, but posts of this quality is exactly why we need articles like this posted, because this is amazing. Thank you!
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