Direct solar production of hydrogen head been around since the 1970s. Wake me up when they can produce pressurised hydrogen at a competitive cost. And even then, hydrogen will be so expensive to transport, store, distribute and use that it won't be used outside industrial settings.
There isn't :-)
I'll be in Oz for the last week of May. Will no doubt be a hot topic.
First time back in SF since COVID. Riding around in a Waymo, listening to Chemical Brothers Galvanize with the sound cranked up. Goosebumps.
It was a privately-held company, with no evidence of secondary sales (investors selling shares). I highly doubt that anyone got any money out. Nah, some hobbyists just milked cash off of a bunch of fools and bureaucrat pseudo-VCs, so they could pay themselves to eff around with toys for a few years.
There are no smart investors in a hydrogen bike company. I bet no one made money from this joke in 22 years except for management, lawyers and PR flacks.
I thought Birol was clear about what he expected as long-term responses: renewables, nuclear and EVs. He also - rightly - cautioned that nations with domestic oil and gas would increase production, and that short-term coal would benefit too. And the IEA has published a report on demand reduction.
Today's #HydrogenSoufflé is from France, where hydrogen motorbike maker Pragma Industries has gone into liquidation after 22 years. No relation to Pragmacharge (which I co-founded) working to open what we think will be Europe's largest eHGV charging hub this summer. www.epochtimes.fr/pragma-recha...
Michael Liebreich, recording an episode of Cleaning Up with Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the IEA, at the IEA office in Paris on 19 March 2026.
This week on @cleaninguppod.bsky.social, we go behind the scenes with the man coordinating the response to the Gulf crisis. I travelled to Paris to meet Fatih Birol, Exec Director of the IEA, just a week after the release of 400m barrels of oil from its Strategic Reserve. youtu.be/hmHIrtBZIAg?...
Michael Liebreich, recording an episode of Cleaning Up with Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the IEA, at the IEA office in Paris on 19 March 2026.
This week on @cleaninguppod.bsky.social, we go behind the scenes with the man coordinating the response to the Gulf crisis. I travelled to Paris to meet Fatih Birol, Exec Director of the IEA, just a week after the release of 400m barrels of oil from its Strategic Reserve. youtu.be/hmHIrtBZIAg?...
Michael Liebreich, recording an episode of Cleaning Up with Fatih Birol, Executive Director of the IEA, at the IEA office in Paris on 19 March 2026.
This week on @cleaninguppod.bsky.social, we go behind the scenes with the man coordinating the response to the Gulf crisis. I travelled to Paris to meet Fatih Birol, Exec Director of the IEA, just a week after the release of 400m barrels of oil from its Strategic Reserve. youtu.be/hmHIrtBZIAg?...
Superbly well-written piece. Thanks.
Yes. You can be sure that in the domains I listed, clean solutions will be more expensive than fossil, even in 2050, because of physics. If you disagree you should put your energy into developing the competitive solutions you believe in rather than complaining about those who don't share your faith.
Try steel, try concrete, try high-temperature heat, try aviation, try shipping, try long-duration storage. What's the point in pretending all decarbonization is cost competitive when it obviously isn't?
But they have to buy the equipment, build the grid, find the finance, do the maintenance, etc. You're making a point about national balances of payments. My point is that all energy cost is mainly capex plus a bit of opex, whether the resource is from the sun, air or underground.
Thank you Hungary.
For this week's episode of @cleaninguppod.bsky.social I sat down with Pierre Wunsch, Governor of the National Bank of Belgium and member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank. What is the real cost of net zero? Is it inflationary? And much more. www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2xS...
#FreeTheModels Indeed!
British intellectuals are not known for their grasp of physics.
Last chance to help my mum reach a record in her final month in business!
Today's #HydrogenSoufflé comes from Westminster. Just three months after Joe Bamford, chairman of UK hydrogen (and electric) bus-maker Wrightbus, was awarded a CBE "for services to innovating the clean hydrogen economy", a transport minister reads hydrogen buses the last rites.
Thanks Robert. Apparently you don't get a CBE for reminding people that the laws of physics have a say in energy policy! I trust you are well.
I'm waiting by the phone!
Today's #HydrogenSoufflé comes from Westminster. Just three months after Joe Bamford, chairman of UK hydrogen (and electric) bus-maker Wrightbus, was awarded a CBE "for services to innovating the clean hydrogen economy", a transport minister reads hydrogen buses the last rites.
Go spend €800 billion of your own money on hydrogen. You'll find you end up with clean fertilizer and that's it. You have no idea the scale of hydrogen's cost problem, even though a schoolchild could calculate it for you. Now trot on, I'm done.
Some folks want to do something that makes no economic sense and are asking for public money. And that's your rationale. Seriously. 80% of hydrogen plant capex is heavy engineering. There is no cost curve that makes that something you use a fraction of the time. Stop wasting your time and mine.
My mum is turning 95 and calling time on her career as an entrepreneur. A premature newborn in Sierra Leone is being given a chance at life thanks to solar power and batteries. Two women, two stories.
mliebreich.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-...
Do the maths. "systematic solar overproduction May to July" = ~4 hours per day x 90 days. 360 hours of free electricity = 8,400 hours of not-free electricity. There is a reason not one (non-toy) hydrogen plant has ever been built to run on surplus solar anywhere in the world.
This is such nonsense. Denmark uses 0.43 MT of aviation fuel each year. Making 0.43MT of e-jet fuel would require strong 40TWh of electricity - more than Denmark's entire power demand. And the EU's figures show e-jet costs 12x kerosene, with no plan to reduce it to any vaguely affordable cost.
