From an Article by Tara Patel, Bloomberg News, May 19, 2022

(Bloomberg) — Renault SA is developing a family-sized passenger car that will run on electricity for short drives and hydrogen for longer trips as part of the company’s push into fuel-cell technology.

Dubbed Scenic Vision, the vehicle will have a carbon footprint that’s 75% lower than that of a conventional EV because it uses mostly recycled materials and a smaller battery, Renault said Thursday. The company plans to put the hybrid powertrain into vehicles from around 2030, a spokesperson said.

Chief Executive Officer Luca de Meo is rolling out more battery-powered models and aims to catch up with rivals in the popular sport utility vehicle segment. He has pledged a fresh lineup as part of a turnaround made more challenging by Renault’s costly pullout from Russia.

High Costs — Still, the hydrogen push makes Renault an outlier among carmakers as the technology is still hampered by high costs and a lack of fueling infrastructure. Across all automakers, hydrogen-powered vehicles are forecast to account for just 0.1% of global production by 2029, according to research released Wednesday from climate think tank InfluenceMap.

Toyota Motor Corp. remains the biggest proponent of hydrogen, which only emits water vapor, though the world’s biggest carmaker has changed tack with plans to add battery-electric models to keep pace with the rest of the industry. BMW AG has said the technology could become an alternative for larger vehicles.

Renault said about 70% of the Scenic Vision’s materials will be recycled, including a floor made from old plastic pipes and milk containers and a fuel cell membrane using platinum from discarded catalytic converters. The car’s exterior design will mimic an all-electric model scheduled to hit the market in 2024.

From the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA),

https://ieefa.org/articles/hydrogen-not-practical-option-household-energy-use-irena

A major international energy body has warned that efforts to blend hydrogen into mains gas supplies could be costly and impractical, and push up household energy costs for minimal emissions reductions.

The new report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) warns that blending hydrogen in mains gas networks is a complicated way of cutting household emissions and would likely cost more than $US500 per tonne of emissions abated.

The findings suggest that the use of hydrogen in residential appliances like stove-tops and water heating would be prohibitively expensive, and electrification could serve as a cheaper path to cutting emissions. While the exact abatement cost would depend both on the cost to produce hydrogen and the prevailing market price for fossil gas, even dramatic reductions in the cost of hydrogen would still likely see the effective abatement cost exceed $US200 per tonne.

“Blending leads to limited CO2 benefits and to a large increase in energy cost,” the IRENA report says. “This translates into a very high cost of mitigating the GHG emissions of natural gas. Given the current production cost for renewable hydrogen, the cost may be above US$500/tCO2 for most gas prices.”

The findings suggest that hydrogen may never be able to play a major role in the decarbonisation of residential energy use, given technical limitations on the amount of hydrogen that can be blended in the mains gas supply and the comparatively higher costs.

Several Australian gas suppliers are currently trialing small volumes of hydrogen blending to demonstrate that existing gas infrastructure can be adapted for zero emissions energy supplies. But critics of such trials have argued that hydrogen blending has minimal potential to cut emissions, and they are largely being undertaken as a way of delaying the phase out of fossil gas use altogether.

[Michael Mazengarb]

More: Costly and impractical: IRENA warns against hydrogen blending in gas networks

https://reneweconomy.com.au/costly-and-impractical-irena-warns-against-hydrogen-blending-in-gas-networks/

PA Permit Violation Issued to EQT PROD CO in Forward Twp, Allegheny County
Description: Environmental Health & Safety violation issued on 5/13/2022 to EQT PROD CO in Forward Twp, Allegheny county. SWMA 301 – MANAGEMENT OF RESIDUAL WASTE – Person operated a residual waste processing or disposal facility without obtaining a permit for such facility from DEP. Person stored, transported, processed, or disposed of residual waste inconsistent with or unauthorized by the rules and regulations of DEP.
Incident Date/Time: 2022-05-13 00:00:00
Tags: PADEP, frack, violation, drilling

PA Permit Violation Issued to EQT PROD CO in Forward Twp, Allegheny County
Description: Environmental Health & Safety violation issued on 5/13/2022 to EQT PROD CO in Forward Twp, Allegheny county. 78a54 – GENERAL REQUIREMENTS – Operator failed to control and dispose of fluids, residual waste and drill cuttings, including tophole water, brines, drilling fluids, drilling muds, stimulation fluids, well servicing fluids, oil, and production fluids in a manner that prevents pollution of the waters of the Commonwealth and in accordance with 25 Pa. Code §§ 78a.55 – 78a.58 and 78a.60 – 78a.63.
Incident Date/Time: 2022-05-13 00:00:00
Tags: PADEP, frack, violation, drilling

PA Permit Violation Issued to EQT PROD CO in Forward Twp, Allegheny County
Description: Environmental Health & Safety violation issued on 5/13/2022 to EQT PROD CO in Forward Twp, Allegheny county. CSL 402(b) – POTENTIAL POLLUTION – Conducting an activity regulated by a permit issued pursuant to Section 402 of The Clean Streams Law to prevent the potential of pollution to waters of the Commonwealth without a permit or contrary to a permit issued under that authority by the Department.
Incident Date/Time: 2022-05-13 00:00:00
Tags: PADEP, frack, violation, drilling

PA Permit Violation Issued to EQT PROD CO in Forward Twp, Allegheny County
Description: Environmental Health & Safety violation issued on 5/13/2022 to EQT PROD CO in Forward Twp, Allegheny county. 91.34(A) – ACTIVITIES UTILIZING POLLUTANTS – Failure to take necessary measures to prevent the substances from directly or indirectly reaching waters of this Commonwealth, through accident, carelessness, maliciousness, hazards of weather or from another cause.
Incident Date/Time: 2022-05-13 00:00:00
Tags: PADEP, frack, violation, drilling

From Ian Palmer, Forbes, May 15, 2022

The context is transitioning from fossil energy to renewables. One key aspect of this is transport via gasoline or diesel vehicles and its transition to electric motors driven by batteries or hydrogen. The fossil fuel industry should be concerned about the efficiency and cost of sustainable transport, because that will determine the speed of the transition which will likely affect the decline of oil production and perhaps the oil and gas industry itself.

Elon Musk knows batteries. He builds them: to propel cars and trucks, at one bookend, to grid-scale behemoths that store and stabilize electrical power for hundreds of homes and commercial enterprises, at the other bookend.

Last week, May 12, 2022, Musk said hydrogen “is the most dumb thing I could possibly imagine for energy storage.” This is not the first time, as Musk has made similar negative comments in past years. A few years ago, Musk told reporters that hydrogen fuel cells were “extremely silly.”

The dumb hydrogen storage comment was a sweeping statement. Was Musk referring to grid-scale storage of electricity? Or to storage in electric vehicles — EVs such as cars trucks and buses? Or both?

Let’s take a deeper look at applications of hydrogen energy and its role in storing electricity as opposed to batteries.

>>>> ……….. >>>>

https://www.forbes.com/sites/ianpalmer/2022/05/15/is-elon-musk-right-or-wrong-to-dismiss-hydrogen-as-a-storage-for-energy/?sh=439301273ac7