Technology

Biodiesels are still better than diesel and the stuff can be manufactured from seaweed, algae, any biomass really. It doesn't have to be a monoculture. It doesn't even have to be 100% biodiesel either - start blending it in. I agree electric motors and electrification are the ultimate outcome but the rail industry has a lot of lines and a lot of locomotives and and you want progression over time with options for battery, power lines or diesel, potentially all 3 on the same line in different parts. It might take decades to transition. It's certainly not hydrogen, that's for sure.

A whole lot of misinformation about biofuel here. Manufacturing biofuels does not require significant changes to current agriculture practices. Most biofuel is made from byproducts that would be burned as waste otherwise.

Electrifying tracks costs money and upkeep and if it's a branch line that sees quite little traffic it's nowhere close to worth it. And this isn't a "Poland poor" situation -- first off, they aren't, not any more, secondly, the first regular hydrogen-powered train service was started in Germany, East Frisia to be precise: Lots of unelectrified track with maybe a train an hour at peak, replacing Diesel, all hydrogen necessary comes from a nearby chloralkali plant.

In the future, Germany will import tons of hydrogen in the form of ammonia (easier to transport) from Canada and Namibia. It's realistic to build enough renewables over here for electricity and heating use, but not when it comes to chemical feedstock, steel smelting, etc.

I can appreciate the electrification push for passenger vehicles. Good luck moving frieght with electric.

You think the toxic (deadly) lithium thermal runaways that can’t be stopped are somehow better? No. They are worse and a deadly underground carpark disaster waiting to happen.

Yup, all those trains waiting to explode in carparks. Nor are we developing better batteries that don't have these problems. Nope, just leaving things exactly as they are.

Not enough lithium in the world to supply the global suv market . . .

Even if lithium was our only battery option, this is just plain wrong. People misunderstand what "reserve" means in mining. It's not the amount of something that's available to be mined. It's the amount that is available profitably under current economic conditions. Both better technology and other shifts in the market mean more reserves "magically" open up.

Oceanic lithium mining may already been commercially viable, and the amount of lithium we can get from that is basically unlimited. On the lab side, there's a promising string-based evaporation method, which would substantially reduce costs and environmental footprint--exactly the sort of tech that makes more reserves open up. It still needs to be demonstrated at scale, but the strings involved don't use any exotic materials or have any difficult production.

1. Not really. There are plans for hydrogen plants. The vast majority is "blue". Secondly what are the chances that an oil company is going to make green hydrogen?
2. The renewables aren't the problem. The cost of capturing energy is the problem. If hydrogen takes 3-4x the energy then that's 3-4x the land with 3-4x the solar and/or windfarms at 3-4x the expense. Do you not see the problem?
3. No it isn't. Scientific studies suggest the impact on the atmosphere might 12x worse than releasing CO2.
4. Lithium isn't the only battery material. Nor I daresay even if it were, that the safety risk is anywhere near as bad as driving a train with a hundreds of kgs of hydrogen on board
5. Lithium isn't the only battery material. There are numerous battery chemistries in existence. It might even be that some less dense chemistries like sodium ion would be viable.
6. Which is why I clearly I suggested a progressive approach. Switch from diesel to biodiesel, start building hybrid trains where the motor and tender are almost separate things and where the source of power can be 2 or 3 potential inputs - diesel, electrification, battery. And where rolling stock can use solar to reduce consumption further.

It's more complicated than that. Hydrogen has a higher energy density than gasoline on a mass basis (i.e. 1 kg of hydrogen is about 3x the energy density of 1kg of gasoline). But for volumetric density the situation is reversed - 1Kg of hydrogen takes 4x the space of 1kg of gasoline. So you're not really saving anything by using hydrogen.

On top of that gasoline is a liquid at atmospheric pressures and can flow into any nook and cranny of your aircraft. Most aircraft will store fuel in the wings and under the fuselage. If you use hydrogen you have to store it in heavily reinforced pressurized tanks, preferably spheroidal, cylindrical, toiroidal in shape. That means you're looking at putting some honking great cylinders on your aircraft and there is no convenient place to do it. They'll either have to be mounted on struts or in the body somewhere.

I don't think batteries will find much application in aircraft until solid state batteries come along. But there are some high density batteries appearing for aviation applications (drones, taxis etc.) and just like with gasoline they can be incorporated pretty much anywhere in the structure of the aircraft.

Actually, we're not a long way off from that. Hydrogen production facilities utilizing (excess) renewable electricity output are under construction as we speak. For example, a large project in Kazakhstan (which has large stretches of windy, sunny and empty steppes) is aiming to be online in 2030 with 30 GW of production going towards green hydrogen.

There's a ton of options there besides hydrogen. Flow batteries are far more efficient than hydrogen, and there's no particular barrier to mass production at this point. Then there's anything from flywheels, other battery chemistries that are too heavy for EVs, or just pumping water uphill.

We need options there today. We want to be on 80% renewables by 2030 in industrialized countries, and that will require some kind of storage solution. Fortunately, we already have quite a few.