Shell Is Immediately Closing All Of Its California Hydrogen Stations | The oil giant is one of the big players in hydrogen globally, but even it can’t make its operations work here.::The oil giant is one of the big players in hydrogen globally, but even it can’t make its operations work here. All seven of its California stations will close immediately.
Instead you rely on Shell to provide hydrogen to you when there’s no pre-existing infrastructure to deliver it and… Oh, looks like they decided to put an end to it, have fun with your brick on wheels 🤷
that’s the whole point tho, for them to sell you special fuel, that you can’t get yourself, like you could with solar panels. this is more serious threat from fleets of trucks, those companies are already building their solar farms to charge their trucks. that’s somewhat catastrophic for companies selling fuel nowadays. of-course they’ll push their magic fuel solution, forcefully. who do you think pays the hydrogen shilling campaigns?
Shell is one of many companies providing hydrogen fuel stations. Infra may not be where it should be, but I blame that on all the people who jumped on battery powered cars at a time battery tech is years of not decades away from being good in vehicles.
Green hydrogen–where it’s produced entirely using renewable resources–currently costs at least twice as much as producing it from hydrocarbons. Depending on the details, it can be seven times as much. Pink hydrogen–water electrolysis powered by nuclear–is barely much better.
The vast majority of production comes from hydrocarbons. Most of it currently goes to the agricultural industry for making nitrate fertilizer.
This is entirely the petrochemical industry trying to open up a new market before it loses its current biggest one.
I get it, but cost is irrelevant if it is produced using green power that would otherwise be wasted anyway from overproduction.