> You might think dispatchable natural gas fired plants with some kind of carbon capture would help but with amine-based carbon capture the capital cost is high, just like with nuclear, so you are looking at a high multiple of what it would cost to add carbon capture to a coal plant that runs continuously. Calcium-based chemical cycling, metal-organic-frameworks and such offer some hope for lowering costs but probably not enough for those scenarios.

I think you are missing far simpler solutions for what is in terms of TWh needed a tiny problem.

Why not just use biofuels, synfuels or hydrogen?

Whatever the aviation and the maritime shipping industries settles on since they are unable to in the foreseeable future decarbonize with batteries.

The US today produces enough ethanol for gas blending to run the entire grid for 16 days without help.

As we switch to BEVs it is trivial to repurpose that for the grid, while also ensuring that the inputs decarbonize as well.

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WalterBright 3 days ago | parent [-]

Hydrogen has a major storage problem.

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ViewTrick1002 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Let’s start with a syngas blend and work ourselves to perfect if that, of all things, is the problem that will make hydrogen infeasible.

We’re seeing the first prototype ferries with hydrogen propulsion being built and delivered as we speak.

Hydrogen does not work for ocean crossing routes, then it takes too much space in compressed form.

Liquid is always an alternative, but that comes with its own challenges.

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DamonHD 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Places where we already store natgas / methane interseasonally are good candidates, and more are available.

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WalterBright 3 days ago | parent [-]

Hydrogen will leak out of about anything, and then there's hydrogen embrittlement.

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DamonHD 3 days ago | parent [-]

Salt caverns seem good. And a bit of leakage is likely OK (the pass through storage via hydrolysis is far from 100% efficient anyway) and the only piping might be from hydrolysers and to turbines very close by, so should be manageable...

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WalterBright 2 days ago | parent [-]

I'll check and see where the nearest salt cavern is --- ---- nope, nowhere around here.

	▲	ViewTrick1002 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		Have you heard of this thing called a grid? I hear it is amazing at moving electricity around!