The All-in Cost Per Vehicle for True Zero is Far Lower for H2 than BEVs
Getting to true zero emissions requires fixing transportation - which is nearly 30% of total CO2 emissions. This will require both BEVs (Battery Electric Vehicles) and H2 vehicles. Getting to well-to-wheel zero emissions for BEVs will be much more expensive than for H2 vehicles - The infrastructure costs to add each additional fast-charge BEV to the grid with well-to-wheel zero emissions is upwards of $30,000 and holding whereas it’s currently $20,000 for H2 with a clear pathway to under $10,000 by 2035. Hydrogen is by far the lower cost way to true zero, owing mostly to grid distribution costs and battery storage costs required to get BEVs to zero emission[1].
The core issue that is BEVs aren’t required to be true zero – they are powered by high-emission natural gas power plants – and the costs of grid upgrades are borne by everyone, not just the wealthy that own BEVs. With open access H2 pipelines for transport and storage of H2, the marginal infrastructure cost of adding a true zero H2 car in 2035 will be half the price of adding a true zero home-charged BEV, and about a third the price of adding a true zero BEV that only fast-charges. These costs can be directly charged to the H2 vehicle users themselves at the pump rather than being carried entirely and indefinitely by taxing and rate-basing like we have with BEVs.
The main implications are:
1. The true cost of getting BEVs to zero emission are hidden in the regressive taxation of utilities rate-basing the costs. Going BEV only will be egregiously expensive and it will fail.
2. We should be pushing for a blended policy of hydrogen and BEVs for light duty rather than ignoring
Making H2 work will require more coordination from H2 suppliers, distributors, end users, local government, and federal government than BEVs will. This means it is harder and requires more partnership rather than the antagonism that the current hydrogen distributors have shown (more on this later).
This article comes from my commercial experience and RFP results from hydrogen and clean energy projects in multiple countries as well as my experience as the director of analysis at the Department of Energy where I oversaw H2 and grid-scale battery projects. This is a commercially relevant, granular, and well-to-wheel cost comparison of infrastructure for zero emission vehicles that I haven’t seen anywhere else.
This is one of the most important articles I’ve written for the public, so to make it more accessible, I’ve made a primer to explain concepts like cost of capital, CapEx and OpEx, and many standard acronyms.
The cost of upgrading infrastructure for zero emissions is massive for any vehicle type – but it bends lower for H2 and higher for BEVs
The true costs of upgrading the grid for BEVs have always been hidden in rate-basing by utilities. These costs are charged to everyone, not just BEV owners, making them a massive regressive tax. Upgrade costs will get much worse as we hit the capacity of the current 100-year-old grid. These costs do not even cover the cost to make BEVs truly zero emission: our grid that charges these vehicles is not zero emission, and the upgrades to ensure that are staggeringly expensive. Upgrading to true zero emission for BEVs will require extensive battery or carbon capture build-out far in excess of the cost of true zero H2 infrastructure. In the meantime, BEVs are barely better than hybrids for emissions, but we’re paying tens of thousands of dollars per car to upgrade the grid for them.
While the cost to get a BEV to true zero is absolutely staggering, it gets worse with every additional BEV added to the grid. Meanwhile, the cost of adding hydrogen vehicles to our energy system is competitive with true zero BEV now and will be lower than that for true zero home charging of a BEV by early 2030s.
To recap my last post: BEVs are great for the minority of the population that owns garages in warm climates. For everyone else, there are 15+ reasons why BEVs fail. I will be going into deep analysis of all these reasons. This post focuses on the costs and emissions of BEVs.
Costs: The marginal cost of adding a true zero emission BEV to the user fleet is immense, and it’s worse for fast-charging. Getting H2 to true zero is already lower[2] CapEx per additional vehicle compared to true zero for fast-charging BEVs.
Emissions: The emissions for home charging a BEV in most of the US are only slightly lower than a hybrid. Fast-charging BEVs are the same as or worse than a hybrid for emissions: fast-charging a BEV in most locations uses dispatchable power, meaning natural gas power, making it about as polluting per mile as an ICE (internal combustion engine) hybrid.
Reaching true zero: Upgrading the grid for BEVs is more expensive than for H2, and even if we wanted to upgrade it, the grid can’t be upgraded fast enough to switch all new cars to BEVs in the next 15 years. Reality must set in – and a blend of BEV and H2 vehicles is the only way to reach full decarb of the grid, with H2 vehicles being less expensive to fuel.
Summarized in this chart is the CapEx required to add one zero-emission car of either type to our system. This includes an extremely generous assumption about fast chargers– that they will go from today’s current 17% utilization to 30% utilization with widespread BEV adoption and faster charging times from new battery architecture. The current size of the BEV bars should be about 50% higher given current fast charger utilization.
Other than the first bar – is a home-charged BEV with upstream power gen emissions[3], this chart is the cost of true zero emissions – IE powered by renewables (wind is largely excluded owing to complexity - the higher variability actually adds more cost to BEVs owing greater to storage needs for true zero). The very modest cost of the current “plug in at home” BEV with its high grid related CO2 emissions is included for comparison. The cost of true zero gaseous H2 now is lower than the cost of true zero BEV fast-charging. By 2035, as electrolyzer costs come down, the infrastructure CapEx required for each additional H2 vehicle with true zero emissions will be less expensive than any true zero marginal BEV infrastructure by almost 50% - continue reading below for more details.
Hydrogen infrastructure cost will all be passed to the hydrogen pump and thus the users will pay the full cost. On the other hand, BEV infrastructure will mostly be rate-based into electricity bills for everyone, requiring even those who don’t own BEVs to heavily subsidize the cost to add BEVs to the grid.
Article flow:
1. Marginal cost to add each new vehicle to the mix
2. Emissions overview – current emissions
3. True zero – what this means
4. How BEVs almost fail to achieve true zero currently
5. H2 – where we are on emissions and how to hit true zero
6. Comparison of emissions
7. Infrastructure Costs for BEVs and True Zero
8. Infrastructure Costs for H2 and True Zero
9. One last note – for those hoping for nuclear power to fix this all, it won’t. It makes everything cost more
10. What this means for us
High-level cost of each additional BEV or H2 vehicle
Costs of existing infrastructure change with scale – they either get more expensive or less expensive. Right now, we are at the low end of the cost curve for adding a BEV – it can tap into existing infrastructure without expanding it. As deployment expands, however, the grid needs to be upgraded. As true zero (described later here) is required, BEV grid upgrades become far more expensive. Hydrogen is at the other end – no infrastructure exists, but as more end uses enter, it becomes far more cost effective to fuel.
The all-in The cost per mile of of driving a BEV will increase as the need for more grid increases. It will increase drastically if we required zero emission. Hydrogen, on the other hand, comes down in cost over time.
BEVs are at the beginning of their journey whereby it is inexpensive now, but will become egregiously more expensive. H2 is at the beginning of its journey where it is egregiously expensive to fuel now, but costs will plummet as the network expands.
At some point there will be a cross-over where it is less expensive to add one more H2 vehicle to the mix than it is to add one more BEV. And for most use cases, we will never turn back – outside of certain home ownership circumstances, an additional fuel cell vehicle will cost less than a BEV for replacing a gasoline car.
The details of all of this are in sections below.
Emissions by Vehicle Type
Current CO2 emissions per mile (see appendix for math)
Current CO2 emissions per mile for various vehicle types and fueling methods
The all-in emissions of BEVs on average in the US are lower than hybrids, but not by much. In cold environments, BEVs are much worse emitters than hybrids. Fast charging a BEV is equivalent to using a hybrid. Hydrogen is lower emitting in almost all cases and has a pathway to true zero emissions that is much lower cost than BEV or gasoline hybrid.
In certain areas with better grid mixes, BEVs are cleaner. I’m not talking about Los Angeles, where they are building five new peaker plants. I’m talking about the Pacific Northwest where there is a lot of hydro power.
The major problem with BEVs, especially with fast-charging, is that they need to use dispatchable power. IE power than can be increased when load increases. Renewables are not this. So when we plug in a BEV, unless there are curtailed renewables somewhere, we are using fossil power.
In the cold BEVs can lose up to half their range. H2 and ICEs have excess heat and operate efficiently over wider ranges, so they do not lose range in the cold.
Overview of True Zero Emissions
True zero emissions means there are no upstream emissions, induced emissions, or emissions in the supply chain. For power input, the so-called three pillars sums up one way to achieve it.
1. Time Matching - power used must be matched with clean power that is produced
2. Deliverability (often called regionality) – that clean power has to be able to be physically delivered, IE there needs to be uncongested power lines between clean production and end use
3. No induced emissions – Adding a new end use to the grid must be offset with new, clean power production, it can’t result in spinning up of a fossil power source
Achieving True Zero with BEVs
1. Time-matching – power used must be matched with clean power that is produced. IE a car would have to charge only when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining. Otherwise the power used will come from fossil plants
2. Deliverability, the biggest problem for mass BEVs- the power must be able to be delivered to the location of use, otherwise the power will come from fossil plants. IE a car can only charge when the wind is blowing or the sun is shining and the power lines between the car and the renewable are not full. Currently power lines from renewable resources to just about every major city in the US are full during most or all waking hours of the day, making this a real deal-breaker. Remedying this would require massive build out of large-scale transmission
3. Additionality – the power must come from additional sources to prove that buying a clean energy PPA didn’t simply result in another fossil plant being turned on. For cars, that means that charging can’t add additional load to the grid unless there are new clean power plants being built.
Effect of cleaner grid: As the grid gets cleaner the costs for true zero with BEVs will remain high – a cleaner grid does not mean zero emission charging, it just means less emissions. Distribution costs will remain massively high, and battery storage for renewables will still be required for true zero.
To make it more clear, true zero requires that any power going into the end use (BEV charging, hydrogen) is exclusively clean power, that clean power can’t be claimed by any other organization, and adding that power draw to the grid doesn’t require additional non-clean power to balance the grid.
Right now when a BEV is plugged into a fast charger, the grid requires an immediate power increase. That means natural gas peaker plant, increasing the load on a more efficient combined cycle natural gas plant, or even increasing the load on coal plants. That is not true zero.
If BEVs were required to meet true zero, there would be a narrow band in the daytime where they could charge, and many days they would not be able to charge. The only real solution is grid-scale batteries, which are quite expensive. So let’s model that. But first – let’s look at H2.
H2 and true zero
The three pillars that the Treasury is trying to put on the 45V H2 production tax credits would result in true zero emissions hydrogen. It would also add massive cost to that hydrogen, and prevent electrolyzers from hitting the point where actual true zero is easily achievable at low cost.
H2 can achieve true zero by hooking an electrolyzer up to renewables that are not grid-connected (islanded renewable and H2 production) or by connecting to the grid and meeting the three pillars.
In addition, fossil H2 can be true zero by using Renewable Natural Gas or biogas, IE natural gas that has zero or negative emissions, to achieve true zero emissions.
Effect of cleaner grid: As the grid gets cleaner, electrolyzer cost, one of the largest contributors to H2 infrastructure cost will come down in cost. Instead of being powered 30% of the time by adjacent renewables, it can be powered 50-100% of the time by a cleaner grid. This will halve to quarter the amount of electrolyzer required and reduce the amount of renewable build-out needed.
Infrastructure Upgrade Costs
BEV
Local
· Commercial charger and construction – about $1000/kw and going up in cost as they get larger
Buildings have to upgrade their building substation at $2M+ per MW, or for every ~50 cars, so it is not feasible to switch every car parking spot to BEV charging
· Transformer upgrades – local power upgrades to step up or step down power at different rates than existing transformers
· Land costs – BEV charging takes up 10x the space of ICE or H2 refueling, so land costs become significant, especially in urban environments (not included in model)
· Local distribution lines – lines that run from the substation to the end use location need to be upgraded (not included in model because this is very local - costs can range from very small when near a trunk line to very large when in a city)
Regional
· Substations are $1M+ for every MW of extra cost
· Upgraded power lines from trunk lines to substation (not included in model)
· New power generation
· New high-capacity trunk lines from power generation sites
BEV and True Zero
· New high-capacity power lines from massive zero-emission generation sites
o Note that these aren’t used when power isn’t coming, so the cost per kwh transmitted is higher
o The cost of this is egregiously high compared to pipelines for reasons of physics
· New renewable power
· Batteries to turn renewable power into dispatchable power – very high cost and no clear path to reduce it
Alternatively, a multi-trillion dollar backbone power grid extending across and up-and-down the entire US would be able to provide 24/7 renewables with about 20%-40% of renewable power being curtailed all the time. This is neither commercially feasible nor politically viable.
Hydrogen
Local
· Refueling stations and construction
· Transformers
· Land costs (1/10th of battery)
· No power distribution lines required – a single tube trailer brings in 20MWH of usable power
Regional
· New power generation with electrolyzers or fossil H2 reformers with Renewable Natural Gas or
· Compression sites to load H2 on trucks
Hydrogen and True Zero
N/A – make hydrogen meet the three pillars and the current expanding infrastructure is sufficient
But – we need to allow H2 to grow without the three pillars to reduce cost much like we already have with BEVs.
The big picture – revisiting the chart
Now that we’ve explained the background, let me explain what we see here.
First bar: each BEV added to a home, even without net zero, increases the burden on developing new power production and power distribution resources, to the tune of $5k. Once we need new generation it goes to $7k. To make this true zero, either the house has to be upgraded to be mostly sufficient with solar and storage (column 2), OR massive grid buildout needs to be brought online with grid scale battery storage (column 3)[4]. Column 2 is “all costs go onto car owner” and column 3 is “regressive tax via rate basing.”
Fast-charging gets worse (column 4) because the 5x higher charge rate means 5x the distribution grid build out. There is no way around this. Going to 350kw means 18x the grid buildout for the one charger. Keep in mind that a home charger operates overnight whereas no one is going to line up for a 350kw charger between 9pm and 7am, so fast chargers build out capacity that isn’t really used around the clock – this is why the distribution costs become significant[5].
H2 (column 6+), on the other hand, is already at lower total infrastructure CapEx per car than fast chargers for true zero, and comes down in cost (column 7/8). As the cost of electrolyzers go down and the efficiency goes up, the infrastructure costs per car go down a lot. Once we have regional pipelines (column 8) (again, if H2hubs get these you can thank me), an additional true zero H2 vehicle costs around the same as adding a BEV with home-charging.
H2 exception: The exception is liquid (column 5). See that orange cost bar in H2 liquid? That is liquefier cost, and the gray bar is the battery to keep that liquefier running when renewables stop. Those don’t go away with scale. Even with electrolyzer costs coming down, liquid H2 cost stack is still bad. Liquid hydrogen is bad for cost structures.
What does this mean for us?
H2 is by far the more cost-effective emissions control and means to zero out light duty infrastructure emissions and the costs will get better as the infrastructure expands. Even home charging becomes more CapEx intensive than H2 at some point of expansion.
BEVs are currently cost-effective if you own a garage and we ignore all emissions from power production. They still incur significant grid upgrade costs that are borne by everyone. Those costs are hidden in electric bills for everyone. And once at-home charging of BEVs penetrates far enough that new zero emission generation is required, they no longer are more cost-effective than H2 vehicles. For those without home charging – the total infrastructure cost per BEV is already more expensive than H2 for net zero.
As we expand home-charging BEVs to the point of serious grid and power generation upgrades, we need to diversify our options. And until we hit that point, BEVs remain a great way to lower emissions – but they aren’t significantly better than hybrids until we get the grid a lot cleaner.
Nuclear – not the solution you are looking for
Vogtle was more than $31B for about 2GW of power – or about $15,000 per kw. That would come out to $30,000 per additional vehicle on the grid.
Flamanville in France is about to be commissions – 1.65GW for $13-$20B. So, same price.
We can’t rely on technologies that have regularly demonstrated massive expense and cost overruns to save us here. The renewables+storage or renewables+hydrogen, with hydrogen’s innate power storage capacity, are going to be the lowest cost way forward.
Appendix
Seriously, don’t read the appendix. It’s all math and descriptions of the analysis - only read it if you want to understand where the numbers and results come from.
The maths
We’ll start with the emissions math because it’s the most important. Most of this article focuses on true zero emissions additional costs, after all, so let’s talk about the emissions.
After that I will talk about the background data and parameterization of the model.
Emissions
Home charging
BEV home emissions. The average grid power in the US is 386 grams per kwh. Depending on driving conditions, one kwh provides as much as 4 miles (perfect conditions at 75kwh battery that gets 258 miles) and an average of three miles at long haul (going fast on a highway), or less than 2 miles for driving in the cold. So for at home charging – worst case scenario is more than 200 grams CO2 per mile. For best case scenario, it’s 95+ grams per kwh.
This can understates how much BEVs emit. In most cases, BEVs represent and additional power requirement on the grid – they get plugged in and the grid draws more power. This means that they need to use dispatchable power to charge – which means natural gas. In this case, if natural gas power plants end up doing the peaking for battery charging at home, emissions are much higher.
There is a case for BEVs making the grid less congested with home charging – using them as virtual power plants and allowing them to charge and discharge as the grid needs more power. This has two issues:
1. The cars must be home during the daytime when solar power peaks, meaning the owner must not be actively using the car during most days
2. The owner must be willing to let the car do two-way grid connection which will accelerate the damage to their battery. At about 5 cents per kilowatt hour, a full drain and charge would mean $3.50. This isn’t really worth it when it would mean a battery loses 10% of its range in two years instead of four years because it was cycling too much
Charging at night
in cleaner solar-heavy grids like California it might seem like BEVs are wonderfully clean. They aren’t. In California once the sun goes down the grid has to be powered with fossil fuel – over 70% of the CA grid at night is power by fossil fuels. So with our average car owner using it commute, plugging in at night means that it’s actually emitting more than what we show here.
Batteries in the cold
In the cold, BEVs lose 40% of their range, particularly for short trips. Batteries plugged in at home in the cold also use electricity just to keep warm, so that means they are using additional energy that isn’t even represented here. So pretty much we can double the emissions per mile.
ICEs and Hybrids in the cold
ICEs lose about 10-20% of their efficiency in the cold. Hybrids can lose further efficiency if they use lithium batteries, almost as much as BEVs. Hybrids with nickel-metal-hydride batteries, however (IE most of them) only lose 10-20% efficiency, like an ICE.
Hydrogen vehicles lose ~20% of range in the cold, similar to ICE. They actually perform better in the heat.
Vehicles in extreme heat
In high heat up to 90 degrees, BEVs lose only 5% of their range. In extreme heat conditions around 100 degrees F or 40C, BEVs lose 30% of their range. Hydrogen vehicles tend to function much better in extreme heat than BEVs.
Unlike cold weather, extreme heat is more niche, but people in Phoenix might care with their 113 days over 100 degrees.
Fast Charging
When a BEV is plugged into the grid for a fast charge it needs power sources that can quickly ramp up to meet the demand. That means natural gas.
Natural gas produces .185kg CO2 per kwh of natural gas for 100% efficiency – and 100% efficiency is impossible. The average peaker operates with 35% efficiency. So with efficient peaker-to-car design we get 529 g CO2 per kwh. At 4 miles per kwh, this is 132 g CO2 per mile local. At 325 watt-hours/km on highway, we are at 181g per mile. Given the 60% efficiency in the cold, this can hit 300g per mile.
For the equivalent to a Tesla Model 3 w use the 2022 Toyota Corolla hybrid[6]– 55 mpg tested by green car reports in worse conditions, the ’23 AWD gets 45 mpg
8.9kg CO2 per gallon of gasoline – 45mpg highway – 200 g per mile
For hydrogen, we use Mirai’s high-level trim (IE optimized for range) of 72 miles per kg H2. At an average of 8kg CO2-e per kg H2, we get ~110 grams per mile. With Low Carbon Fuel Standards in place, this drops down to ~90 grams per mile. For cold weather we’re bumping this up 20%.
Type of fueling
Grams CO2-e per mile (and in the cold)
Gasoline hybrid
200 (250)
Battery Electric Vehicle – at home charging
90-140 (250+ if kept warm when not in use)
BEV Fast Charger
130-200, (300)
H2 – no LCFS
110 (140)
H2 – LCFS
90 (110)
All in infrastructure cost
Assumptions on how many vehicles a single charger or hydrogen dispenser can service
This has a major effect on the cost-per-car for BEVs for fast charging. The assumption is that a fast charger is not highly utilized during working hours, and the brunt of its use will be on weekends and from 5pm-9 or 10pm. There will be exceptions, but keep in mind that many on-highway superchargers are only going to be used on weekends, so the average charger will only be used about 7 hours per day.
We’re also assuming the average round trip of a full charge is about 1 hour, and that at 40 miles per day the average user charges twice per week for a total of 280 miles.
This is extremely generous, given that current fast chargers are only used for 4 hours per day.
In summary – the modeling here understates the cost per vehicle for upgrading the grid for BEVs.
Chargers and fueling stations
Charger and hydrogen station costs are pretty straightforward. They come from public documents. Chargers are on the order of $1000/kw.
A single charger with 30% utilization (based on Chevron Friday fueling curve – IE a realistic curve of how much time a highly utilized station will get charged) – charging a car to full will charge 7 cars per day at 1 hour per charge (we’re assuming a situation where people want to fully charge – IE they can’t charge at home). This 30% is hyper generous, because right now we are seeing 17% utilization at chargers
Assuming a 100kw supercharger, we’re talking $100,000 for a power plant to charge 7 cars per day. Given a car needs to charge twice per week, we multiply by 3.5 to get ~24 cars.
Hydrogen stations that can fuel 80 cars a day are about $1M without high-pressure storage. For true zero, H2 fueling stations are assumed to need 60% of their power for compression and cooling stored locally in batteries to achieve true zero. This cost is added to the fueling station cost. The power demands of an H2 fueling station are roughly 1kwh of electricity for every 20kwh of energy delivered to the wheels of a car. The standard 400kg/day hydrogen station has a 100% utilization throughput of 1440kg/day, and so we have a 28% utilization, which is on par with gasoline fueling stations owing to their ability to fuel in 5 minutes.
Local Distribution costs
These are not yet included. For BEVs including this would increase the costs. For H2 fueling stations it would have very minor cost increases owing to the 20:1 ratio of electricity to power (hydrogen) delivered to a car at a hydrogen fueling station.
Substation upgrade costs.
Substation upgrade costs come from projects I’ve worked on, interviews with people in the utilities and power distribution business, and interviews with people in battery backup industries. It’s pretty close to $1M/MW but can easily push to $2M/MW in urban environments. The amount of substation upgrade required is fairly complicated because there is a trade-off between charging rates at fast chargers and how much substation upgrading is needed. If a bank of 10 100KW fast-chargers are all going full at once, like they are doing full fast charge of 300 mile range BEV, that means a 1MW upgrade. If they rate-limit it to 50kw simultaneously, then it’s only a 500KW upgrade. The tradeoff here, however, is that using half the power rate means that half the vehicles per day can be charged, and so the cost upgrade per vehicle charged remains the same.
To make this very clear the substation upgrade costs remain relatively fixed regardless of whether vehicle charge rate. If we make the average user charge for 30 minutes, they have to charge more times per week and the chargers need access to more power so the total infrastructure per car remains similar.
The average hydrogen fueling station would use 60kw to be able to provide fuel for 500-1000 hydrogen cars, so the cost of substation upgrades and other power transmission upgrades per H2 car is a rounding error.
Power Transmission and Distribution Upgrade Costs
Local distribution lines are ignored in this analysis. Trunk-line transmission costs are estimated using the cost of the Champlain Hudson Power Express ($4.5B for 1.2GW of power) – a line meant to bring clean electricity to a dense urban region.
We do not use the rather optimistic the Grain Belt Express ($7B for 5GW) running through unpopulated territory because this is not building a point-to-point power distribution system, it’s distributing this much power along the line. IE this isn’t 5GW of power coming from one end of the line and going to the population centers on the coast.
Calculations –
Distribution capacity requirements are increased in the model by 8% - the amount of line losses that can be expected from long-distance HVDC plus the step-down transformation and distribution lines. This slightly increases the cost contribution of distribution.
Distribution capacity requirements are decreased based on the charge rate or any throttling that may occur between chargers. IE if a bank of 10 100kw chargers are limited to using 500kw together, the distribution capacity need is lowered to 500kw and not 1MW. This reduces the cost requirements of distribution.
Hydrogen distribution costs
This model assumes drop and swap hydrogen deliveries whether it is gaseous or liquid. The current delivery method of small amount of liquid or gaseous hydrogen is not particularly cost-effective, and the next-gen systems of drop-and-swap have already been demonstrated to be significantly more cost-effective in the EU.
A trailer is about $1M for 1200kg of H2, and at a current 400kg/day station would be on-site for three days. A network of 10 stations would require 3 swaps per day, so each station needs to pay for 1.33 trailers.
Throughput for a station to do drop-and-swap with liquid would have to be very high. It’s not really viable for a light duty station, but I only included liquid to show how ridiculously expensive liquid hydrogen is and always will be.
Power requirements
Solar power is $1000/kw and operates about 25% of the time[7]. For BEVs, we make a straight-line calculation of how many kwh are required to power the BEVs, increased for efficiency losses along the way.
Wind power is a lot more complicated because it isn’t predictable. That means it will require a lot of battery storage to assure that power will be available for charging when needed.
For Hydrogen – power requirements use a straight-line calculation with the energy needed to produce and compress H2 that is used at the stations.
Battery Storage
Grid-scale battery storage is around $500/kw once all power electronics and grid interconnect are included. Battery round-trip efficiency for these batteries is 85% at best, so that means more power production is required for batteries used. The power production requirements are bumped up accordingly as a result.
New types of batteries like flow batteries and Form Energy’s rust-air batteries are lower cost, but about 50% round-trip efficient, so that means upstream renewable costs double immediately if we use these. It nets out to being slightly more cost effective, but not much unless renewables come down in cost a lot.
Given the phase-shift of renewable availability (daytime) and people charging (nighttime) I use an 80% level of storage required. This assumes that there is some overlap between renewables and charging. For this 20% overlap, I reduce the amount of upstream renewables required based on the fact that they won’t take the 15% round-trip efficiency hit of flowing through a battery.
Hydrogen – for hydrogen production, we don’t need battery storage for gaseous. For liquid we do because the liquefiers can’t turn off.
[1] Zero emission gasoline and diesel are and always will be more expensive than H2 – if it exists it will be a premium product.
[2] This lower H2 costs assumes drop-and-swap gaseous H2 trailers or even drop-and-swap liquid hydrogen trailers. Current paradigms are not cost effective and will likely be sunsetted
[3] As the grid becomes cleaner, BEV emissions will come down. But the grid is getting cleaner a lot slower than academics suggested was possible. H2 has three advantages – it does not have to time-shift with batteries like BEVs, as the grid gets cleaner, electrolyzers can use more grid power and required electrolysis comes down and costs come down massively, and
[4] A BEV owner that works from home or doesn’t take their BEV out will have the opposite effect if they remain plugged in – they can actually reduce grid costs for other BEVs – provided they are willing to let the power company charge and discharge their battery and thereby hastening its degradation
[5] Build-out of large-scale power transmission capacity in rural environments can be a half or even a third the cost of anything that goes into cities, but given that 80% of the US lives in urban and suburban environments the low cost power lines like the grain belt express’s lower cost structure ($1.4B per GW) is not an appropriate analog for most of the US.
[7] If we aren’t using renewables but instead use a nat-gas peaker power plant without emissions controls, it’s $713/kW. Assume $300/kW more for full emissions controls at this scale, so $1000/kw. Then we have to add carbon capture and sequestration for another $500-$1000/kw, depending on how far away the carbon storage site is. So it is actually similar price or even cheaper to use a grid scale battery with solar here to get true zero.
