Articles by
Michael Barnard
Ballard Averaging $55 Million Annual Losses While Pushing Hydrogen Rock Uphill With Grants
By
Michael Barnard
There are three long running supporting cast members in stagings of the sad farce that is trials of hydrogen for fleets, FuelCell Energy, Plug Power and Ballard Power Systems. All of their market capitalizations peaked roughly 99% above their current stock valuations in 2000. They’ve all participated in innumerable hydrogen fleet trials, yet none of the trials has resulted in hundreds or thousands of vehicles operating on hydrogen. Quite the opposite, most have resulted in hydrogen being abandoned entirely.
More Hydrogen Fleets That Reached The End Of The Tragicomedy Including Iceland
By
Michael Barnard
One thing that the chorus is bad at is even acknowledging, never mind keeping track of, acts 4, 5 and 6, where the governmental taps are shut, leading to the fleet operators scrapping the hydrogen vehicles and getting battery electric vehicles instead, something that they should have started with.
Ontario’s Hydrogen Approach Will Be A B-School Case Study In Failure
By
Michael Barnard
Not to be left behind as the world is spun in circles by hydrogen hype, Ontario published a hydrogen strategy in 2022. Recently it announced the first approved significant project, one that involves truckloads of hydrogen leaving Niagara Falls to be burned in a gas generator over 100 kilometers away. Multiple layers of energetic and economic nonsense are involved in this.
What Drives This Madness On Small Modular Nuclear Reactors?
By
Michael Barnard
This week I had an equivalent question from someone engaged by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The individual isn’t an industry insider and didn’t have a particular iron in the fire, but had been engaged to write a Bulletin piece on the perplexing enthusiasm small modular nuclear reactors (SMR) are seeing from an overlapping circle of advocates and firms.
This was, of course, in the week when NuScale inevitably imploded, a story I’ll return to as I unpack some of the motivations behind those thinking a bunch of lab technologies that have been around for decades that depend on uranium from Russia, that don’t have the physical characteristics for cheap nuclear generation and don’t have the conditions for success for nuclear generation will be the saviours of the nuclear industry and a key wedge in fighting climate change.
The Odyssey Of The Hydrogen Fleet: A Tragicomedy In Six Acts
By
Michael Barnard
But that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a legacy left behind. In the case of nuclear energy, it’s people like Michael Shellenberger, a man whose commitment to nuclear energy is so absolute that he’s become a climate change denier and anti-renewables campaigner because renewables are so obviously a better wedge against global warming.
He made his career in California around the same time as hydrogen for transportation sunk its hooks into the state deeply. Sometimes it’s better to be a follower than a leader, and while California’s heart was in the right place, it’s head was stuck in a place devoid of oxygen.
UK Has £10 Billion Per Nuclear Reactor Decommissioning Bottomless Pit
By
Michael Barnard
The decommissioning costs for the UK’s nuclear generation are coming home to roost, and they are laying golden eggs for the firms that won the business. For UK citizens, not so much. Despite the very high costs of both the new nuclear reactors at Hinkley Site C, the rapidly rising costs of clean up and the much cheaper alternatives available, the country’s current administration remains committed to the technology. Something is likely to give.
If there were no alternatives to nuclear generation, then this wouldn’t be a problem compared to global warming. But, of course, this is 2023 and there are proven, effective, efficient and reliable forms of low-carbon electrical generation that do compete with nuclear energy, wind and solar.
Heirloom & AirLoom Prove that Cleantech Stupidity Often Repeats & Even Occasionally Rhymes
By
Michael Barnard
So there you have it. Both Heirloom and AirLoom are variants of long-failing technological pathways. They are both massively mechanically complicated for little return. They are both funded by Bill Gates. They are both destined for the dust heap of history. It’s remarkable that anyone would give them money, and it’s remarkable how much fawning press they’ve received. In this case, history is both repeating itself, and rhyming.
Adventures In Failed Technology: Small Modular Reactors & Hydrogen Buses
By
Michael Barnard
Small modular nuclear reactor and hydrogen for energy proposals and trials are all zombie proposals sucking time, effort, and willpower away from the necessary decarbonization of our economy. This little roundup is just an appetizer course for the absurd feast of riches to come with canceled projects and crashing dreams.
Canada’s Carbon Price Working, So Of Course It’s Being Attacked
By
Michael Barnard
Canada’s carbon price, which is mostly invisible to most people, most of the time, is back in headlines. For fiscal and political reasons, the Liberal government exempted homes heating with oil from the tax for three years. Naturally, the Conservatives have used this to raise populist grievances that mostly don’t hold any water.
I’ve been avoiding writing about this as it’s a bit sigh-worthy, much tempest in a teapot without much Earl Gray coming out of the spout. But a long-term acquaintance, the executive who gave me great career opportunities in Canada and Latin America a little over a decade ago, reached out recently with a good question.
Land Rovers Keep Catching Fire, But EVs Get Blamed For Luton Carpark Fire
By
Michael Barnard
Let’s put some basic facts on the table. The fire department identified the car which started the blaze. There’s video of it. It was a diesel Range Rover, one of the Land Rover group of cars. While there is a diesel battery-electric hybrid option for some of the Range Rover groups, there’s zero evidence that it was a hybrid.
IKEA Follows In The Footsteps Of Organizations Abandoning Hydrogen For Energy
By
Michael Barnard
IKEA will figure it out, just as everyone who goes down this pathway does. It’s remarkable that people keep making the mistake when it’s so obviously a mistake with tiny amounts of number crunching and the slightest awareness of battery energy density improvements.
Another Month & Another Delay & Cost Overrun For Canada’s Black Elephant
By
Michael Barnard
Canada’s Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project never had a business case that made the slightest sense. Perhaps that’s why its construction project is such a train wreck. In the latest installment of the tragicomedy, TMX — the Crown corporation that owns the dead asset — has requested a route deviation that will delay completion by at least nine months and add costs to the effort.
