Any sufficiently deep ignorance is indistinguishable from stupidity. You’d recognize that to be a riff on Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law (1968) which states that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
While Clark’s 3rd law is about perception (how we perceive technology that we don’t understand), my variation is about outcomes: how severe ignorance results in outcomes that could have been motivated by malice or just plain stupidity. The intent may be to improve things but the impact is to make matters worse.
We all are abysmally ignorant about nearly everything. The saving grace is that our ignorance does not result in widespread socially destructive outcomes. But public policy is sadly replete with examples of gross stupidity arising out of ignorance. That’s so because bureaucrats and politicians are generally ignorant and therefore cannot formulate reasonable solutions to actual or perceived problems.
Furthermore, they lack the incentive to not make enormous mistakes. Private entities—individuals and corporations—pay a price for screwing up. That disciplines them. Public sector actors are shielded from the consequences of the folly. Ordinary people pay for policy mistakes.
That’s an elementary lesson from public choice theory. At a high enough level of authority and responsibility, ignorance ceases to be a neutral excuse and becomes functionally destructive. The failures arising from deep ignorance of policy makers are indistinguishable from outright stupidity.
Recently it was reported that Prime Minister Modi launched the country’s first hydrogen-powered train. “Modi flagged off Namo Green Rail saying the fuel will power Indian railways in the 21st century. It comes as New Delhi doubles down on green hydrogen, aiming to turn the clean fuel into a major export industry.”
Namo Green Rail. Is there no end to the blatant self-aggrandizement?
Hydrogen, whatever else it may be, is not “green”.
Anyone with even a basic understanding of undergraduate physics and chemistry will not make the elementary mistake of confusing a fuel with an energy carrier.
Hydrogen is not a fuel; it is an energy carrier.
A fuel—such as wood, crude oil, natural gas, or uranium—is a primary energy source. Fuels exist naturally in a form that can be extracted directly from the Earth and burned or reacted to yield net energy. Hydrogen does not exist in isolated, usable deposits.
Because hydrogen binds aggressively with other elements, virtually all hydrogen on earth is locked inside compounds like water (H2O) or methane (CH4). To get pure hydrogen gas (H2), we must expend energy to split those chemical bonds.
Therefore hydrogen must be manufactured using energy from another source before we can use it. Therefore hydrogen functions like a chemical battery or an energy carrier similar to electricity rather than a fuel.
We don’t always have the freedom to use only primary fuels to power machines; circumstances force us to use energy carriers. We use electricity as a convenient energy carrier all the time. Electricity has to be produced at some location and transmitted over a grid to where it is used. Not just that, we have to use batteries to get electricity where and when we need it.
Basically there are many intermediate steps between the primary energy source (the fuel) and the end use of the energy. That’s where the laws of thermodynamics present us with a reality check.
Primary fuels (wood, coal, crude oil, uranium, etc) have a positive EROEI — Energy Returned on Energy Invested. Burning a gallon of petroleum yields significantly more energy than it took to pump it out of the ground, refine and transport it. The net energy balance is positive EROEI.
Hydrogen cannot be mined to add new energy to society. We can only use hydrogen to store and transport energy that was generated somewhere else. Hydrogen operates on a net negative EROEI.
Electrolysis of water to produce hydrogen requires more electrical energy than the resulting hydrogen will ever release when used to power anything. Production losses are an inescapable feature of thermodynamics. But that’s not all. Hydrogen is ill-suited for locomotives.
Hydrogen is the least dense element in the universe. Compressing it to 700 bar or cooling it to minus 253 degrees Celsius consumes a substantial chunk of its total energy content. Reconverting hydrogen back into power via a fuel cell or combustion engine incurs further energy loss.
Primary Energy Source (Coal / Oil / Solar / Wind) ➔ Energy Input ➔ Hydrogen Production ➔ Energy Storage ➔ End Use
Hydrogen is a vector for transferring energy from point A to point B, not a primary source of power. Much like an electric battery stores chemical potential to release later, hydrogen is a manufactured medium used to store energy. Calling hydrogen a fuel makes about as much sense as calling a power grid line a fuel.
So why the chest-thumping about hydrogen powered locomotives? I believe it is fueled by ignorance at two levels: at the top level of politicians and at the bottom level of voters.
Shri Narendra Modi is a genius politician. No Indian politician, past or present, comes close to him. When it comes to manipulating the masses and winning elections, he is unmatched. But like everyone else, he too is ignorant about most things. What’s worse, he is clearly ignorant of his ignorance.
It is instructive to contrast Modi with another consummate politician: the longest serving prime minister of tiny Singapore, the late Mr. Lee Kuan Yew. LKY was trained as a lawyer. He was no engineer or economist. But he recognized that he needed to formulate policies that make engineering and economic sense. He worked hard to overcome that handicap by hiring the best engineers and economists in his bureaucracy to advise him.
LKY rarely made policy mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes. But when he occasionally did, he was quick to admit it and quick to learn from them. Admitting one’s mistakes is the first step in learning how to make fewer mistakes.
LKY had another important character trait: an eagerness to study history and learn from others. Particularly important for him was to learn from the mistakes of others. He said that the reason he committed Singapore to free-market capitalist economic policies was he learned from the mistakes of Nehru. LKY did not need to try socialism because he saw Nehruvian socialism had ruined India’s prospects of growing out of extreme poverty.
It appears that Modi doesn’t have people around him who can do arithmetic. Modi caused immense harm to Indians with his demonetization gimmick. And then he imposed the China policy of locking down the Indian economy during the Chinese pandemic. Both policies pushed tens of millions of poor Indians into severe poverty.
LKY never succumbed to fads and popular delusions. Sadly that cannot be said about any of the current politicians around the world. The Europeans have swallowed the nonsense about climate change. German politicians have committed themselves to insane energy policies that has put the German economy on a suicidal path.
It appears that the Indian politicians are also captivated by the siren call of “Green energy” and “net zero carbon emissions.”
Two points. Green energy is not all that green. And zero carbon is not possible at the current state of technology. And finally, zero carbon even if feasible, is not desirable. That’s where technology and economics intersect. Since my training is in engineering and economics, that’s my bailiwick.
That’s in Part 2 of this piece.
Image at the head of this piece is from a YouTube video “India clean energy: Prime Minister Modi launches country’s first hydrogen-powered train.”
Let’s listen to Luiz Gonzaga sing Hora Do Adeus. Translation by gemini below:
My hair is already starting to turn silver
But the accordion hasn’t gone out of tune yet
Listen closely as I sing—my voice
Is the same voice from when my reign began
Modesty aside, I haven’t sung out of tune
Since I was a boy
In Exu, back in my sertão [backlands]
I sang free as a roaming cicada
And that’s why, to this day
I’m still the King of Baião
I thank the Brazilian people
The entire North, Center, and South
Where the baião reigned
If I deserved my king’s crown
I always honored it
It was my duty
My accordion, my voice, my baião
This leather hat of mine and my gibão [leather jacket]
I’m going to gather it all and give it as a gift to the museum
It’s time to say goodbye
It’s all karma, neh!
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 
I do enjoy your potshots at the powers that be, but I think that your assertion is incomplete and uncharitable to hydrogen and policy makers.One cannot say ‘hydrogen is not eco” as an absolute statement. If you have to do work (thermodynamically speaking), it will require energy, and the conversion of energy to work is never 100% efficient. The real question, is it better than the alternatives?As you say, hydrogen cells are a battery technology, not a fuel. I wish they didn’t use the term “fuel cells”. Compared to all other storage tech that we have now, hydrogen is WAAAY more efficient. A comparable Li-ion solution for a train would require hundreds of tons of battery alone.Compared to diesel, hydrogen works out about equal in terms of end-to-end operational efficiencies. Diesel has to be extracted, stored and transported. But where hydrogen wins out is that it does not spit out CO2, NO2 and SO2. It is a far greener option per km compared to diesel. And as an aside, it does not have a dependency on geopolitics. Electrification is the only real alternative and it is WAY more green compared to hydrogen, since its operational efficiencies are incredible. However, there are routes such as narrow gauge routes where it is incredibly expensive (with reference to its usage), or even impossible, such as mountain tunnels where it is not possible to lay down a catenary. Further, for electrification, no one talks about the embodied environmental debt in putting up massive amounts of steel and concrete along the lines, and in support of the lines. I’d like to see this contrast being explored.
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