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Nobody is saying this is being done now, but Germany for example is heavily banking on a hydrogen based energy economy for the future [0], just as the EU comiss

Nobody is saying this is being done now, but Germany for example is heavily banking on a hydrogen based energy economy for the future [0], just as the EU comission does. Which makes a lot of sense: It's a way to utilize the overproduction from renewables and existing gas infrastructure can be retooled for hydrogen without too much investment [1]. There are even considerations for a European hydrogen backbone by gas infrastructure companies from nine EU member states [2] [0] https://www.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/zv/de/ueber-fraunhofer/wissenschaftspolitik/Positionen/2019-10-a-hydrogen-roadmap-for-germany.pdf https://www.fraunhofer.de/content/dam/zv/de/ueber-fraunhofer... [1] https://www.rechargenews.com/transition/german-pipeline-operators-present-plan-for-world-s-largest-hydrogen-grid/2-1-810731 https://www.rechargenews.com/transition/german-pipeline-oper... [2] https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/gas-grid-operators-unveil-plan-for-european-hydrogen-infrastructure-backbone/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy/news/gas-grid-operat...

epistasis 6y ago
Your post and links got me thinking: in many ways hydrogen is happening a lot more now than nuclear. China is building tons is alkaline electrolyzers. Europe is looking to PEM. There are new MW-scale electrolyzers used for silicon production. There's an active industry that is scaling and innovating and growing. Nuclear is in decline, with all the giants failing. The few startups are working on engineering projects where iteration is measured in decade time scales rather than months. The hydrogen industry exciting right now, and honestly I can't imagine saying that even a year ago. Europe's investing tens of billions of dollars in it, which will result in massive changes and improvements for the technology. A similar investment in nuclear would not move the needle at all.

epistasis 6y ago

Your post and links got me thinking: in many ways hydrogen is happening a lot more now than nuclear. China is building tons is alkaline electrolyzers. Europe is looking to PEM. There are new MW-scale electrolyzers used for silicon production. There's an active industry that is scaling and innovating and growing. Nuclear is in decline, with all the giants failing. The few startups are working on engineering projects where iteration is measured in decade time scales rather than months. The hydrogen industry exciting right now, and honestly I can't imagine saying that even a year ago. Europe's investing tens of billions of dollars in it, which will result in massive changes and improvements for the technology. A similar investment in nuclear would not move the needle at all.