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Well, it would make the US strategically weak if there weren't reasonable alternatives. Wires are cheaper and more convenient ways of moving energy around than
by elihu 6y ago
Well, it would make the US strategically weak if there weren't reasonable alternatives. Wires are cheaper and more convenient ways of moving energy around than refrigerated/insulated pipes or tankers. So anywhere you can use electricity directly you probably would. Batteries are already good enough for cars. Hydrogen might be good for energy storage, but pumped hydro is probably simpler and cheaper where geography allows.
Hydrogen might be very useful for some applications that require high energy density (electrified aircraft, perhaps?), though maybe those use cases will be served by conventional liquid fuels that might be increasingly made using renewable energy inputs rather than made from fossil fuels.
- epistasis 6y agoFor the demand side, I agree with the Part 2 article that I posted. Namely, hydrogen will be used primarily for non-electrical industrial purposes, and perhaps for seasonal storage of excess electricity that wouldn't have been used anyway. I don't see much use for shipping hydrogen around, unless it's as a minor component of a synthetic mixture that replaces natural gas, but that's super speculative. However for ammonia (fertilizer), steel, maybe shipping, there's few other options. (And I'm super hopeful that we figure out how to build more wires in the US, probably by repurposing existing right of way. But I'm also skeptical that we will be able to fight NIMBYs for that...)