The biggest steel mill in my state is switching to locally sourced green hydrogen. Written out, that sounds pretty funny. But it's produced with local solar ene

The biggest steel mill in my state is switching to locally sourced green hydrogen. Written out, that sounds pretty funny. But it's produced with local solar energy farms, so it's pretty accurate. This is one area where carbon taxes are the obvious solution. Cost and availability is the biggest driving factor for industry. Furnace coal is available and cheap, but if you tax it heavily for it's emissions enough it won't be. Will steel become extinct? Of course not, the mills will switch to the next alternative, which is hydrogen. It will be ripe with opportunity, with solar farms and hydrogen plants popping up around steel mills. Already we are seeing coal plants written off as unprofitable and future mining projects are becoming less attractive to investors in an unpredictable future. Even without a carbon tax, we could see the cost of coal go up enough to make a local hydrogen industry make more sense. But we can speed the whole process up with smart carbon taxes.