Eugene Coyle wrote:
The electricity for producing hydrogen is most likely to come from coal or nuclear generation. Hydrogen is not a panacea -- it is not even an energy source but rather a storage medium.
It is precisely because hydrogen is a storage medium that the electricity to produce it (by electrolysis) on a mass scale will come, will have to come, from wind turbines and solar cells. Because the best wind and solar locations are far from the main energy-usage centers and the inputs are irregularly available, wind and solar energy are relatively uneconomic as inputs to the grid (which is anyway, because of wastage in the transmission process, an inefficient means of supplying electricity). But since hydrogen can be delivered, with insignificant losses, to its point of use, the solar/wind/hydrogen process becomes the only practicable solution to the energy/global warming crisis. Of course monopoly capital, totally invested in nuclear/petroleum/coal, will never in time consent to the massive Manhattan Project-scale investments needed for the solar/wind/hydrogen transition. Either it gets overthrown or, as Michael said
(4) we're screwed.
Shane Mage "Thunderbolt steers all things...It consents and does not consent to be called Zeus." Herakleitos of Ephesos
