There's a bunch of places where you'd still want hydrogen for non-fuel purposes, for example in plastics manufacturing. It's also useful as a reducing agent in steel production. Finally, the higher energy density makes it suitable for larger vehicles like long range trucks. Electrification is preferablem but not everything can be electrified.
Also, if you have enough renewable generation capacity to reliably cover peak loads then there are also going to be times when you have massive overproduction. Battery costs for the coming decades will be too high with to buffer multiple weeks of power use so it makes sense to have an "electricity sink" where you can dump any excess. Hydrogen production via electrolysis is an excellent option for that since it's very quick to scale up and down and the end product has many different uses.
Steel production can be done electrically, no need for hydrogen. Electrical metallurgy is very promising technology. Just replacing what we do now with hydrogen is about as difficult and will end up more expensive.
Check out Boston Metal.
> Finally, the higher energy density makes it suitable for larger vehicles like long range trucks. Electrification is preferablem but not everything can be electrified.
Trucks will be battery electric, its clearly more efficient for 99% of the routes.
> Also, if you have enough renewable generation capacity to reliably cover peak loads then there are also going to be times when you have massive overproduction.
Renewables will only cover peak loads with the help of massive amounts of batteries in the first place. No amount of solar power will create enough energy to cover the evening peak.
> Battery costs for the coming decades will be too high with to buffer multiple weeks of power use so it makes sense to have an "electricity sink" where you can dump any excess. Hydrogen production via electrolysis is an excellent option for that since it's very quick to scale up and down and the end product has many different uses.
Battery cost have been coming down fast and the trend is looking to continue.
I have huge question about the ideas of trying to store many weeks of energy production, the economics of that are very questionable. And hydrogen is just one of many technologies that can potentially 'solve' that if it even ever is solved. Hydrogen is far from clearly the best way to approach that problem.
> Steel production can be done electrically, no need for hydrogen. Electrical metallurgy is very promising technology. Just replacing what we do now with hydrogen is about as difficult and will end up more expensive.
> Check out Boston Metal.
MOE will release oxygen at around 1800 degrees Kelvin, making this highly impractical. I don't think this could work economically without a major breakthrough.
People will dump on BEV trucks for range, but why not have swappable trailer energy packs as an extra trailer? You can pull into a stop and just swap trailers. The tractor battery can be a backup or a stabilizer.
The trailing trailer can be shaped to further increase aerodynamics. It can have drive wheels to stabilize the truck in high crosswind, and additional regen braking on major mountain descents, as well as additional power up the mountain, although EV motors should be able to provide torque for climbing.
In the end, all the alternatives are now chasing a technology ecosystem that is improving at double digit percents per year in cost and more than that in scale of production.
The "hydrogen economy" actually needs to beat not only what Tesla can allegedly do in 2-3 years from what they presented on battery day, but even better than that, because IF/WHEN they get to scale, batteries will be at least half the cost of where they are now.
Same for nuclear. Once BEV and Wind/solar/storage stabilize their development curves, maybe nuclear or hydrogen can target a competitive price point.
You're weight limited with large trucks. Anything adds more weight will just take away from your cargo capacity. Not to mention the complex and logistics of having hundreds of thousands of battery trailers.
This is really just wishful thinking more than anything else. You can't just pretend the problems of batteries will magically go away.
Also, if you have enough renewable generation capacity to reliably cover peak loads then there are also going to be times when you have massive overproduction. Battery costs for the coming decades will be too high with to buffer multiple weeks of power use so it makes sense to have an "electricity sink" where you can dump any excess. Hydrogen production via electrolysis is an excellent option for that since it's very quick to scale up and down and the end product has many different uses.