A Youtube exchange with a techno optimist
Recently on the Youtube channel Friendly Jordies run by Jordon Shanks, an Australian comedian I posted this comment. Hydrogen power is a non starter. Why? Because you have to make the hydrogen and that is energy sucking in a world where energy is going to become a lot tighter. What is the source of hydrogen? Most from natural gas, which is mostly CH4, or methane. A fossil fuel and that is not very good. Besides you would yield less energy from the hydrogen from NG than you would by using the NG as an energy source directly. Once the H is stripped what happens to the C of the molecule? Thus liberated it takes to dance with with nearest O2 to form what we know as CO2. On top of that NG is a finite resource. Fail on the climate front. The other source of hydrogen is from water, H2O via electrolysis. VERY energy hungry and VERY expensive. Will not fuel an economy but we drown it in overheads. Another fail. Hydrogen energy is really another form of hopium. Moral of the story ...