At the moment there is no "hydrogen economy". There are tests and prototypes and demonstration projects but it is a big money-sink. On the other hand it is a pretty good place to put the money, especially as the world discovers just how much power generation it is going to take to electrify everything that is going to be electrified.
From Ars Technica, August 5:
Companies may be investing in production capacity that will outpace demand.
If you were paying attention at the start of this century, you might remember the phrase "hydrogen economy," which was shorthand for George W. Bush's single, abortive attempt to take climate change seriously. At the time, hydrogen was supposed to be a fuel for vehicular transport, an idea that still hasn't really caught on.
But hydrogen appears to be enjoying a revival of sorts, appearing in the climate plans of nations like the UK and Netherlands. The US government is investing in research on ways to produce hydrogen more cheaply. Are there reasons to think hydrogen power might be for real this time?
A new report by research service BloombergNEF suggests that hydrogen is set for growth—but not in transport. And the growth has some aspects that don't actually make sense given the current economics.
A gas that’s not really for cars
There are currently two primary ways of producing hydrogen. One involves stripping it from a hydrocarbon such as the methane in natural gas. CO2 is a byproduct of these reactions, and at present, it is typically just released into the atmosphere, so the process is anything but carbon neutral. That carbon can be captured and stored relatively easily, however, so the process could be clean if the capture and storage are done with renewable or nuclear power. The same caveat applies to producing hydrogen by water electrolysis: It needs to be done with low-carbon power to make sense for climate goals.
Until recently, very few countries have had enough renewables installed to regularly produce an excess of carbon-free electricity to power climate-friendly hydrogen production. That situation is now starting to change, so governments are beginning to include hydrogen in their climate plans.
But something else has changed since the early talk of a hydrogen economy: Battery prices have plunged, and widespread electric vehicle use is a viable option for decarbonizing a lot of transportation. There are still some types of vehicles, like trains, for which batteries aren't a great option and hydrogen could play a role. But looking out to the end of the decade, BloombergNEF sees transportation generating only about 10 percent of the total demand.
Instead, BloombergNEF foresees countries using hydrogen as part of a larger integrated plan to reach national climate goals. If things go according to these plans, carbon-neutral hydrogen will be used in segments of the economy that are difficult to decarbonize otherwise.....
....MUCH MORE
