Hydrogen is NEVER going to replace petrol/gasoline

Here’s why:

1. Hydrogen is notoriously difficult to store.
2. Hydrogen, having the smallest atomic size of any element, even in its molecular H2 form, is prone to leaking through just about anything and everything. It can even escape through metal pipes — and be absorbed by the metal itself.
3. And when it does come into contact with metals it can cause embrittlement of that metal. See (a)
4. Most Hydrogen gas is created from Natural Gas. So it’s perhaps not surprising to see that oil and gas companies are the most prominent supporters of Hydrogen. They have seen the writing on the wall and desperately need to find another use of their oil and natural gas. It should be noted a byproduct of producing Hydrogen from natural gas is C02 , lots of it.
5. Even ‘green hydrogen’ made from solar or wind power through electrolysis doesn’t make any sense. Say you have a wind farm or large solar array generating electricity to convert sea water to hydrogen. No CO2. But this has to be transported (which takes energy), stored (which takes a huge amount of energy perhaps 50% of the energy of the stored H2). It has to be stored at something around 10,000 psi pressure! Or Cryogenic temperatures. This is then transferred into your hydrogen car, which drives a hydrogen fuel cell (itself only 50% efficient) to produce electricity to drive an electric motor.

Nope, doesn’t make any sense.

OR

You take the power from your solar array or wind farm, connect it to the grid, transmit the power over the grid (very efficiently, like 95% efficient) directly to your car battery (90% efficient also), which drives the electric motor.

So converting electricity to a very-difficult-to-handle, store and transport gas, then converting it back to electricity again, with something like 75% energy loss, is simply nuts. It’s insane and doesn’t and will never make any sense.

Basic science.

And if you are now thinking, but what happens when the wind isn’t shining the sun isn’t blowing? The answer is grid battery storage. And one day soon maybe via a ‘virtual power plant’ which is made up from tens of thousands of battery packs in people’s homes.

The days of large centralised power generation are coming to an end. The future is not hydrogen, but distributed power generation and storage, where your energy company will store excess power in your house battery, and will discharge from your battery in times of peak demand. And they will pay you for it. And if you have your own solar panels, you become a power generator. And they’ll pay you for that also.

No more large, expensive, dirty gas-powered ‘peaker power plants’.

A cheaper, greener, smarter way to produce power. Can’t wait.