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Originally Posted by Isaac Zachary
While you can argue that that's where most of hydrogen comes from today on average in most parts of the world, you can't argue with the possibility of running a hydrogen vehicle off of hydrogen made 100% from renewable sources.
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Sure I can, because it's not happening. Arguing against something that isn't a reality is simple.
Arguments that we should stop doing something now because something in the future might be better aren't reasonable. I could say we should shut down all fossil fuel power generation now because we might have cheap and abundant fusion electricity in the future, but it wouldn't be rational.
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The same argument can be said of battery electric vehicles. Sure, you can go get a generator from Harbor Freight and charge your EV off of that. Or you could install solar panels and charge your EV off of those. Just because in country A 95% of electricity comes from coal and 95% of it's hydrogen comes from natural gas doesn't mean that in country B 95% of it's electricity can't come from wind and solar and 95% of it's hydrogen can't come from wind and solar powered electrolysis. (Again, I'm not trying to start a political debate, I'm just saying it's hypothetically possible.)
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A country could go 95% wind and solar and they would be broke, which is why none do it. I could have my lawn mowed with fingernail clippers, and it would consume no fossil fuels, hypothetically.
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Say I run a fleet of trucks that drive long distances and want to stay away from fossil fuels. Would solar to battery storage to battery electric vehicles make the most sense, seeing how I'd have to charge often for long charging times, and the weight of the batteries would make me have to take along less cargo? Or would solar to electrolysis be better, even though I'd need more solar panels? But at least I wouldn't need to store the electricity in stationary batteries since hydrogen is already a storage medium. The trucks could haul more cargo and drive farther distances between refuels since hydrogen is much lighter than lithum ion batteries and refuelling would be much, much faster. Or would fields of corn to produce bio fuels make the most sense? This is all hypothecially speaking of course.
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That's a relatively simple question to solve mathematically. Even more simple is Energy Return On Investment (EROI). It's the amount of energy invested divided by the amount of energy returned expressed as a ratio. If it takes 1 unit of energy to harvest 10 units of energy, that is cheaper than if it takes 1 unit of energy to harvest only 3 in return.
The nature of competition is those who spend the least to extract the most have the market advantage. Those who have to spend more or extract less have to increase the price of their product, and people largely aren't willing to pay more for commodities.
