Cheap, green hydrogen would be a breakthrough in clean energy
I don&#x27;t see hydrogen playing any role for energy storage or grid demand balancing.<p>Even if all the technical and engineering challenges associated with storing and transporting it safely could be addressed, I just don&#x27;t see how the economics of green hydrogen is supposed to work.  The round-trip energy efficiency of electrolysis-fuel cell is poor - currently about 40%.<p>The counter-argument is that such inefficiency doesn&#x27;t matter as it can be used as a sink for excess&#x2F;almost free renewables (solar or wind) but for this to work, it means leaving your capital-expensive electrolysis plant idle for half or 2&#x2F;3rds of the day.  Since the cost of green hydrogen production is mostly cap-ex not op-ex, this makes the proposition almost completely infeasible.<p>Looking at the trajectories of grid-scale battery storage and that of hydrogen technology, I don&#x27;t see how anyone could bet on hydrogen.<p>The best hope is that we can replace the current industrial consumption of grey hydrogen with that of green but this currently needs massive subsidy as a kg of green hydrogen current costs about 5 times that of gray (admittedly I think the multiple will be less given the current high NG prices).