Hydrogen vs. Battery Electric Cars

Dianna, please do a deep dive into Gray vs Blue vs Green Hydrogen (and do it without Toyota, or Shell Oil, Exxon, etc.) The problem that EVs are trying to solve is CO2. Green Hydrogen effectively DOES NOT EXIST. Gray and Blue Hydrogen are just petroleum companies strategy to keep pulling petroleum out of the ground. 

Gray Hydrogen is steam reformation of Natural Gas (NG) that pumps the waste CO2 right into the atmosphere. It's even worse than NG powered Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) because it uses so much energy to heat the NG to separate the H2. 

Blue Hydrogen purports to capture the CO2 to store it or put it to other uses. This "storage" is going to be like the "green washing" plastics companies did with their promise of recycling all plastic, which in reality can't be done. Pumping the waste CO2 into the ground (that's their proposal) is just pushing that CO2 release to sometime in the future. Compressed gases in the ground are eventually going to make their way into the atmosphere. Our grandchildren's grandchildren will have to suffer the consequences of our determination to pull petroleum out of the ground. Blue Hydrogen also wastes the electricity that it requires to now not only reform the NG but also to transport it and pump it to the underground storage that they have created for it. 

Green Hydrogen, from electrolysis using renewable energy to create is the only Hydrogen that would be zero emissions, but only if the transportation and compression is also from renewable, zero emission, energy. Today, Green Hydrogen created with renewable energy is prohibitively expensive and requires A LOT more electricity than if the solar, wind, hydro, etc. power was just put directly into a battery. 

There may be some use cases for fuel cell vehicles, but it WILL NOT be passenger cars. It probably shouldn't be for trains either. Trains run on tracks, therefore VERY predictable routes. Electric trains taking power from overhead lines is the best way to give trains their power. Including overhead lines when building new train tracks is a miniscule increase in infrastructure cost. Retrofitting existing lines with power lines is feasible and will amortize for train companies in only a few years. In the interim, before all tracks have overhead lines, trains that need to travel short distances between powered segments can hook up a train car(s) with rechargeable batteries for those stretches. 

Boats and planes? I can imagine that they could benefit from fuel cells. 🤷‍♂️