Hydrogen for Net Zero: A critical cost-competitive energy vector

The early adoption of hydrogen in these sectors will be driven by regulators and industry commitments, and while hydrogen adoption in 2030 will be relatively low in these segments at about 1% and 6%, it lays the foundation to decarbonize these sectors longer-term by up to 60% by 2050.

These are long-term investments, definitely can be a challenge to get businesses on board when the pay offs are that far out. That's why a policy backing can be so critical

"Power: Hydrogen will enable early decarbonization of current fossil-fueled power generation assets..."

This claim seems particularly fanciful.  There are Japanese power companies which are being pressured to keep their existing (safe, clean, zero CO2-emitting) nuclear plants off-line and pursue other options instead.  Some have offered to keep burning dirty coal, but to "co-fire" the coal with a small fraction of carbon-free imported ammonia.  By increasing the ammonia fraction over time, they can forecast modestly decreasing CO2 emissions and air pollution deaths (and steadily increasing per-kWh costs) for many years, reaching perhaps 30% reduction for each coal-fired plant.  That's a completely insane solution (ammonia costs much more than coal or gas) compared to the obvious alternative: use nuclear instead of fossil fuel.

Advocates will ask, why not just use renewables instead?  There are only two ways to use (variable) renewables in a power grid while addressing the variability: blended with (dirty) fossil fuel, or massively over-built, with the excess used to make hydrogen.  The problem with the hydrogen route is that in all plausible scenarios, the resulting "green" hydrogen costs more than hydrogen made from fossil fuel, and much more than burning fossil fuel directly.   

So the offered solution is to kick the can down the road, and say, we won't use hydrogen, but our grandkids might.

We should admit that variable renewables are a relic of the fossil fuel era, and instead take the technically easier solution (even though for some it will be emotionally harder): nuclear.  With nuclear, we can decarbonize our power grids with less over-building and therefore less hydrogen that needs a buyer.  We can use waste heat from nuclear plants to power district heat networks to provide space heat to our cities.  We can use heat from high-temperature nuclear plants to replace fossil fuel heating in many industrial uses.  Nuclear powered tugs can move cargo ships across the seas.  And what little hydrogen/ammonia fuel that is produced from the excess nuclear electricity (which exceeds the needs of the fertilizer industry) can be used, not to replace cheap coal and gas, but expensive gasoline and diesel for buses, airplanes, ships, trains, long-haul trucks, and construction equipment.