U.S. Ready To Jump Aboard Hydrogen Express

Bob's exactly right. Hydrogen is the latest energy storage panacea fad, now that Lithium Ion is showing its downside.

At a high level, there seem to be two general approaches toward decarbonization in the energy transition, 1) the electrification of everything through scaling mostly existing technologies, as advocated by folks like Mark Jacobson and Saul Griffith, and 2) look to hydrogen as a cure-all.

The Europeans missed out on the first energy innovation wave, so they're all in on attempting to lead on hydrogen. While green hydrogen sounds great in theory, it is decades away from economic viability, and its tiny molecules mean that natural gas infrastructure can't be repurposed.  Beyond all that, hydrogen is just too lossy, with efficiency declining at every step in the value chain. In one example, automotive, overall efficiency is 25-35% vs 70-90% for electric vehicles. http://ehcar.net/news/news2020-04-062.htm

Hydrogen is a critical chemical feedstock; over half of global production goes to making ammonia, and half of global agriculture is dependent on ammonia-based fertilizers. And as Bob points out, almost all of it currently comes from SMR with no carbon capture.

Hydrogen will have applications in the energy transition, mostly those that can't easily be electrified. If produced locally, there will be a few industrial applications to explore (e.g. blast furnaces) but the efficiency losses make it an ineffective source of heat. There would also be value in long-term strategic storage for grid backup.