I’m pretty sure the basic thermodynamics of it are against truly green hydrogen production ever becoming cheaper than the dirty business of producing it by reforming methane from natural gas, unless basically all fossil fuel subsidies are someday cancelled – or else after the energy cost of energy gets so high (in other words, the energy return on energy invested falls so low) that it’s no longer practical to extract fossil fuel from the ground regardless of price or any other economic factor; – but by that point in the future, that same scarcity will have permanently crashed the world economy thus humanity will already be in forced deindustrialization. I could go on…
The thing is, hydrogen is a byproduct of damn near every industry. It’s usually just released into the atmosphere because it’s a pain in the ass to capture and store and isn’t worth much. If it starts being in demand, you can bet your ass they’ll start trying to gather it.
Remember, though, that it is currently profitable to reform hydrogen out of methane, at the same time as it’s not profitable to contain and sell ‘byproduct’ hydrogen. There are sure to be reasons why, and they might be fairly durable reasons that don’t change much even as the demand for hydrogen increases. I’m no expert on this so I won’t speculate too much on what those reasons might be – maybe factors related to scale and logistics?
I’m pretty sure the basic thermodynamics of it are against truly green hydrogen production ever becoming cheaper than the dirty business of producing it by reforming methane from natural gas, unless basically all fossil fuel subsidies are someday cancelled – or else after the energy cost of energy gets so high (in other words, the energy return on energy invested falls so low) that it’s no longer practical to extract fossil fuel from the ground regardless of price or any other economic factor; – but by that point in the future, that same scarcity will have permanently crashed the world economy thus humanity will already be in forced deindustrialization. I could go on…
The thing is, hydrogen is a byproduct of damn near every industry. It’s usually just released into the atmosphere because it’s a pain in the ass to capture and store and isn’t worth much. If it starts being in demand, you can bet your ass they’ll start trying to gather it.
Remember, though, that it is currently profitable to reform hydrogen out of methane, at the same time as it’s not profitable to contain and sell ‘byproduct’ hydrogen. There are sure to be reasons why, and they might be fairly durable reasons that don’t change much even as the demand for hydrogen increases. I’m no expert on this so I won’t speculate too much on what those reasons might be – maybe factors related to scale and logistics?