Hydrogen Future

I do not believe in electric cars. In fact they are one of the biggest lies out there today. They have very little in common with protecting the environment. The life-time carbon footprint of an electric car is more or less equal to a traditional car. So switching from an ICE vehicle to an EV does not move the needle.

And speaking of mobility in the context of the climate: there are many super easy things which could move the needle: stopping buying new cars would be the first. Some people do that every 2-3 years. That is completely irrational, in particular considering they often complain how bad the new car is compared to the old one. Or simply driving less. 3 weeks ago attending an industry convention in Bellevue, WA, I was the only passenger on a public bus to the Airport. The bus is $3.25 and the ride takes 50 minutes. Comparing to $35 and 40 minutes by Uber. It must be a monumental effort to take this bus, as clearly nobody was able to do do that. Or nobody cared.

Back to EVs - the key issue with them are batteries. Low energy density (=heavy, limited range and frequent need to recharge) combined with complex chemistry which requires extracting unimaginable amounts of raw materials: 500 thousand tons for a ton of batteries. Half-a-million! And no, the bulldozers doing that are not electric. This is either done by hands by children in Congo or by heavy diesel-powered machinery. 

Chemical batteries as energy storage are a dead end. Too heavy, too impractical, too expensive, too much environmental impact. But there is one ultimate, easy to use, super clean energy storage: hydrogen. There even are super clean cars running on hydrogen, such as the Toyota Mirai.

But having said that, hydrogen is not going to be about personal cars, as they do not have the future anyway due to crowded cities and roadways and the modes of transportation being changed globally (sharing and micro mobility). When moving to sustainable energy, we are dealing with highly variable supply (wind, solar) and highly variable demand (daily peaks). The peaks often (almost always) do not match, so we need energy storage. And while there are very low hanging fruits there - such as locally heating water with surplus electricity, a generic, highly efficient and clean storage of energy is desperately needed. Out of the available options, hydrogen is by far the most promising. We "just" need to master the technologies around it. Which is a great (and responsible) opportunity to invest resources (both financial and talent).