> This is a well written and comprehensive article, but I don’t feel it has answers to the central issues of scaling up the Hydrogen economy. On the other hand, Hydrogen can be green, while mass produced lithium batteries are anything, but.
This is not really fair..
Batteries can be produced cleanly just as much as hydrogen. It's just a matter of chemistry, mining practices and cost.
Furthermore, batteries is not a fuel. It is not burned. It can be recycled or reused.
But I get what you mean. All in all this is a technological arms race, and it seems to me that batteries have a pretty big head start. Though it's not over until we get a battery that is made from cheap common elements that has 2-3 times the capacity of todays batteries. In the meantime I suppose hydrogen fuel for the personal transport sector has a chance.
Then there’s storage of Hydrogen, which is manageable, but not trivial. Transportation is difficult, but again possible to manage given enough drive to make it work. Fuel cells also currently require expensive catalysts such as platinum. I don’t see any of these problems close to being approached, never mind solved.
This is a well written and comprehensive article, but I don’t feel it has answers to the central issues of scaling up the Hydrogen economy. On the other hand, Hydrogen can be green, while mass produced lithium batteries are anything, but.