A kilogramme of hydrogen - the unit most often used – has an energy value of about 33.3 kWh.[1] So a tonne of hydrogen delivers about 33 MWh and a million tonnes about 33 terawatt hours (TWh). To provide a sense of scale, the UK uses about 300 TWh of electricity a year.
It takes a good while to build out the physical infrastructure to deliver green hydrogen equivilants:
Green hydrogen is made from renewable energy, producing zero pollution – its only by-product is steam. FFI’s ambition is to grow its green hydrogen production to 15 million tonnes of green hydrogen per year by 2030, accelerating to 50 million tonnes per year in the next decade thereafter.
The person doing this isn't in the "pinky promise" game, they built out a penny stock company from 2c a share to ~$28 a share over two decades to capture a large chunk of a billion tonne per annum raw iron ore market.
Yeah, swindling governments is a profitable business.
“So the plan right now is to replace the coal generation with natural gas generation, and color the pipes in green paint.” - eh no. This is not “the plan” although getting rid of all coal is part of the plan.
It is: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germany-agrees-subsi...
> The ministry said hydrogen transition plans should be drawn up by 2032 to enable the plants to be fully switched to hydrogen between 2035 and 2040.
> "Germany last year agreed with the European Commission to tender 8.8 GW of new hydrogen plants, and up to another 15 GW that will run initially on natural gas before being connected to the hydrogen grid by 2035 at the latest, but Berlin and Brussels have disagreed on how the gas plants would be subsidised."
So basically, Germany is _paying_ companies somewhere around $20B to build new gas power plants and make _plans_ to switch to hydrogen by 2032. The switch itself can go into 2040-s.
Germany needs about 300GW in winter once it switches to electric heating and EVs. In winter, renewables regularly drop to about 10% of their average production for weeks at a time. So Germany will need to import about 250GW of power from its neighbors. That also need power for their own use.
This is just not feasible.
So the plan right now is to replace the coal generation with natural gas generation, and color the pipes in green paint. Oh, and make the companies to pinky-promise that they are "hydrogen ready".