We'd need a lot of renewables for this to work though. Like a lot more than we currently have or that is currently planned/under construction. Orders of magnitude more. At the cost of a few trillion $. The math just isn't great for this.
Just doing the simple math of the twh needed to produce the fuel for a major airport on a daily basis is kind of eye watering. Just a little back of the envelope math makes it really obvious that that's not going to be a thing any time soon even if we do get some magic laws of physics defying electrolysis technology (those pesky laws of thermodynamics are hard to beat though).
And even just shifting current hydrogen production, which is good for a few percent of carbon emissions today, is a huge undertaking. I agree that electrolysis improvements will actually make that cost effective to do at some point. Possibly even as soon as next decade. But right now it just isn't and most of those electrolysis companies still have a few things to prove. Like having working products or the ability to produce those cost effectively at scale. Either way, within now and a decade, we won't have nearly enough renewables in place to power any of this new hydrogen economy. We'd struggle to power the current one with that. As long as renewables remain scarce, hydrogen is not a great use case for wasting them.
Just doing the simple math of the twh needed to produce the fuel for a major airport on a daily basis is kind of eye watering. Just a little back of the envelope math makes it really obvious that that's not going to be a thing any time soon even if we do get some magic laws of physics defying electrolysis technology (those pesky laws of thermodynamics are hard to beat though).
And even just shifting current hydrogen production, which is good for a few percent of carbon emissions today, is a huge undertaking. I agree that electrolysis improvements will actually make that cost effective to do at some point. Possibly even as soon as next decade. But right now it just isn't and most of those electrolysis companies still have a few things to prove. Like having working products or the ability to produce those cost effectively at scale. Either way, within now and a decade, we won't have nearly enough renewables in place to power any of this new hydrogen economy. We'd struggle to power the current one with that. As long as renewables remain scarce, hydrogen is not a great use case for wasting them.