> This would not, by itself, be enough to level Germany's demand.
This is exactly what I said. There's not enough industrial-grade energy storage capacity in the world to even out the intermittency of "renewable" energy. You currently must supplement it with "always on" power generation.
> The better solution would be electrolysis to make hydrogen...
> Today, 95% of the hydrogen produced in the United States is made by natural gas reforming in large central plants.
While it is true that we can work with hydrogen and can burn it for power, hydrogen will not save us. It's notoriously difficult to contain, meaning that it leaks out of containers and piping at the drop of a hat. It is the second least dense known substance in the universe, meaning that its energy density per cubic meter is dreadfully low. It's also energy-intensive to produce and store. The way all industrial-scale hydrogen production works means that the process to produce hydrogen produces more CO2 than if we just burned the petrochemicals used to feed the process. [0][1]
The energy consumption of electrolysis doesn't matter at all if we have more electricity available than we know what to do with... but that's very definitely not the world we live in right now.
> ...even sticking with their existing nuclear plants would not have gotten them off fossil fuels...
Right. The thing to do is to build more fission plants and "renewable" generators in tandem. Fission plants are ultimately a stopgap until we have enough storage and solar/wind/hydro/etc. to meet our current and future energy demands. But, like, even if we start honestly and eagerly working on this in earnest... today, we're absolutely not going to get there globally within our lifetimes. We're sure as hell never going to get there if we shut down existing fission plants and backfill by burning coal and natural gas.
[0] Search this <https://www.aiche-cep.com/cepmagazine/march_2021/MobilePaged...> for the phrase "Natural gas is currently the main feedstock for hydrogen processes, accounting for 75% of annual global production", and read the next couple of paragraphs.
This is exactly what I said. There's not enough industrial-grade energy storage capacity in the world to even out the intermittency of "renewable" energy. You currently must supplement it with "always on" power generation.
> The better solution would be electrolysis to make hydrogen...
It's my understanding that roughly zero of the industrial-scale hydrogen production operations use electrolysis. They process _natural gas_, and _coal_ to get hydrogen. From <https://www.energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-na...>:
> Today, 95% of the hydrogen produced in the United States is made by natural gas reforming in large central plants.
While it is true that we can work with hydrogen and can burn it for power, hydrogen will not save us. It's notoriously difficult to contain, meaning that it leaks out of containers and piping at the drop of a hat. It is the second least dense known substance in the universe, meaning that its energy density per cubic meter is dreadfully low. It's also energy-intensive to produce and store. The way all industrial-scale hydrogen production works means that the process to produce hydrogen produces more CO2 than if we just burned the petrochemicals used to feed the process. [0][1]
The energy consumption of electrolysis doesn't matter at all if we have more electricity available than we know what to do with... but that's very definitely not the world we live in right now.
> ...even sticking with their existing nuclear plants would not have gotten them off fossil fuels...
Right. The thing to do is to build more fission plants and "renewable" generators in tandem. Fission plants are ultimately a stopgap until we have enough storage and solar/wind/hydro/etc. to meet our current and future energy demands. But, like, even if we start honestly and eagerly working on this in earnest... today, we're absolutely not going to get there globally within our lifetimes. We're sure as hell never going to get there if we shut down existing fission plants and backfill by burning coal and natural gas.
[0] Search this <https://www.aiche-cep.com/cepmagazine/march_2021/MobilePaged...> for the phrase "Natural gas is currently the main feedstock for hydrogen processes, accounting for 75% of annual global production", and read the next couple of paragraphs.
[1] And search this <https://www.cell.com/joule/fulltext/S2542-4351(22)00416-0> for the phrase "More than 95% of global hydrogen production is currently based on fossil gas and coal with no carbon abatement."