What is actually the simplest answer why hydrogen is not feasible yet for a replacement of our usual ways to heat buildings or drive cars. I heard that Hydrogen makes sense for larger vehicles that have to drive for a lot of miles but smaller ones are not really in development outside of toyota’s experiments. Is there already a way to when it could get feasible?
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It is disappointing that the top answer is plain wrong.
The ELI5 answer is: It takes more energy to create/isolate hydrogen than the amount of energy you get from burning hydrogen. Looking to hydrogen as a fuel source is the wrong perspective. You should be looking at hydrogen as an energy storage medium.
More in-depth answer:
The world needs to look at hydrogen as an energy storage medium instead of an energy source itself. Similar to a battery, it is where you put energy when you have too much of it (preferably from clean energy sources).
The current top answer is plain wrong because it does not answer the actual question of “Why is hydrogen not feasible”. While the top answer does mention that one primary way to get hydrogen is from fossil fuels, you can also generate hydrogen through renewable energy sources. Germany has multiple hydrogen plants utilizing this approach.
It is valuable in Germany because they have had periods of over-generation of electricity from renewable sources. Prior to the hydrogen plants they would have to encourage citizens to waste electricity because the power must go somewhere.
Unlike batteries though, you can easily load a ton of carbon onto a tanker in hydrogen tanks and take it all around the world with very little losses. Additionally batteries cannot fit within a pipeline infrastructure.
That though introduces another barrier of hydrogen adoption. Current energy transport systems (gas pipelines, oil tankers) are not suitable to transport hydrogen. I forget at the moment exactly why, I think its because they are not meant to be pressurized at the level we would pressurize hydrogen – or it might have been due to some side chemical reaction… Can’t recall that specific detail at this point.
Source: Masters in Energy Systems Engineering. One of my projects was a case study of one of the new hydrogen plants in Germany (might already be built/building at this point). In that project we addressed the hydrogen feasibility question in light of Germany building hydrogen plants.
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