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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When people talk about using hydrogen as a fuel, what they mean is hydrogen molecules (H2). There are very few of these on earth. There are very many hydrogen atoms, but almost all of these are locked up in other molecules such as water.
There are three main sources of hydrogen. The main one used at the moment is… fossil fuels. There are various methods that can be used to get hydrogen out of natural gas, oil, or coal. These are about as environmentally friendly as simply burning the fossil fuels, so it would be pretty pointless to use this to heat homes or power vehicles. Another possibility is to get hydrogen out of biomass (e.g. wood or animal waste). But this requires a sustainable source of biomass and comes with all kinds of complications depending on what substance is being used. The final source is elelctrolysis of water. This requires a huge amount of electricity – in fact, slightly more than you get by burning the hydrogen.
One possibility that does seem feasible is that hydrogen could be produced from excess electricity from renewable energy sources, at times of the day when demand is low or in places that have loads of wind/sun/flowing water but few people. However, the infrastructure for this is not in place yet, and will not be for a long time.
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