Hydrogen - the neglected opportunity for e-mobility?
Almost everyone in the automotive sector is talking about the inevitability of e-mobility.
It is (rightly ) a current mega-hype, but in my opinion the main focus lies - unfortunately - on battery electric vehicles (BEV).
These are regional without emissions, but in most of the countries the required power is generated from fossil energies. Of course there are sophisticated countries (e.g. Norway) with environmental conditions to generate the required power almost complete from regenerative sources.
I live in Germany, here we cannot cover the needs with regenerative energy. Therefore BEVs may be promoted as emission-free, but it does not cover the whole story. The extreme environmental impacts for battery productions are not even mentioned here.
However, if I ask myself:
Is there any efficient approach to store power from regenerative energy sources?
Yeah, I think... why not focus more on hydrogen?
Hydrogen as alternative source of energy contributes significantly to the world-wide reduction of CO2.
As well it would create more than 30 million of new jobs, that is the result of a study of McKinsey and the Hydrogen Counsil that was presented in November, 2017 in Bonn, Germany during the world climate conference.
http://hydrogencouncil.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Hydrogen-scaling-up-Hydrogen-Council.pdf
There a roadmap for the large-scale introduction of hydrogen is described and the effects on energy revolution are pointed out.
Hydrogen as a large-scaled ressource could cover 20% of the energy demand in 2050. Thereby, the yearly CO2 emission would decrease by six gigatonne (that means 6 x 10^9 or 6.000.000.000 tonne of CO2).
Hydrogen solutions build a foundation for a sustainable growth for the industry and the mobility.
To store and that is the main point here, to transport, energy from regenaritve sources like wind or solar energy.
As a summary - my personal opinion:
I hope that the governments will see the potential of hydrogen and distance themself a little bit from the mega-hype battery electric vehicles. It would help the world a lot.
Cheers!