Hydrogen is not really an engineering problem, its an investment problem. And its simply put a gigantic amount investment for a minimal amount of gain.
There are so many, way, way, way more useful investments you can make. How about doing useful simple things that we are sure can be done successfully and we know for sure will save a lot of CO2 and emission.
Stuff like railway electrification.
If you want to have long range trucks be a thing, electrify the highway with trolley wires.
Hydrogen trains have already shown that they can't compete with electrification traditional or with battery. In trucks they are currently getting their ass kicked by battery trucks. So neither for trucks nor for trains does hydrogen really make much sense.
So why exactly should we invest in a gigantic hydrogen infrastructure. For the maybe 1% market share in trains and trucks?
And its not actually easy to reuse LNG infrastructure.
> And worrying about a lack of infrastructure is also not a big issue.
This is disproved by literally 5000 years of human history where huge infrastructure investments are always a big political problem. And even if projects are clearly of huge benefits they are difficult.
In terms of hydrogen infrastructure, nobody can make a case that it is actually worth it in the first place.
> There's lots of engineer's who'll easily transition out of the LNG industry into great jobs working on these problems.
Or we could make those engineers work on useful stuff like batteries, railway electrification, nuclear, metros and so on.
Railway electrification in the US is a political problem. US freight rail has tiny margins and relies on quantity for profits. Freight rail regularly delays maintenance and upgrades until unavoidable for cost reasons. The US gov't is loathe to make American rail less competitive and force it to electrify, so they continue running polluting trains.
Us freight does not have tiny margin, they pay a large dividends and have spent 100s of millions in stock by back.
> Freight rail regularly delays maintenance and upgrades until unavoidable for cost reasons.
They are gradually running down the infrastructure built 100 years ago into the ground and maintain at the bare minimum while making large profits.
> The US gov't is loathe to make American rail less competitive and force it to electrify, so they continue running polluting trains.
Electrification would make it even more profitable then it already is.
Pretty much every single study done on electrification shows that it pays for itself in a pretty reasonable amount of time. Given that this is something that would still be useful 100 years from now, the US government forcing all first class to invest in this would be of huge benefits both to them and to the US as a whole.
> Hydrogen is not really an engineering problem, its an investment problem.
The problems stated by the OP are mostly maintenance problems. What is even worse, because you don't just pay once and they go away; you have to keep paying and they will come back if you ever lose focus on handling them.
There are so many, way, way, way more useful investments you can make. How about doing useful simple things that we are sure can be done successfully and we know for sure will save a lot of CO2 and emission.
Stuff like railway electrification.
If you want to have long range trucks be a thing, electrify the highway with trolley wires.
Hydrogen trains have already shown that they can't compete with electrification traditional or with battery. In trucks they are currently getting their ass kicked by battery trucks. So neither for trucks nor for trains does hydrogen really make much sense.
So why exactly should we invest in a gigantic hydrogen infrastructure. For the maybe 1% market share in trains and trucks?
And its not actually easy to reuse LNG infrastructure.
> And worrying about a lack of infrastructure is also not a big issue.
This is disproved by literally 5000 years of human history where huge infrastructure investments are always a big political problem. And even if projects are clearly of huge benefits they are difficult.
In terms of hydrogen infrastructure, nobody can make a case that it is actually worth it in the first place.
> There's lots of engineer's who'll easily transition out of the LNG industry into great jobs working on these problems.
Or we could make those engineers work on useful stuff like batteries, railway electrification, nuclear, metros and so on.