OK, a little chemical reality here...

First, if creating the electricity to electrolyze water by "hydro,
wind,solar energy" were economical today, then it would also be true
that creating electricity for ANY use (including water electrolysis)
would be economical today. In the US, pretty much all the economical
hydro power has been tapped already (or is unavailable for other
reasons, eg. damming up the Colorado in the Grand Canyon is
unacceptable), and wind and solar are still considerably more expensive
than (depending on the location) burning natural gas, oil or coal to
make electricity. As soon as it becomes economically feasible to tear
down the coal-, oil- or gas-burning power plants and replace them with
windmills and/or solar cells, it will be done.

Second, obtaining hydrogen from "natural gas, swamp gas, you name it" is
already the current primary production methodology. The end product is
CO2, which comes from the carbon in the hydroCARBON source (exactly the
same amount of CO2 is produced as when the hydrocarbon is burned in a
power plant), and hydrogen. And of course, the amount of energy
contained in the product hydrogen is considerably less than what was
contained in the feed hydrocarbon. And no electricity is produced.


dons asbestos suit, getting ready for flame war

bob



bowgus wrote:
To clarify ... hydro, wind, solar energy could be used to create the
hydrogen. And it's looking like natural gas, swamp gas, you name it may be
used as well without the combustion side effects associated with getting
energy from gas.


The sticky point with hydrogen is that it takes so much energy to
produce. Where are we going to get all this energy, which we're already
short of?