Hydrogen is a gas too and you can make it without emitting carbon. If you want you can also make methane from atmospheric carbon and water.

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olau 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

FWIW, the latest analysis I've seen seems to suggest that biomethane is probably the way to go for last-resort long term backup. Hydrogen is just too fickle.

	▲	tcfhgj 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		biomethane aka methane from rotting plants? extremely inefficient and requires intensive agriculture
	▲	idiotsecant 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		What does it mean for a gas to be 'fickle'? Hydrogen gets stored long term all the time. It's made in refineries and used in chemical plants all over the world every day. It's expensive to store, but it's certainly doable with the right metallurgy. If your goal is reducing carbon emission as much as possible, it's way better than methane, regardless of source.

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pixl97 an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Thank goodness that around 99% of our current hydrogen is made from fossil fuels!

If your going to burn the power turning it into hydrogen then you save a shitload of that power by putting it in batteries instead.

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jandrese 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Hydrogen is a storage medium. It's fundamentally different than natural gas. Think of it more like a more complex, expensive, and inefficient battery; with the only advantage being that you can store more energy per unit volume at large scales.

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pfdietz 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Of course. But the point was that it could also be burned in these turbines, and is also storable underground like methane.

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literalAardvark 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The very small molecule makes it much harder to store than methane, and unlike anything else on the planet other than Helium, lost hydrogen is lost forever.

	▲	pfdietz an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Hydrogen leaked into the troposphere is quickly oxidized back to water. Only very little makes it to the very upper atmosphere where it can escape. Storage of hydrogen in underground caverns is demonstrated technology.

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cassepipe 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't think parent was against gas because of its physical but rather because it's a fossil fuel

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tcfhgj 3 hours ago | parent [-]

but not all gas is fossil

	▲	pixl97 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Just almost all of it to a staggering percent.

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m463 an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

i suspect that thinking is similar to the ideas people had that got them to buy hybrid cars because of EV range anxiety.

but hybrid cars are saddled with a maintenance heavy complex system that isn't used much.

nowadays we know the solution is just a bigger EV battery.

	▲	NetMageSCW 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Studies have shown that hybrids have fewer issues than ICE or BEV, though for different reasons. BEVs have new technology issues, and ICE has maintenance issues. Having a mostly understood ICE car that rarely uses the ICE and has the most reliable (battery+motor) part of the BEV makes a better solution short term.