I simply disagree, we do not have an availability issue with green energy, we have a geographic issue with green energy, in that it simply isn’t produced where people need it. You can see examples of this all over the world.

To cite my home country, Scotland, where our highlands produce over 200% of their energy requirements from wind & hydro. However where these sites are population is extremely sparse, meaning there are massive grid transmission issues getting the power to where it is needed. There’s a great video on this here highlighting Orkney https://youtu.be/8UmsfXWzvEA.

To cite a larger more relevant example to global warming, China, who currently have both the largest expansion of coal power with the largest expansion of wind & hydro. The problems they are facing is their green energy is situated predominantly in the sparsely populated west, with their industrial power houses being along the eastern coast, needing supplemented by coal generation, as China does not have adequate gas sources for cleaner generation (https://youtu.be/GBp_NgrrtPM here’s a good more in depth documentary on Chinese energy infrastructure). They are experimenting with extremely high voltage transmission lines however they are still problematic with the huge distances involved.

Grid transmission is a massive issue, and one that is being exacerbated by BEV usage, home chargers are already a huge grid issue we are seeing here in Scotland with the stress of substations and dated residential transmission lines, we have seen a 200-300% uptick in localised grid demand in affluent areas here, and that is even with our very small <5% EV adoption.

This is where many hydrogen schemes come in, it can be produced in large volumes at green energy production sites, and shipped or piped out, the same way gas & oil production happen today. Without requiring a near rebuilding of our energy grid. Where there’s losses on on paper efficiency, which is ever reducing with Japanese firms predicting an 80% production efficiency in the next 5 years (up from 30-40% in the last 5) there is potential to save billions on grid infrastructure. If you want a good video on Japans hydrogen development I think this is a good one: https://youtu.be/8UmsfXWzvEA although it’s focusing in a big way on the nuclear production of hydrogen, which is a fairly new concept, conventional production is being helped lately with the advent of carbon nano fibre filters & catalyst bases.

>the major issue with hydrogen and the reason it's not competitive with BEV's and never will be.

Even if this were true (it's not), small passenger vehicles are just a small piece of the decarbonisation puzzle, it's extremely narrow minded to keep coming back to this argument.

>Using our precious green energy for it is a waste.

The fact is, green energy is not precious in some places. We have vast solar and wind arrays in the Australian desert that make green energy out the wazoo, but getting that energy to where it's needed is a different story.

They actually make so much excess green energy that they're mining bloody cryptocurrency with it.

From the above article:

"Renewable energy projects are already not being allowed to connect to the grid due to curtailment and others are suffering heavy losses when they switch off at times of low consumption,” he said. “We keep using the power 24/7 and that’s a huge benefit to the renewables developers, it makes their projects more financially viable. “We are basically like a sponge. We soak up the excess that’s not used.”

What the plan is - is instead of letting crypto grifters use it to make imaginary internet coins, we use it to make green hydrogen on site, which can then be loaded onto ships and shipped anywhere in the world, particularly places like Japan with very little access to their own wind and solar.

And this is what's happening now here in Western Australia. The projects are already underway, the infrastructure is being built, and the contracts with Japan already signed. None of this is hypothetical.

So why fight it? Green energy, exported to the world. Should be right up /r/futurology 's alley.

Also, storage is a problem. Natural gas can be liquefied and fed into a distribution system as needed. Hydrogen requires much more extreme pressures and temperatures for that.

You might think hydrogen could just be produced on demand then, but on demand power is already the biggest problem with post fossil fuel energy systems.