Exactly: We need the h2 for processes where it's irreplaceable. Burning it for transportation tasks is a pure waste. That's like using drinking water for pools during a drought.

And no, I don't think solving the fundamental problems of h2 tech is a matter of research. Let alone take this: H2 is terrible to store. There are ways to circumvent this, such as storing it in a solution, but that again lowers the efficiency. And h2 storage is a really old problem; like 100+ years. It is very unlikely that this would be solved all of a sudden. And storage is just one of many problems.

H2 cars received more funding until the mid 2000s than BEVs. The ICE car industry kept showcasing them, knowing they would never be a danger for their core business - while receiving state subsidies to research a dead-end tech. Without Tesla, we'd still hear "in 20 years, we'll all drive using h2 cars".

Edit: sorry to bring up cars. But even for storing energy, h2 is a poor choice.

Hydrogen fuel cells have been around since the 80s and working concept cars have been presented since then a well. The fundamental problem of hydrogen is production and storage. It wastes a lot of energy to produce h2 from water and the reverse step is also quite wasteful. Battery cars have a somewhat 73% well to wheel efficiency, meaning 73% of the electricity is converted into motion energy of the car. For h2 this is only 22%. (https://insideevs.com/news/332584/efficiency-compared-battery-electric-73-hydrogen-22-ice-13/). And these numbers have been like that forever since. I don't believe any amount of research will cause these numbers to change as dramatically as it would be needed to be able to compete with BEVs.

I've been reading about battery tech breakthroughs since 2008 or so. It's normal that such things take 5 to 10 years to become commercially available and only a fraction manages to get there at all.

Most people aren't aware however how much battery tech developed in a disruptive way. For the past 2 decades, battery prices per kw/h halfed roughly ever 4.5 years. This is due to all these advances that people think never arrive in products because there are so many news on it.

You can see the historic price development graph here: https://ourworldindata.org/battery-price-decline

And btw, for photovoltaic and wind energy, the price development looks fairly similar.